At the former St. Croix Hilltop Drive-In Theater, on Sunday mornings from Memorial Day through Labor Day, the Cougar lies down peacefully with the Mustang, the Falcon with the Sunbird, and the Cobra with the Impala. These worship services, held by Trinity Lutheran in Stillwater, are the longest-running show at the Hilltop, which is about a mile north of the Stillwater lift bridge in Houlton, Wisconsin. For twenty years, rain or shine, the faithful have crowded their autos into the lot at this 1960s-era single-screen drive-in, and propped Bibles against their steering wheels.
There are other drive-in churches in the Twin Cities area (Augustana Lutheran of St. Paul holds summer parking-lot services), but Trinity Lutheran is the only service held at an actual drive-in. (The theater closed in 1991, and the land is now owned by a member of the Trinity congregation.) The curtain will soon be coming down for good, however, when nearby Highway 35 is expanded to a four-lane divided highway in 2008. In the meantime, a committee is searching for a new outdoor location, but most drive-in worshippers lament the decision to pave this particular paradise.
Sunday mornings at “Drive-In Trinity” might overall resemble a thriving car dealership, but attending church here is in many ways like worshipping at any other church. Congregants sing hymns, pray, and listen to a sermon—but all from their automobiles. Deacons walk past with wicker offering baskets, and arms stretch from car windows, proffering donations. Able-bodied worshippers leave their cars to take Holy Communion in front of the movie screen; those who can’t instead turn on their headlights, and celebrants bring Communion bread and wine to them. (Cars sometimes have to be jump-started when drivers leave their lights on throughout the service.) Pastor T.J. Anderson, who has been with Trinity since April, understands that churches must change with the times. While at St. Andrew’s in Mahtomedi, he created the “noisy service,” where energetic youngsters are free to run amok. Founded in 1856, Trinity is “always asking, How can we be innovative?” Anderson said. Having never seen a drive-in service before this year, though, he worried that “it wouldn’t feel like a real worship service. And I was wrong.” The only concession he makes in preaching to a sea of windshields is to use more theatrical gestures. For instance, in illustrating the concept of strength in faith to the assembled vehicles, Anderson did an exaggerated Hulk Hogan-style bicep flex. When he called for an “amen,” the response was a joyful noise of honking horns and the occasional high-pitched compressed air siren. And when the faithful are moved by their preacher, they don’t wave their hands, but flick on their windshield wipers.
Tom Thiets has attended the drive-in church since the 1980s. Back then, the Hilltop functioned as both a Saturday-night passion pit (where God only knows what went on in the cars) and a Sunday-morning place of worship. Thiets, who is forty-eight and works as a trade-show supervisor in Stillwater, recalled that when his buddies first went to movies there, “it was a place to party and hang out with people. Now, years later, we sit in the same place going to church. We changed and so did the drive-in. But it’s still a very good gathering place.” The atmosphere is relaxed: part tent revival, part tailgate party. Many of the faithful are active types, dressed for boating or the golf course, and it’s common to see vehicles with kayaks or motorbikes in tow. Other congregants set up lawn chairs, combining their devotions with a little sun worship. Some even arrive on horseback.
On the last Sunday of August, about 350 people worshipped at the drive-in, decisively outnumbering the assembly at Trinity’s home base in Stillwater. “We might have fifty percent more people at the outdoor service than in the traditional church,” said Pastor Anderson. “We’re inviting people to come and be themselves, come unshaven, in their pajamas, with their pets. In a building, it’s like we’re supposed to be quiet and reflective. The drive-in worship allows this kind of different freedom. I would say it’s fun.”
Beautiful, too. No church in town has a finer ceiling. “Most every weekend, we see three or four eagles soaring on the air currents over the St. Croix Valley,” Thiets said. Appropriately, the welcoming song at a recent service was “On Eagles’ Wings.” “It’ll be sad when the drive-in closes,” he said, “but we’ll find a way.” Amen to that.
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