Eight minutes into Embrace United Methodist Church's service, Sarah Morehouse takes the stage to lead a recitation of the Apostles' Creed.

"I want to talk just a minute about why we do the Apostles' Creed," says the student at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore. "The church is really rooted. It goes all across the world and throughout time, and people have a lot of different beliefs because there's mystery in the faith, and there's paradox in the faith. There are different theologies, and that makes us a more diverse and awesome church. ...

"The cool thing about the Apostles' Creed is it's the one thing that unifies the church. It is the essentials of the faith."

Embrace looks like a church where people might be more inclined to think the Creed is a song by Christian rockers Third Day than a document dating back to the earliest days of Christianity.

Services take place in the State Theatre, the smaller house in the Kentucky Theatre complex — members of the congregation like to point out that it once showed porn films. Music by Coldplay greets worshippers at the 10:45 a.m. service, and worship is led by an acoustic guitar-based team.

Pastor Rosario Picardo spends much of his preparation time making sure overhead projections — of the Creed, for instance — are ready to go on his laptop, and he delivers the sermon in distressed jeans and a tight T-shirt, accentuating a physique that makes it easy to believe he's not too far removed from service in the Marine Corps Reserves.

But the modern vibe has a traditional edge. The service structure is close to that of mainline denominations, which it is a part of, and it includes aspects such as the recitation of creeds; the passing of the peace, a formalized greeting time; and weekly Communion.

"A lot of people here are coming to faith for the first time," Morehouse said after the service. "They need to know the basics."

The congregation on a late February Sunday morning is a mix of college students, a few families and a number of homeless or marginally housed people. The needy population at Embrace is large enough that sack lunches are passed out each week after the service to anyone who wants one.

"Roz said he wanted to minister to broken people, even people who are broken by the church," says Brady Searl, who has been with Embrace since it started in Picardo's basement apartment.

Picardo began considering ministry when he was in the Reserves and found a lot of guys came to him for prayer and with spiritual questions. His first idea was to become a military chaplain, so he started hitting the books at Houghton College, a Christian school in New York, so he could get into seminary.

Since a lot of his professors went to Asbury, he came to Wilmore.

"I say God tricked me to get me down here because I started getting involved in the local church, and the chaplaincy thing quickly faded," Picardo, 29, says. "When I graduated in 2007, I felt God calling me to start a church for people who were broken and hurting."

He felt drawn to Woodland Park, where he started holding prayer meetings once a month, and he eventually moved downtown to live in the community to which he wanted to minister.

"I've made Starbucks at Ashland and High Street my office, where I have met numerous people over the last 21/2 years or so," says Picardo, who has been dubbed "The iPhone Preacher" by some in his congregation.

Working out of a coffee shop and using his home for gatherings other than Sunday morning is one of the challenges for Embrace, which does not have a facility of its own.

The church began holding services at the State in January 2009. While most churches can just unlock their doors and flip on the lights Sunday mornings, Embrace has a crew of about a dozen volunteers each morning setting up everything from a sound board and microphones to a Communion table to coffee and doughnuts in the lobby. Then, after the service, they have to tear it all down again to make way for movies.

Someday, Picardo says, Embrace would like to get its own property. But if it does, he says, he wants it to be as inviting as the State, where people who might not go to a formal church feel comfortable.

"Worship isn't determined by your location," Picardo says. "It's where the people gather."

The style of worship was purposeful.

"Lexington has a lot of contemporary services," Picardo says. "The last thing the city needed was just another contemporary type of service. We wanted to develop a style I call 'Ancient Future,' bringing practices from the early church to today and explaining each thing.

"I pride myself on our people understanding what's going on in worship."

Mark Fogleman, 20, a University of Kentucky sophomore, says, "I like the contemporary feel, and Roz explaining why we do what we do. Some of the contemporary stuff forgets the roots of the church."

Picardo says maintaining traditional practices is part of a broader goal to develop a congregation with a deep faith, that doesn't come to church for the entertainment value.

"He has done a great job of being real and making sure everything is based on Scripture," says Lacy Heismann, 26, a case manager at Bluegrass Regional Mental Health.

"I like that we do hymns, but they'll have a contemporary twist," says UK student Heidi Hayes, 21. "We're worshipping God, and that's all the really matters."