Preaching to the De-Churched: An Interview with Mark Batterson

Preaching: Your congregation is also known as the Theater Church. Why is that?

Batterson: I went into church planting with a traditional mindset: meet in a rented facility so you can buy or build a building. Problem is, on Capitol Hill property was going for about $10 million an acre.

Preaching: That's a challenge!

Batterson: Yeah, we were not going to buy property and build something. Long story short, we were meeting in the movie theaters at Union Station, which is the most visited destination in D.C. About 25 million people pass through Union Station every year.

You know, sometimes I'm slow picking up on these things, but at some point I thought to myself: Here we are meeting in a movie theater in Union Station, with amazing screens that we use for videos and worship projection, and there are 48 food court restaurants right outside our front door. And how many churches have their own subway system?

And then I thought to myself: Why would we build a building when we can be at a place like this? So that vision of meeting in movie theaters at Metro stops was birthed. We're now one church with nine services at five locations, four of them movie theaters. And then we own and operate the largest coffee house on Capitol Hill. God has blessed us over these 13 years. And, for what its worth, we are 70 percent single, 20-somethings; so a lot of emerging generation folks are coming to church, and we're doing our level best to reach them for Christ.

Preaching: The vast majority of your people come from an un-churched or de-churched background. How do you go about reaching those "de-churched" folks?

Batterson: That's just someone who grew up going to church but quit going. I've read statistics that as many as 61 percent of 20-somethings quit going to church at some point, and we kind of get them on the rebound. It's amazing how many people were checked out for five or 10 or 15 years, and we find them or they find us on the rebound. We love being a church for those folks who left the church for one reason or another. That's really who we're targeting and part of the reason why we're trying to meet in marketplace locations. It makes it a little bit easier for them to walk in our front door.

Preaching: As you do that, tell me about the approach you take to preaching. If we were to come to one of your locations next Sunday, what might we see and experience?

Batterson: Those of us who are preachers, we eat and sleep and breathe these things called preaching and teaching. I'm going to say up front that even 13 years in, I'm still trying to find my voice; and I make no apologies for that. I have not arrived, and I continue to try to sharpen my edge as a communicator. I do that by listening to a lot of podcasts—I have a steady diet of preachers in my own life.

If I were to describe one thing that makes us somewhat unique, it is that while we are very biblical in our approach, we do try to brand our sermon series. Let me give you an example. We did a series on First and Second Timothy that was expository in nature; but instead of titling it "First and Second Timothy," we decided to title or brand that series "Potential" because we felt like it was all about a guy named Paul who saw tremendous potential in a kid named Timothy. By branding it that way, we felt like it would speak to some of those deep desires in people's hearts to reach their potential.