Northpinellas: Wacky World tunes kids in to worship

The business sits in a plain brown industrial building, but the first things visitors see inside are the grille of a bright green taxicab, a cartoonish, bubbling laboratory and a 6-foot statue of a gold elephant.

The walls are purple and orange. The carpet appears to be covered with bright confetti.

Bruce Barry feels at home in these surroundings.

The son of a Disney cartoonist, Barry, 41, has built his career designing cartoon sets, children's furniture and animated characters for clients that include Universal Studios and the Nickelodeon cable network.

Barry, who lives in Lutz, relies on his creativity and imagination in his business, but he said he couldn't have imagined the changes that would occur in his business and his personal life when he was asked to make a proposal to a huge Baptist church in Arkansas two years ago.

As a direct result of that meeting in November 1999, Wacky World Studios anticipates $3-million in sales this year, employs 24 people and is rapidly developing a reputation among some of the largest Baptist churches in the country as the company to hire to make kids enjoy coming to church.

The focus of Barry's business has shifted to huge, interactive play areas for children's churches with themes like Soul Train City, which resembles a train station, and The Hangar, which features a life-sized airplane with a theater inside.

"People have said my designs are like a cross between Disney and Dr. Seuss," Barry said. "I take that as a compliment."

Children enter one of Barry's sets by walking through the mouth of a whale and sliding down giant slides onto a beach. In another, they board a bus at a faux station.

Wacky World fashions the fantastic scenes at its 18,000-square-foot facility on Douglas Road. Its staff of carpenters, painters and craftspeople use foam, wood, fiberglass and polyresin, as well as bold colors and an oversized sense of reality that appeals to children.

Two years ago, the children's pastor at First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., was looking for a unique way to attract more children to his youth ministry. Surfing the Internet, Pastor Dale Hudson found the Web site for Barry's company and thought Wacky World might be what he was seeking.

"Children these days grow up so fast and have access to so much technology," he said. "It takes a lot to capture their attention."

Children at First Baptist Church were meeting in a room that was also being used for funerals before Barry designed two interactive kids spaces.

Toon Town is a fully animated city designed for first- through third-graders. It features 26-foot-tall buildings and cars with illuminated headlights. During children's church services, bells and buzzers sound and confetti explodes from the set.

The other creation, Space Place/Planet 45, was designed for older children. It features Christian music videos on huge screens and non-violent video games along the walls.

Hudson said the two areas Barry designed and built for his 4,500-member church have more than doubled the attendance in the children's programs since they were installed a year and a half ago.

First Baptist Church is located in an area that is also the headquarters of Wal-Mart and Tyson Chicken. It has a lot of members with a lot of money and a large budget.

The youth ministry was willing to spend several hundred thousand dollars on the children's areas.

First Baptist Church is part of a small but growing number of "mega-churches" that are willing to spend huge amounts of money to attract members, said Randy Bishop, managing editor of Your Church magazine, an industry publication that is part of Christianity Today.

"There are churches out there that spend a lot of money on these types of things," he said. "They're looking to create a multisensory worship experience."

Barry made little to no profit on the First Baptist Church project, which cost $270,000. What he gained from the experience, however, was worth more to him than money.

Barry, who hadn't set foot in a church since he was a child, became a Christian through his involvement with Hudson and First Baptist Church.

At one of Barry's project meetings with the church leaders, Barry said he got down on his knees and accepted Christ as his savior.

"My whole life changed overnight," Barry said. "It's been just incredible."

Since the First Christian Church project, Barry designed a children's area at the Second Baptist Church in Houston, which has more than 30,000 members. He is currently working on projects in Jacksonville; Plano, Texas; and Dunwoody, Ga., at a church with more than 19,000 members. These churches have paid up to $750,000 for the interactive play areas.

Late last year, Barry decided that his company was growing faster than he could handle alone, so he joined forces with Fred Hemmer, a CPA and businessman looking to invest in a business.

Hemmer joined the company in January and moved it from a small warehouse in Oldsmar to its current location on Douglas Road. The two men leased 12,000 square feet in January, but the company has grown so fast they added an additional 6,000 square feet in July.

The partnership appears to be working. Last week alone, the company received inquiries from four additional churches.

"What works for this company is that he doesn't get involved in my end of things and I don't get involved in his," said Hemmer, who as chief operating officer, manages the day-to-day operations of Wacky World Studios.

Barry and his wife, Vivian, who also became a Christian at First Baptist Church, attend Tampa's Idlewild Baptist Church, which has more than 8,000 members.

Barry said he is talking to folks at Idlewild about designing a children's area for the church. He is also talking to Harborside Christian Church in Clearwater, which has 1,200 members and is building a new church on McMullen-Booth Road in Safety Harbor.

Barry said he enjoys working with the churches because the people are honest and sincere, but his real joy is designing the sets for children.

"When you see a kid sit there and shake with excitement . . . that's my reward," he said.

-- Staff writer Julie Church can be reached at (727) 445-4229.

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