Drive-Through Offers Fast Food for the Soul

In a nation of fast-food restaurants, cash machines and even drive-through liquor stores, the city’s First Church of the Nazarene is finding that people like their religion quick and convenient as well.

This month the church closed its parking lot to set up a drive-through Nativity scene for those who want to experience the “true meaning of Christmas” but don’t want to leave their cars.

“I suppose some people will feel it is tacky, and I suppose intellectually it is,” said Carla Johnson, professor of communications at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind. “But from the standpoint of they have a message that they want to get to as many people as they can . . . it’s a really good idea.”

The church expects about 10,000 people to take the 15-minute drive, said Jane Krutz, a member of the church’s board of directors.

Since the church started the tradition 12 years ago, the five-day exhibit has grown to about 140 costumed characters and a stable of animals, from donkeys to hens.

Motorists pass through nine scenes illuminated with candles, each telling a part of the Christmas story. In a scene where shepherds watch their flocks by night, an angel is suspended in the air.

Many churches have had to turn to secular-style marketing efforts to attract a crowd, Johnson said.

“They’re using the channels that people are comfortable with. They’re giving you something you want to see and at the same time getting the message across,” she said.

The concept of outdoor morality plays is actually centuries old, Johnson said. In the Middle Ages, churches sent actors to small towns to deliver messages on morality to illiterate townspeople.

“It’s a way of reaching a culture that’s more visual than literate,” she said.

Krutz said one man who drove through the church’s Nativity scenes about three years ago had a spiritual reawakening.

“He hadn’t been in church since he was a boy,” Krutz said. “Because it was outside, he came through it.”

The next year he portrayed one of the shepherds, she said.

“That one person alone is worth the work we go through.”