Verda Mae Pugh
December 26, 2012
Three silent films, with live music
January 2, 2013
Wearing a black leather jacket over blue jeans and a white t-shirt, Pastor Jeremy Voisin delivers his weekly sermon between pool and foosball tables and beneath black lights.
Voisin’s brief speech cedes to a video played on a projection screen above a stage. The video brings new context to a spiritual awakening, urging viewers to succumb to God so he can break them from an otherwise-inescapable prison cell and eventually use them to break others free.
“Our mission is to spread the gospel, to let people know about God,” Voisin says of his Christian nightclub in Houma, open every Friday.
If the devil looms in the bottom of a bottle, removing alcohol from the premises seems an appropriate avenue to avert temptation. After five years of operating by this mantra, Voisin is taking the steps to crystalize his Houma nightspot’s footprint.
Jeremy and his wife Autumn Voisin classify Club ATC (At The Cross) as an alternative nightclub meant to ease the transition into a religious lifestyle and provide a gathering spot free of indulgent pressures.
Jeremy Voisin chose the powerful – through repetition, volume and vocabulary – video clip, of course, and it jibes with his story. After years of living an admittedly reckless lifestyle and seeing several close friends die – and at the not-so-subtle urging of his father, a pastor – Jeremy Voisin chose a new path in life and gave birth to ATC, geared at locals of his ilk.
“This is a Friday night church,” he says while heavy metal blares over the loudspeakers. “I would see this place, you know, laying down in bed; I couldn’t stop thinking about it. God was just like showing me what he wanted me to do. I was single at the time. God was putting it on my heart for other Christians that are single and just ain’t got nothing to do. They go to church and after church is over with, they’ve got nothing else. I just had a burden to reach them, you know, and give them a place to hang out so they didn’t have to go to bars.”
Above all else, the Christian nightclub on South Hollywood Road is a social hangout open to everyone 17 and older. Through merging its foundation of faith and target demographic of young adults, Club ATC’s image is shaped for the fringe of religion.
A business’ logo offers insight into its mission, and Club ATC’s red-and-black design is no different. Thorns on vines shaped into the letters “A” and “C” stabilize a cross in the center. It’s indicative of an edgy and modern atmosphere inside.
Like local taverns, intra-club entertainment exists with pool and foosball tables. Posh furniture lines the boundaries and black lights glow from above. A stage is backed with neon strobes.
The music, often live, isn’t limited to one genre. The only guidelines are Christianity and audible lyrics. Rap or heavy metal coerce a visceral arms-elevated sway or bob, just as country or pop music draw crooning from the dance floor. The sounds remain the same, but rage and violence are replaced with deference to and longing of a higher power.
Jeremy Voisin splits his time evenly with work offshore. A rotating group of associate pastors, each possessing individual strengths, lead the rest of the weekly gatherings.
One night, after the deejay cut the music, associate pastor Kenny Authement paced the floor and delivered a unique sermon centered on each attendee taking a scaled-down personality test.
Authement’s goal was to demonstrate why all people aren’t compatible. The experiment grouped its takers into one of four categories (drive, influence, steadiness and compliance) based on how they answered various questions of self-perception.
“God didn’t make everybody the same,” Authement says. “All of them (personality traits) are needed to make the world go round.”
Officially called Montegut Foursquare Church, the club also hosts youth sessions every three months.
“We invite all the youth groups from all the churches,” Jeremy Voisin says, and specific tasks – such as skits, sermons and music – are delegated among the groups in a concerted effort to involve all Christian faiths. The crowd frequently overflows into the parking lot, Jeremy Voisin says. The next youth rally is Jan. 18.
The room, adjacent to the Omega Institute of Cosmetology, is now open to the public more than one night a week, as the Voisins decided to establish a café, open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday. The club is open from 8-11 p.m. on Friday.
The café opened late last year as an avenue to sustain the weekly faith-based nightclub now that seed funds acquired through The Foursquare Church have run dry.
“We don’t bring in tides and offerings like a normal church,” Autumn Voisin says, though the club does take voluntary donations.
Though the end game is similar to traditional Christian churches in that it celebrates the gospel, Club ATC serves a base that usually doesn’t don casual ware on Sunday mornings. It could, in the long run, be stepping stone to that end, the owners say.
For the traveled and weary who wish to repent, sometimes the perception of judgment can restart the cycle and trigger a lifestyle relapse. The club, in this regard, functions as a path to alleviate these fears.
“They feel like they will get judged,” Autumn Voisin says. “We try to make them realize that’s not going to happen.”
Jeremy Voisin says his faith has strengthened to the point where relapse is not palatable.
“I put that life way behind me. In fact, I hate that life because I see what it does to people,” he says.
– editor@gumboguide.com
Guests at Club ATC (At The Cross) in Houma listen to the Christian rock band Crave. The club hosts its weekly worship session every Friday beginning at 8 p.m.
Sr. Pastor and Club ATC owner Jeremy Voisin gives his weekly sermon.
