The hundreds of young adults who filtered into a Midtown church service at 11:59 a.m. Sunday were greeted by a 15-person rock band — with drummers, flautists, electric guitarists, and several vocalists belting out God-praising lyrics.

Worshippers at the Journey, which bills itself as “a casual, contemporary Christian church,” found seats inside the Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom, but remained standing. The crowd, comprising almost exclusively people in their 20s and 30s, swayed, clapped, and sang along. The lyrics, including, “All for You, my glorious King/All for You, my everything,” were projected on two large screens on either side of the stage. Some churchgoers reached their hands into the air.

A nondenominational Christian start-up that promises to provide “teaching that is practical and relevant to your life in New York City,” the Journey functions as an evangelical, gospel-spreading church but eschews the evangelical label. Its casual dress code, unusual 11:59 a.m. start-time, rock band choir, and free Krispy Kreme doughnuts at every service have brought in crowds of New York transplants — and some native New Yorkers — who are decidedly urbane, and devoutly Christian.

The jeans-and-rock worship concept has been growing nationwide for about a decade, though it has taken longer to penetrate New York City. Since the Journey launched five years ago, several other casual-attire churches — Forefront Church in Murray Hill, Apostles Church in Midtown, and Mosaic Manhattan in TriBeCa to name a few — have opened and found followers among the city’s young professionals.

Just last week, several hundred Christians from across the country, hoping to take a page from the Journey’s playbook, gathered in Queens for a two-day Journeysponsored seminar about how to launch a church from scratch.

The Journey’s four Sunday services in Manhattan bring out about a total of 1,000 people. Several hundred more go to the Journey’s satellite site in Jersey City, N.J., and church leaders just recently announced that that in April a second Manhattan location would be opened in TriBeCa — the result of a forthcoming merger with Mosaic Manhattan, whose Sunday service attracts about 150 young people.

The Reverend Nelson Searcy, 35, is the Journey’s founder and lead pastor. He preaches in jeans and sports a Southern twang, though he was raised in Southern California. The medium is not the message, because while he dresses youthfully and sounds folksy, his words are often solemn: Avoid premarital sex and pornography; eternal damnation is the consequence of sinning without repentance.

“You can choose to continue to go your own way, and face the consequences of Hell — God doesn’t send you there, you choose — or you can choose to follow God’s path and find yourself in Heaven,” Rev. Searcy said in a recent sermon titled “What Does It Mean to Be A Christian?”

“There’s a notion that if the music is loud, and the people are hanging out in hoodies and jeans, then somehow it’s church-lite — it’s not,” the author of “Righteous: Dispatches From The Evangelical Youth Movement,” (Viking, 2006), Lauren Sandler, said. “The whole evangelical movement, it’s not a lax thing that you drop in and out of. It’s a 24/7 belief system and lifestyle.”

Indeed, the Journey offers spiritual, educational, service-oriented, and social functions almost every day of the week. Last night, congregants met to volunteer at Journey’s East 35th Street offices; Friday, a church group will go ice-skating in Central Park; and Saturday, church members will hand out invite cards and water bottles in Tompkins Square Park as part of “Servant Evangelism Saturday.”

“It’s not like, ‘This is Christ, and this is New York,'” a Journey congregant, Zak Clark, 24, said — holding his hands about a foot apart. He clapped his hands and added: “It’s about what seeing what God is doing here in New York.”

Mr. Clark, who works in finance and grew up in Vienna, Va., heard about the Journey about a year-and-a-half ago from a fellow dancer in a salsa class he was taking at the time — and he has been attending services weekly ever since.

“There are certain parts of the country where it’s easier to live out the teachings of Jesus,” Rev. Searcy said in an interview. “New Yorkers are very busy.”

In some places, he said, making time for a daily devotion is de rigueur — as is getting to church, without navigating subway service changes. “We’re focused on how to apply the teachings of Jesus Christ to their lives. Giving people something on Sunday that they can use on Monday is really a key value for us,” Rev. Searcy, whose recent sermons have taken on roommates, dating, and finding happiness at work, said. (After more than a dozen e-mail, phone, and in-person requests for an interview, the Journey granted The New York Sun a 10-minute telephone interview.)

Last Sunday, Rev. Searcy’s sermon was titled “Get Financially Fit,” the fourth installment in the Journey’s five-part “Get Fit” series. It focuses on congregants’ spiritual, intellectual, physical, and financial well-being, in addition to the health of their relationships.

Rev. Searcy, quoting heavily from biblical passages, spoke of the virtues of paying down debt, learning to live on less, saving money, and earmarking 10% of earnings to God — or, more specifically, to a church and “for most of you that’s the Journey.”

“You’re never going to going to go deeper with God, if you’re violating the law of tithing,” he said during an hour-long talk. The pastor encouraged attendees to enroll in the Journey’s automated giving program, authorizing the church to deduct a set amount from checking accounts once or twice a month.

A tithing congregant, Danielle Elleman, 28, first attended the Journey about two years ago, after seeing an advertisement for it on the back of a pocket-size subway map handed to her. “It’s hard to go to work in New York and say, ‘I am a Christian,” she said. “You don’t know how people will receive it.”

A social worker originally from Benedict, Kan., Ms. Elleman said the church’s programming, in addition to its charismatic leadership, has made her a Journey regular. “They’re close to my age,” she said, referring to Rev. Searcy and the Reverend Kerrick Thomas, the church’s boyish 31-year-old executive pastor. “They seem to relate everything back to my personal life. They’re not old men up there dictating what is sin and what isn’t sin.”

Revs. Searcy and Thomas are planning to increase their flock, expanding Journey’s worship sites beyond the new TriBeCa location. “We’re hoping for the possibility of one church in many locations,” Rev. Searcy told The New York Sun.