APPLETON — There will be a new focus for the former Big Picture Theater of Adventure and Discovery.
A one-year lease was signed Feb. 3 to turn the large format theater, which has been closed for more than two years, into The Core, an outreach ministry of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Freedom.
The daughter congregation will target the 18-to-35-year-old demographic, said the Rev. Jim "Ski" Skorzewski, who will pastor the 300-seat (plus handicapped seating) church.
The Core's vision is to become a city within the city, Skorzewski said.
"In the same way we've been transformed by Jesus, then our responsibility and opportunity is to share that Gospel message that transforms lives," he said. "We're going to start very small like a township and our goal is to grow into a city that affects the city for our Savior Jesus."
More than 100 people turned out for an impromptu service and Bible study Sunday.
The $5.1 million Big Picture opened in March 2005. It closed in October 2006 and has remained vacant since.
In August, Skorzewski, formerly with St. Marcus Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, received a call from St. Peter's pastor, the Rev. Tim Glende, to start the new ministry. Skorzewski and a friend had began working on a new model for starting a church a year ago targeting two areas in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod: Oconomowoc and Appleton.
"A year later I got a call from both places the same night four minutes apart to do almost the exact same thing," Skorzewski said. "My philosophy has been if we're going to go after and target the 18-to-35-year-old age group you need to be downtown."
Once interior modifications are made to the theater — such as shrinking the size of the 80-by-60-foot screen using curtains and installing a performance platform, The Core hopes to launch its first service April 19. A Web site launching party is planned Feb. 22.
"It's an exciting time for our congregation and also for this daughter congregation," Glende said.
"Our tag line is real, relevant, relational," said Skorzewski. "We're going to be a pretty non-churchy church. It will be the more reverent irreverent service you've been to. … We're going to do something I haven't seen done in the Valley, so to speak. …So often churches become 'I have to,' not 'I get to.'"
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GJ - Would CORE be a clone of what Ski and Parlow drooled over in Atlanta - the Emergent Church, multi-screen, Rock and Roll Babtist Northpoint Community (sic) Church?
Read your publishing house's books, Ski and Glende. Deutschlander calls this kind of mission "whoopee worship."
