Above: Venice-Nokomis Presbyterian drive-in church, 1954. Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory.
Sunday best wasn’t always required, and neither was leaving the car. From Venice’s drive-in church to beachside services and worship at the Flora-Bama, Florida congregations have found some unexpected places to gather. This week, we explore the history of Sunday services beyond the traditional pew.
The minister preached from the bed of a truck, his congregation seated in more than 200 cars. The drive-in theater’s billboard advertised the evening attraction: “The Devil Takes a Holiday!” It was an unlikely welcome to Sunday worship, but that is how Whitfield Estates Presbyterian Church’s first service is remembered in a church history preserved by the Manatee County Public Library System. [1]
The gathering on Jan. 4, 1953, offered a solution to a problem the minister had heard from his own congregation: Physical disabilities kept some members from attending church. Passing the Trail Drive-In Theatre between Sarasota and Bradenton, he began to see how they might worship without leaving their cars, the church history explains.
The idea caught on, and the congregation eventually acquired a small building with a roof that doubled as a preaching platform. When rain arrived, the organist and soloist went downstairs. The minister received a raincoat, according to the same account.
Florida’s weather required a few accommodations. So did its worshippers. Along both coasts, congregations were finding ways to bring Sunday services to people who might otherwise miss them.
Farther south in Venice, drive-in worship received an architectural upgrade. Architect Victor Lundy designed an elevated pulpit with room for an organ and choir for the Venice-Nokomis Presbyterian Church. The arrangement attracted national attention in Life magazine in April 1955, according to a Sarasota County History Center account published by Sarasota History Alive.
The church’s pastor initially had doubts. He came to appreciate how the services accommodated people who could not easily leave their cars, those with hearing difficulties and others hesitant to enter a traditional church. Elsewhere in Sarasota, Pine Shores Presbyterian temporarily moved services to a drive-in theater when crowds outgrew its space in spring 1953, the same local history records.
A car could offer a familiar, manageable place to worship. And for a growing congregation, a theater parking lot had the considerable advantage of being available on Sunday morning.
The same opportunity presented itself across the state. In 1953, a Daytona Beach congregation began holding services at the Neptune Drive-In Theater to reach vacationers and winter visitors. The minister preached from the projection platform, while the choir occupied the concession stand, according to the Disciples Church Extension Fund’s history of the ministry.
What began as an outdoor ministry became a separate congregation in 1957. The movies eventually disappeared, but Daytona Beach Drive-In Christian Church remained. Today, arriving worshippers can park at its Daytona Beach Shores property and tune their radios to 88.5 FM, a frequency prominently listed on the church’s website.
The familiar arrangement proved useful in a very different era. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the congregation continued gathering without missing a Sunday service, its minister told the Disciples Church Extension Fund in 2025. Keeping worshippers apart was something the property already accommodated.
Of course, Florida offered another outdoor gathering place with considerably better scenery than a parking lot. In New Smyrna Beach, an Episcopal priest sought permission to hold worship on the beach. The first Surfer’s Mass took place on July 19, 1970, becoming a summer tradition, according to the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida.
When the beach services ended in the early 1980s, residents and weekend visitors helped keep the congregation together at a local elementary school. That gathering eventually became St. Peter the Fisherman, established as an Episcopal mission in January 1987, the diocese records.
The congregation had found its beginnings on the sand. On the Gulf Coast, another ministry would find a home where beachgoers were already gathering for an entirely different reason.
At the Flora-Bama on Perdido Key, Worship on the Water began holding services in 2011. The famous beachfront bar’s tent stage became a Sunday worship space, with baptisms just steps away in the Gulf, according to the ministry’s history.
The bar provides the space free of charge, and the relationship continues through the week. Ministry staff offer support that includes grief and addiction recovery, the congregation’s website explains. The venue may draw the curious, but there is ongoing work behind the Sunday gathering.
Florida’s Sunday traditions have always made a little room for the way people actually live. A winter visitor could keep the car seat, a beachgoer could keep the sandals, and someone hesitant about church might find a familiar entrance at the local bar. Come as you are, as it turns out, leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
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