Drive-ln Chapels

On hot evenings in Phoenix, Ariz., it is a standard reflex to steer for one of the district's ten drive-in movies. This summer, as an alternative, Phoenix has drive-in religion. Five nights a week, the Rev. George A. Rustad, state director of Arizona's Seventh-Day Adventists, offers two services featuring an uplift movie and a sermon illustrated with colored slides.

Like many a U.S. minister, Adventist Rustad had looked enviously at the movie drive-in crowds. In Yankton, S. Dak. three years ago, he gathered a crowd for a drive-in religious service -- only to have it melt away when an early snowstorm struck. When he went to Arizona, he tried again. Last year, with Adventist Elder Lawrence E. Davidson of Phoenix, he rented a small lot for the purpose. Services went so well that this year the Adventists took over two larger plots, one of them in the Negro section of town.

A typical drive-in service begins at 8 p.m. after a half-hour prelude of organ music. Elder Davidson opens with a story for the children, then runs off a 30-minute religious movie, or a "family problem" movie with such titles as Love Thy Neighbor and Honor Thy Family. After a brief prayer, Davidson (or a guest preacher) begins the half-hour illustrated sermon. Since May, both drive-ins have been drawing steady crowds. (Top attendance so far, for a visiting minister: 2,000.) Says Adventist Rustad: "We live in a new age, and the churches should keep moving with the times."

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