A flurry of frantic, angry emails began around 6 p.m. last night on the Cleveland Park Listserve and moved seemingly all over town by 8 p.m. It was the end of civilization as we know it! A catastrophe of epic proportions! Alert the National Guard! The Uptown Theater might be closing!

Thankfully, cooler heads have now prevailed. Turns out the rumor got started because the Jews for Jesus outfit McLean Bible Church put up a page on their web site advertising the new “community campus” they will begin in January at the theater — meaning the church group will be renting space at the Uptown on Sunday mornings to hold services. But freaked out Cleveland Park residents, including Advisory Neighborhood Commission member Bruce Beckner and DCist Flickr contributor extraordinaire and local book publisher Bill Adler began posting to the neighborhood listserve that the Uptown had actually been sold to the church and would be closing, getting everyone in a tizzy. A comment thread at Drinking Liberally provided the first call back to sanity last night, when Mike Hurt, the church’s Director of Community Campus Development, jumped in to explain the reality of the situation.

Churches renting out movie theater space is actually a growing trend across the country, as theater owners search for ways to increase revenue in the face of declining ticket sales, and churches increasingly have trouble owning big buildings in expensive urban areas. The National Community Church already holds its services in the AMC Union Station 9 movie theater.

Clarification: We originally wrote that McLean Bible Church is affiliated with Jews for Jesus, when instead the Church only hosts a Jews for Jesus Bible Study group on Thursdays.

Photo by truenotes