The desperate prayer of a church planter can resound with: “God, how are we going to do this?” But what changes if the energetic prayer moves to “why?”
Nearly 20 years ago, my wife Amber and I started the adventure of planting Corner Church in the core of downtown Minneapolis. Our calling from the beginning was to have a Corner Church and valued-in-community business within walking distance of people in the urban dense parts of our city.
Today, we have five Corner Coffees – local, community coffeehouses – in five distinct Minneapolis neighborhoods. These five coffeehouses serve hundreds of people Monday through Saturday and are closed on Sundays when Corner Church meets in them. One church, five communities, five valued-in-community businesses. There could be hundreds of books written on the strategies of planting churches and valued, community businesses. There could be 50 written on doing church in a coffeehouse. I feel I am well equipped to write a series of books on the pitfalls of doing so. While the how is important, and I will share many strategies in this article, I feel the real gold is found in the why.
Why
While being a part of the church planting culture for the past 20 years, I have seen, heard, and personally felt the attacks of the monster in the church planting world: sustainability.
Sustainability is the beast prowling around looking for someone to devour. Sustainability doesn’t seem to be easily tamed and doesn’t seem to be discerning on who it is willing to consume. In the season of prelaunch, first year after launch, or even nearly 20 years down the road, sustainability is fuel for desperate prayers, panic attacks, and ulcers. The screaming questions of how are we going to get paid, how are we going to pay this rent, and how will we do it not only this month but every month are deafening.
Sustainability can be tamed. Partnership with an endlessly generous parent church, building a large launch team before the bills start coming in, and/or rapid, exponential growth after launch are great weapons in the fight. One of these can make a huge difference and all three will help a planter sleep at night.
The perspective that punches me in the gut is that this beast of sustainability is quietly steering me, us, the church planting world as we form our “why.” Why are we planting? Why are we planting now? Why are we planting here or there? Why do we look this way? Why do we do these things? Because “we think it will work” or because “we think we can make it sustainable,” may sound Godly, but I am fearful that at times it isn’t. Sustainability can quietly steer us away from doing what God has placed under our feet to do.
There is a clear draw to plant in communities that are crowded with disconnected, disaffiliated, and dissatisfied church people. The potential rapid growth and subsequent sustainability can pull planters in. The draw to plant in rapidly growing, middle and upper middle class communities that are filled with new elementary schools and pristine community centers is powerful. The potential rapid growth and subsequent sustainability can pull planters in. While this is beautiful for these communities, what about all the other communities in our world? Communities that are too expensive, too poor, too small, too difficult to find meeting space, too disinterested in church, too unChristian, and too uncool? If our golden why is “I think this can work here” in spite of God’s direction, we can blot countless communities off our potential map.
What would you feel if a local person looked over your shoulder as you X’ed out their community because you felt it wasn’t sustainable?
My call for change is to see church planters and the church planting culture set aside the initial how of sustainability and build a deeper and more profound why. Jesus commissioned us in Matthew 28 and sent us to all communities to make disciples. Many of the “all communities” will not have a simple “I think this can work here.” The absence of attainable sustainability in a community does not remove it from our commissioning.
I personally believe that a foundational “why” can’t be given, inherited, or borrowed. While every church planter and church planting movement is entrusted to find, refine, and solidify their own why, I am confident in saying that the foundational why should not be built on “I think this will work here.” Being sustainable is Godly, but letting it be the foundation to your why may lead you away from God’s plan.
At Corner Church we keep leaning on the “why” of seeing a healthy body of Christ in every locale. Not so there will simply be more Corner Churches and more Corner Coffees. We believe God’s plan in our locales is the body of Christ, and our mission is to see them alive and well within walking distance of people in our city. The value of this “why” is that it does not eliminate communities of people Jesus loves from our potential horizons.
There is an obvious challenge to building from a foundation that doesn’t stem from sustainability. It may not last! Church plants do fail because of a lack of sustainability. However, we should not let fear of sustainability stop us from fulfilling our “why.”
How
With your why on the table that is not being ruled by sustainability, it is time to bring sustainability back into the room. My personal desperate prayer is for a creativity in building sustainability that does not detract from our mission/why, but rather bolsters it.
I mentioned earlier that I was going to share some strategies. Put your seatbelts on and keep your hands inside the ride. This is the moment that I am going to do a strategy dump.
Corner Church and Corner Coffee, while being one in ideology and identity, function legally as two entities. Corner Church is a not-for-profit faith community, and Corner Coffee is a local, independent chain of coffeehouses. Corner Church owns Corner Coffee. Yes, a not-for-profit can own a for-profit business.
Corner Coffee and, in turn Corner Church, occupies leased space. While there is value in owning space, it requires a significant cash reserve set aside for unexpected expenses. Leasing protects us from unexpected and large space disasters and expenses. Corner Coffee is the lessee of all of our spaces, and Corner Church subleases space from Corner Coffee on Sundays. In practicality, Corner Coffee pays 6/7 of all our leases while Corner Church pays 1/7. We came up with this formula because the coffeehouses are open six days a week and closed on Sundays when the church meets in all our spaces. In urban spaces, there is high value in space not sitting empty. Our arrangement allows a local business to utilize rented space during the week, and a local church to sublet space from a business and not carry the expense of space sitting idle through the week.
The economic value of Corner Church having Corner Coffee is not in having the coffeehouses pay for ministry or pay ministers. Coffeehouses, especially singular coffeehouses, are really good at not making money. The economic value is in being efficient in our space expenses. It is easy for a new church to spend 30, 40, or even 50 percent of their annual budget on space. In a high rent, urban environment, it is possible to spend even more. While Corner Coffee is not directly paying for ministry and/or pastoral staff, it allows us to pay for ministry and pay our pastoral staff because our space costs are exponentially lower than normal.
While coffeehouses are good at not making money, we work very hard to have the Corner Coffee world do better than just break even. The proceeds of Corner Coffee go towards the multiplication of space. Going from zero to one Corner Church and Corner Coffee or from one to two is independently impossible. The expenses of buildout and the incredible expense of business profit loss as you build your customer base are catastrophic. These things can be overcome with the miracle of partnerships and fundraising as well as business loans. As we have multiplied, we have been able to carry the financial burden of a new location internally as the other coffeehouses fuel the multiplication of space.
The value of sharing space cost is huge. However, the costs, risks, and inconveniences of having a local, independent business don’t make for an easy solution. I think that planting a church takes a degree of craziness, and starting a business calls for a person to be a little dysfunctional, but doing them together is insane.
There are things that come with small business, food service, and/or coffeehouses that are relentless. Staff calling in sick, refrigerators that stop cooling, drains that don’t drain, sinks that drip, ice machines that don’t make ice, wifi that stopped working, espresso machines that need to be replaced (we have replaced three in the past year). All of these things can make a Corner Church pastor covet sitting in an empty, cavernous building on a Tuesday afternoon.
If economics is not enough reason to do it, then why would anyone do it? For us, we don’t see the foundation of evangelism being an invitation to a Jesus information session. We see the foundation of evangelism being redefinition. If Jesus and the church are seen as being meaningless, mindless, counterproductive, isolating, building superiority complexes, political, exclusionary, hateful, abusive (all things we have heard from people in our area), an invitation to a Jesus information session will not have any impact. Our hope and faith says that relationship with Jesus and being the church has immeasurable value and discipleship doesn’t start at belief, but rather at redefinition. Redefinition / discipleship is found in relationship over time.
We think of it as the hairy hamburger experience. If you take a bite of a burger and discover a mouthful of shower drain hair stringing away with the cheese, it would be impossible to get you to take another bite and incredibly unlikely to get you to go back to that restaurant ever again. Countless people in our world have had a hairy hamburger experience at church or have had a loved one take a bite. What will it take for them to take the risk of taking another bite? Only a relationship that fosters the deepest trust will potentially open that doorway again. Knowing the owner. Knowing the new chef. Seeing the kitchen. Knowing that it is unlikely it could happen again. Even with these assurances, going in the door would come with deep trepidation. We have to realize that people are leery of taking a bite of church or Christianity.
While our coffeehouses are not church or Christian coffeehouses, they are owned by the church. There is no church or Christian paraphernalia in the coffeehouses other than a simple poster on our community bulletin boards, yet people naturally learn more about their coffeehouse over time. We covet the moment when someone says, “Wait, you mean to say that my neighborhood coffeehouse is owned by a church?” We can sometimes physically hear the gears of redefinition breaking as people realize that their community coffeehouse is owned by a church. The predictable bright spot of their day is owned by a church. The coffeehouse that they get to by passing by three others is owned by a church. The place where they are known is owned by a church. The place that they are honored for who they are is owned by a church.
These moments may not be easy to quantify or even qualify, but our calling is not just to love and value our community, but rather to be valued by our community. In this being valued, people who would never consider coming to a church or would self disqualify in being a part of a church, can and are being connected to the reality of Christ.
We are often asked about the potential of people not knowing that Corner Coffee is connected to a church. The question often comes out as “what if they never cross the bridge from going to Corner Coffee to going to Corner Church?” The simple resolve has to be that our greatest commitment is in opening the door to connection to Christ. We will serve this purpose more than we will serve our own personal brand.
Secrets
One thing that I have been concerned about for years has been whether or not we have been building something that can be recreated. Is Corner Church and Corner Coffee an anomaly fueled by one-off personalities, unicorn skill sets in a peculiar environment? My hope and prayer is that what has transpired here can be recreated in cities around our country and around the globe. Our “why” of seeing healthy bodies of Christ in communities can not be confined by our or my finite capacity.
There are four things that I think are secrets to be shared with all.
Team is key: I feel like my capacity and pain tolerance are high, but from day one in the Corner Church world we knew that there was no one person to fly this ship. Pastoring a church plant is all consuming. Being the point person or manager of a business start-up is all consuming. The thought that one person can do both is irrational. If your goal is to have any degree of personal health in your faith, family, and community, you can not be the pastor and business operator. Efficiency and financial capacity may be pleading you to do it all, but for the good of the ministry and your sanity, don’t do it.
Ministry first: Over the years I have met with countless people who were starting a business and church. One intention that often rises to the surface is that as soon as they get the business leveled out, then they will focus on the ministry. After nearly two decades of this adventure, I have never seen the business aspect of things get to a point of leveling out where ministry capacity is easy to find. I would encourage every planter considering starting a business to do the church first. Give the ministry your first efforts. For us, business is far too complicated and difficult to do it just for business sake. Don’t find yourself years down the road and still waiting for that elusive capacity to begin the church.
Keep your impatience and patience locked in the same room: I so desperately want things to be done and accomplished. I want ministry to thrive, community to be impacted, business to grow, product to be perfect, environment to be the best. I don’t want these things someday. I want them now. In my relentless impatience, I have found that things take exponentially longer to accomplish that I naturally hope for. Not just some things take longer. Everything takes so much longer than the ideal. I think an essential ingredient for business and church to thrive over time has to be a split personality of relentless impatience and graceful patience – continually pushing for progress and endlessly realizing that progress is only accomplished over time.
Play the long game: My last secret is one where the impact of it is probably still years away for most of us: Build things that last. Life is an incredible journey that usually goes in a seemingly random, meandering route. My hope for people in our communities is that as they pass through, we will habitually leave them better than we found them. The impact of that may not be immediate or apparent, but when life wanders back to us, we will be findable and ready for the next round of discipleship. If we idealize the expectation that life change is immediate and without setback, it builds fences as failures and struggles surface. I hope to be a part of a world where people can grow, struggle, process, doubt, backpedal, and even walk away but know that they can come back and walk towards Jesus again. We will be findable, predictable, faithful, and consistent over time.
Last Call
I don’t think everyone should launch a church and coffeehouse. I don’t think every church should have a valued-in-community business. While I see their value and am willing to put in the work, I don’t see them as being imperatives.
The foundation that can’t be dismissed is one that seeks to find ways to plant churches in complicated communities. My faith says that Jesus loves us all. That he desires a relationship with us all. That all of us should have the opportunity to be a valued part of the body of Christ. And in walking out that faith, we can’t allow communities to be marked off as being communities where planting won’t work. My faith-filled prayer is that there would be a profound “how” that is fulfilling our “why” in every community.
