One of the most popular stories on the Tucson Weekly's website is one former staff writer Saxon Burns wrote about The Cool Church in 2007. There was a somewhat predictable bit of drama at the time between the church's pastor, late night TV commercial star David McCallister and Wingspan about the multi-location church and their views on homosexuality, so Saxon went to check the place out himself. Our article is still on the first page of Google results for the church's name, so every few days, there's a surge of traffic when someone new is looking for info on the place. You'd think at some point in the church's twenty year history, they'd figure out that trying to be cool is the least cool thing you can do, but whatever. Evangelicism is notoriously slow at figuring things out.

However, being the butt of a joke in one town isn't quite enough, so The Cool Church is expanding to Mesa on Jan. 12 of 2014, bringing odd necklace choices, bad hair-bleaching and creepy tans to the East Valley.

Of course, one might wonder why an area with nearly 20 Protestant churches with a two mile radius (and one of Phoenix's largest churches, Christ's Church of the Valley less than three miles away) would need another competitor for worshipers, but maybe those houses of worship lack the same icky sheen that The Cool Church brings to the party. Good luck, East Mesa, and we're sorry. We tried to contain him. We really did.