The number three has a special significance at Bridgeway Community Church in east Columbia these days, one that has nothing to do with religious doctrine.

While the Rev. David A. Anderson does deliver sermons dealing with the Holy Trinity, three happens to be the number of Sunday services held each week to accommodate nearly 3,000 worshippers at the church off Route 108, as well as the number of parking lots leased from neighboring industrial firms on Red Branch Road to handle parking overflow.

"It's a nice problem to have," Anderson said of the growing congregation that keeps pushing the nondenominational church's physical limits.

Yet concern is growing among church leaders that the current lease arrangements won't suffice as attendance continues to climb and parking issues return, he said.

"We've been praying about this, and we'll probably end up contacting more of our neighbors about using their lots on Sundays," said Anderson, who is also an author and radio-show host.

What spurs all the logistical maneuvering to manage near-constant growing pains is the church's philosophy, Anderson said.

Bridgeway "uses the creative arts and practical Christian teaching to reach people, no matter where they are on their spiritual journey," according to the church's website. But there's more.

"It's said that 11 a.m. on Sunday is the most segregated hour in America," said Anderson, 44, who has been preaching in some capacity for 24 years. "As a multicultural church, representing people from 42 nations, we seek to put a stop to that."

"The seed [to unite cultures in one church] was put in me," he said, noting his father was a Baptist minister. "From a very young age, I have felt that segregation has never been OK."

'We make it entertaining'

Worshippers at Bridgeway enter the building through a 6,000-square-foot lobby, a cavernous space that encourages mingling before services begin at 8 a.m., 10 a.m. and noon. Many patronize the Missions Cafe, where the sale of coffee and other refreshments raises $1,200 each month to support local and worldwide mission efforts.

Congregants then file into a 1,200-seat auditorium filled with high-backed, padded seats with armrests that were custom-made to fit Anderson, who is imposing at 6-foot-3. "I figured if I were comfortable in these seats, then everyone else surely would be," he said.

Everyone has a clear view of the stage. Performances, many of them original productions, are overseen by Bridgeway's creative arts director, Rich Becker, who helped Anderson launch the church in 1992 with just six members.

The idea of a stage playing an integral role in worship services stems from Anderson's belief that "it's a sin for church to be boring."

Becker, who also is the son of a preacher, "grew up thinking church was a chore," he said. "But at Bridgeway we make it entertaining, and people have fun and laugh and cry just as they would if they went to any theatrical production."

Using the performing arts in worship has been a priority for Anderson since he moved his then-tiny congregation from temporary office space on Sterrett Place in Town Center to Slayton House in Wilde Lake. The church spent four years there with about 120 attendees before a slot opened up in 1996 at Smith Theatre at Howard Community College, where 410 worshippers filled the auditorium to near-capacity at multiple Sunday services.

After a 10-year stint at HCC, the church leased its current building for two years before buying it in 2009.

Shaun Lane of Columbia, who has attended Bridgeway since 1998, said the church's rapid growth has been well managed.

"Year by year, even month by month, you could see the growth, not only in the number of people but in the number of ministries," Lane said. "But David has a way of engineering it to not make you feel like you're getting lost in the shuffle. He keeps it personal, while still opening doors to change."

But it's Anderson's definition of a multicultural church that sets Bridgeway apart.

Defining 'multicultural'

The Prince George's County transplant, who picked Columbia for its principles of racial and socioeconomic equality, said he could never accept that people from different cultures live and work together, then split up when it comes time to worship.

"'Multicolored' is different from 'multicultural,' " Anderson said. The first applies only to faces in a congregation, while the other describes a church's vision for building bridges between cultures.

A nondenominational identity allows the church to "reach out to the unaffiliated, and serves as a way of opening the door to anyone who wants to investigate," the pastor said.

A multicultural emphasis allows Bridgeway to be "a really good teaching church," which is more of a white person's concept, and also "a really good preaching church," which tends to be a black person's priority, he said.

"You need them both, teaching for learning and preaching for living," said Anderson, who received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Moody Bible Institute in Illinois, and a doctorate in philosophy from the Oxford Graduate School in Tennessee.

"White people think of church as a noun, and black people think of it as a verb," he said. A multicultural church falls somewhere between being a place and a feeling, thereby uniting two approaches to worship under one roof.

The church even conducts an internal diversity audit every six months to check on the multicultural health of its 30 ministries and staff of 35, he said, to insure all are practicing what they preach.

While Bridgeway occupies Head Sports' former regional headquarters, a 50,000-square-foot behemoth that the church has renovated, Anderson's followers aren't confined by bricks and mortar.

He reaches out over the airwaves through a weekday talk-radio program and in print as the author of four books on race relations. The most recent, "Multicultural Ministry Handbook: Creatively Connecting to a Diverse World," came out in September and a fifth book, "I Forgrace You: Doing Good to Those Who Have Hurt You," will be published in May.

He also does consulting work with business firms through the church's BridgeLeader Network, which has its own publishing arm.

For the nine months that he has hosted "Afternoons with Dr. David Anderson" on WAVA 105.1 in Washington, which airs from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, the pastor has used a slogan, "your bridge-building voice in the nation's capital," to introduce and sign off his show.

That tagline serves to sum up Anderson's vision for cultural integration, and also explains why he decided to call his church Bridgeway.

Listeners especially love Mondays, Anderson said, when he and his wife, Amber, talk openly about the highlights and lowlights of their 19-year interracial marriage. The couple also discuss their three children, Asia, Luke and Isaiah, who range in age from 10 to 15.

WAVA's station manager, Tom Moyer, said Anderson is a natural fit for the station's Christian programming.

"His phone lines are jammed virtually every time with nonstop calls because David provides intense and compelling content," Moyer said. "Listeners can tell when someone's authentic, and he really puts himself out there."

Anderson's not sure what's in store for Bridgeway, but he does know how he'll approach any options that come along.

"We're all one family in need of someone to say we really can do this together," he said.

"We need to establish a culture where everyone feels valued and has access to leadership and representation, otherwise it's just apartheid."