By KAREN WORKMAN
Of The Oakland Press

Kensington Church’s progressive message continues to hit home with Oakland County residents, and the proof is in the numbers.

The church is attracting more than 11,000 people for its Sunday services and, starting in January, opened a new campus in Orion Township.

“We believe a lot of people have been turned off to God because of churches,” said Joe Wurm, campusing director for

Kensington.

The campus in Orion is the fifth one to be opened by the church and is drawing about 900 people on Sundays.

“We started with one campus in Troy, then we opened the second one in Rochester, a third in Clinton Township, a fourth in Birmingham and (Orion) is the fifth,” Wurm said. “We’ve announced our sixth campus too. That is going to be in Orlando, Fla.”

The nondenominational, mainline Christian church opened its doors in 1990.

At first, the congregation moved from one rented facility to another, but by 1999, built its own building at the corner of Square Lake and John R roads in Troy.

The church’s first service drew 463 people. Two years later, more than 1,000 people were attending Sunday services. When its building opened in 1999, attendance was topping 3,000.

“It really has been amazing,” Wurm said.

It all begin when the church’s founder, Steve Andrews, started asking people why they didn’t go to church. According to Kensington’s Web site, Andrews knocked on the doors of 1,400 Oakland County homes in 1989 to find out.

Members of the church continue to go out and talk with people to get an idea of what they don’t like about church.

“They say it’s boring, it doesn’t relate to my life, it’s hypocritical,” Wurm said. “We felt there was a way to do it differently to capture the same message that’s a couple thousand years old and deliver it in a very creative, progressive way.”

The one-hour Sunday services usually feature a lot of technology, loud music and creative elements, like skits.

“During our Easter service, our main song that we did was ‘The Magnificent’ by U2,” Wurm said. “If you walked in the middle of the song, you’d think it was U2. We had the smoke and strobe lights and laser beam lights and graphics.”

About 25,000 people combined showed up for the church’s Easter services, which were pretty much the same at all five of the campuses.

In fact, the church strives to keep its services as similar as possible across all the campuses. It hopes to have 12 local campuses and five national ones by 2020, starting with the first national campus planned to open in Orlando in September, 2010.

“For example, right now we’re kicking off a new series, ‘Scandalous’ that looks at some of the outrageous and crazy things God did,” Wurm said. “We have three parts to that, and the idea is for people to be able to go to a campus here in Michigan, see the first week up here, and then if they’re vacationing, see the second week down in Florida.”

About 100 people have committed to traveling to Florida to start up the first national campus, and Wurm said several dozen Florida residents who are originally from Michigan have expressed a desire to have a church there.

“Hopefully, that will be a gateway to the Southwest region,” Wurm said.

Kensington isn’t looking at constructing a new church building, but to find an existing building or school that can house Sunday services, Wurm said.

Within Oakland County, the church’s campuses outside of Troy all operate in existing buildings.

The services are offered at Rochester Adams High School in Rochester Hills, at Groves High School in Birmingham, at Lake Orion High School in Orion Township and a performing arts facility in Clinton Township.

The church also owns some property in Auburn Hills, near the Dutton and Bald Mountain roads area.

“Part of our long-term strategy is to, hopefully, have a permanent facility there,” Wurm said.

Other places that may one day be home to a Kensington campus are Clarkston and Romeo, Wurm said.

Not everyone enjoys the church’s progressive services, though.

“We get a lot of criticism for, ‘being out there,’ ” Wurm said. “If they’re looking something for a little more traditional, they’re not going to find that on a typical Sunday at Kensington.”

No matter the delivery method though, the message of Christianity remains the same.

“The service on Sunday is really designed to be interesting and exciting for people who don’t like church — it’s a church for people who don’t like church,” Wurm said. “It seems to be working for us.”