A Corner Church Within Walking Distance - Exponential

Project: A Corner Church Within Walking Distance
Leader: Scott Woller

Website: www.thecorner.church

Purpose

A Corner Church and a valued community business within walking distance of people in the urban dense parts of our city.

Project Categories

Bivo/Covo Business for Mission Models and Expressions
Church Planter Recruiting and Equipping
Church Planting and Funding Model

Collaborative Methods for Increased Planting
Disciple Making and Church Engagement
Micro Models and Expressions

Big Idea and Overview

Corner Church is a way to answer the question, “How are we going to plant churches in communities that are not populated with disconnected, disaffiliated, or disgruntled Christians?” Evangelism and discipleship of people who are not in the almost-Christian subculture cannot be accomplished through simple invitations and information. It takes a process of redefinition, moving from indifference or angst to interest and connection. This redefinition process is accomplished through being valuable to the community and through intentionally building trusted relationships. Our mission is to be multipliers, planting human-scaled churches that are housed in valued in-community businesses. In 2006 we planted our first Corner Church and launched our first Corner Coffee. Today we are in four communities serving hundreds of people every day in our four Corner Coffee locations and gathering as churches in our coffee houses every Sunday.

Customer / Mission Field Context

While we see and value the differences in each of our communities, a commonality that we see is that a majority of people don’t fit into a traditional evangelical box. Very few people in our communities would identify as being an actively religious Christian or as having a Christian worldview, would see value in being a Christian or a church attender, or would even say they have positive Chritian experiences. Our coffeehouse customers are a true reach into our communities as a whole, and our church bodies are made up primarily of people from our communities.

Goals and Desired Outcomes

Our calling as a church is to be connecting people to each other and to Jesus. Our mission is to have a Corner Church and valued in-community business within walking distance of the people living in the urban dense parts of our city. Our outreach is through being relational redefiners in the community.
Some desired outcomes are:
- Refine a sustainable planting process that is economically and missionaly sustainable in post-Christian communities.
- Create principles and systems that allow for replication in other cities around our country.
- Accelerate the replication process in order to live out our calling of connecting more people to each other and to Christ.

Results and
Impact

We have planted a Corner Church in each of four communities.
We have four for-profit Corner Coffee locations.
We actively meet needs in each of our communities through
Neighborhood cleanups, Food truck fairs, National Night Out gatherings, Community Candy Grabs at Easter, and Serving on neighborhood boards and committees.
The thing that we celebrate most and see as an indicator of church health for us is when a person from our church community is compelled by their relationship with Christ to do something that is not on our church calendar. We see success in this daily.