As worshippers gather nearby, Mary Gibson gets down for playtime with Riley Rasmussen, the pastor's son, in a movie-theater hallway.

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Showing soon at a theater near you: Sunday morning church.

Epic, a new church started by 27-year-old Baptist pastor Jake Rasmussen, meets in theater No. 10 in the Century 20 Park Place Theatres, at Park Place mall. Worshippers gather early on Sundays, before the day's movie screenings begin.

Epic's inaugural service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Easter Sunday.

"We just want to serve the people and what better social hub than a mall? It's the town square of today," Rasmussen said. "We strategically chose Park Place — 129,000 people live within a five-mile radius."

"Theater churches" are popping up in multiplexes around the country, with clusters in areas such as Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where real estate prices are high.

"I don't know if we'll ever build," Rasmussen said. "We have enough churches that sit empty six days per week. The church to us isn't the building, it's the people."

Rasmussen wants to tap into a growing segment of Tucson and the nation — young people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion and don't attend any house of worship.

He's trying to offer up church postmodern-style, using many of the methods adopted by evangelical churches. There are no Bibles. There is no pulpit or organ. There is a band, and Rasmussen projects words from Scripture and catchy Christian songs onto the big screen so that worshippers can join in.

He encourages worshippers to bring laptops — the church has free wireless Internet — and he accepts questions via text message during the service. Children gather in theater No. 5 for their service.

The new church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention's aggressive "church planting" strategy in Southern Arizona. The denomination's new start-up churches like Epic don't have the word "Baptist" in them, and the worship style is individualized to the pastor.

Rasmussen, who grew up in Tucson, started EastPointe Church on the far East Side in 2005 — a church that caters to young professionals and is designed in a café style, sort of like Starbucks, complete with an espresso bar. Rasmussen himself works part time at Starbucks and likes the idea of a church having the same lure as the popular coffee chain.

"I love the commitment to the customer at Starbucks, I love that it is a place where people go to hang out and feel comfortable," Rasmussen said. "The same people go there every day, and we build relationships with those people. I have about 150 regulars who I know, and I can tell you their drink."

And the nice thing about having a church in Park Place is that it has a Starbucks, Rasmussen said. Since movie theaters allow food and drink, worshippers at Epic will be able to buy a venti latte and sip it while they pray.

At a recent sneak-preview-test-run of Epic, ESPN's SportsCenter played on the large screen as worshippers took their seats in the theater at 5870 E. Broadway.

The choice of pre-service entertainment was strategic, since Rasmussen's target demographic is young men.

Rasmussen says women will often go to church alone without their children. But by connecting with men, his church has the potential to attract the whole family, his research tells him. "And men like going to movies," he said.

Epic is one of at least 170 churches, most of them evangelical Christian, meeting in rented movie theater space around the country every Sunday — up from 95 churches just two years ago, according to data from National CineMedia. The Colorado-based company works as a liaison among movie theaters and groups that want to use theater space in off-hours.

There are three theater churches meeting in Phoenix and another set to open this year. In Tucson, CrossRoads Church, a non-denominational Christian church, has met in the East Side Century Gateway 12 for three years, said Roger Netherton, executive pastor. The church has about 150 attendees, predominantly young families, at Sunday morning services, he said.

Although the trend is growing rapidly now, theater churches aren't all that new, National CineMedia says. Robert A. Schuller's Crystal Cathedral megachurch in California began in a drive-in movie theater during the 1950s. The Granger Community Church in Indiana and Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, both now well-known megachurches, once met in movie theaters, too.

"One of our pastors likes to say that in the medieval times the church taught Bible stories through stained glass, and that the movie screen is the postmodern stained glass," said Tom Doyle, manager of Worship Solutions for National CineMedia.

Doyle said there are several other reasons theater churches are popular: "When real estate is high and cities are growing fast, school systems may not embrace churches in their buildings. A lot of pastors who are gifted communicators would rather be in the middle of the marketplace at First and Main than tucked away in a neighborhood. Everyone knows where the local Cinemax Gateway 12 is at."

In a technology-savvy era, when many churches are now hiring "digital ministers," the theater church has a lot to offer — big screens they can use with high-resolution digital and audio projection. The stadium-style seating mirrors the worship space in many successful megachurches.

"You can be anonymous if you want — it's easy to slip in and slip out. And I liked the Sports Center," said 22-year-old Matt Johnson, who attended Epic's sneak preview. "It's unconventional. It doesn't have the corporate feeling of so many churches."

Johnson comes from a Baptist background and already attends a church on the East Side but decided to try Epic for the experience.

Joe and Leona Linton, both in their 20s, also tried out Epic at its sneak preview. The Lintons grew up going to churches in different denominations but fell away from the habit as they got older and busier. Leona is an educator and Joe is a student and pharmacy tech. Since Joe works on Sunday afternoons, Sunday morning is often the only time they have to do things like laundry and grocery shopping.

"We're going to try to come. We like the movie theater idea and the location," Leona said. "It's just that life is hectic. It's hard to find time."

Rasmussen is hoping his service will be important enough for non-churchgoers like the Lintons to change their ways.

"My family is incredibly busy, as well," said Rasmussen, a married father of two. "It's an hour. It's an hour where they might make a connection.

"I want this church to be about people — not a list of do's and don'ts."