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CAPITAL REGION — The Northway Church is breaking new ground in the Capital Region by broadcasting its Christmas services on local television.

Starting tonight, worshippers can catch live services at the church’s Colonie branch; Thursday evening they will be held at the Clifton Park location.

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the one-hour special will be broadcast on the region’s CW station, TWTV and News Channel 13 over a span of 14 hours between the two days.

The TV blitz, as the nondenominational church is calling it, is yet another way of embracing technology to get the message of faith, hope and love out to as many people as possible, says the church’s pastor and founder, Buddy Cremeans.

“We know that there are so many people searching for a place of worship that is relevant to their modern lifestyle,” Cremeans said. “So we want to reach them where they are,” whether it’s in the church, online or in their living rooms.

Services revolve around interactive performances of inspirational music, including modern contemporary and classic Christmas songs performed by a six-piece band, plus stories, humor and “the message,” as relayed by Cremeans.

“With all the bad news — the economy, foreclosures, the rest of it, I think, maybe for the first time, we’ve come to an awareness that … there is more and that we need God to help us through,” Cremeans said, speaking via telephone shortly before he was due onstage in front of an audience of several hundred people at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Mass., Tuesday evening.

“That’s why I want to blitz it — because I think we’re craving that message of faith, hope and love,” he added.

Cremeans said his aim is to leverage modern culture as a bridge to communicate about Christ with youth, teenagers and adults who might not know about the church. Its extensive Web site, www.northwaychurch.tv, includes videos, a Twitter feed and links to a Facebook account and the pastor’s blog. Worshippers even gather before services to “tweet” from their seats in anticipation of the upcoming event. Their messages appear on a Twitter feed displayed on a giant video screen in the sanctuary.

“We’ve leveraged the culture of the day like Jesus did,” Cremeans said. “Social media gives us a chance for people to know who we are and for us to know them.”

The message seems to be catching on.

Northway Church has been growing fast and furiously in recent years, beginning in 2002 with a handful of members who congregated in a former gym in Malta, to more than 2,000 members now spread between Colonie, Clifton Park and neighborhoods surrounding two soon-to-be-built locations, one in Malta and one near Pittsfield, Mass.

Plans for the new branch on Dunning Street in Malta are currently under way, Cremeans said. The building is expected to hold 1,000 to 1,500 people and is intended to be a hub and headquarters connecting the other churches.

“We’re looking to build as soon as possible,” he said.

The other new Northway branch is expected to open in the Berkshire County area in 2010.

Tuesday, Dec. 22
PITTSFIELD — The Northway Church, a fast-growing church founded in 2002 in New York’s Capital Region, will announce the opening of a new branch in Pittsfield at tonight’s Christmas service at The Colonial Theatre, the church’s pastor said.

Founded by Pastor Buddy Cremeans, Northway is known for delivering a multimedia production, complete with a nine-piece rock band and a pop-culture theme, based around his religious message.

The formula seems to be working. Since he started the non-denominational evangelical congregation in 2002 in a former Gold’s Gym in a Clifton Park, N.Y., strip mall, the church has grown from about 600 members after the first year to more than 2,000 members and two locations. The second church is on Central Avenue in Colonie, N.Y.

Cremeans said he anticipates opening a new branch for the Berkshires in Pittsfield in 2010. A new pastor, Paul Howlett, has agreed to run the new congregation, Cremeans said.

A Pittsfield location has not yet been secured, but a Jan. 17 “vision meeting” for the new church will be held at Reid Middle School, Cremeans said.

Cremeans said about 10 members of his church have been traveling from the Berkshires to the Northway Church in either Clifton Park or Colonie for the past couple years and frequently asked when it would be coming to the Berkshires.

When Northway Church made its Berkshire debut for a Good Friday celebration at the Colonial this spring,
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it drew more than 800 people. “We were just blown away,” Cremeans said.

Cremeans said the vision is to “meet people where they are to share the greatest message ever. We want to be the church for people who don’t like to go to church but are open to faith.”

The style of using contemporary music and culture, he said, is “leveraging culture.”

“If you’re not leveraging culture, then you’re not connecting,” Cremeans said. “That’s what Jesus did. What we’ve found is that people are open to faith and to God, they may have just had a bad experience with religion.”

The Northway Church will also be blitzing the Capital Region with an hour-long Christmas show on several Time Warner Cable TV channels.

But why should people trust the Cremeans message when there have been so many other “TV preachers” who tried to leverage pop culture as part of their message and turned out to be scam artists?

“One of our basic tenets is integrity,” Cremeans said. “I take it very seriously — that God is going to hold all of us accountable. You can’t get too isolated and you’ve got to surround yourself with people who are not afraid to say anything. You must have a culture of truth-telling and I welcome that.”