Jewelry store, clothing store, cellphone store, church, eatery, Sears, arts and crafts store, cosmetic kiosk…..

“Things you find in a mall?”

correct, DING!!! (a $20,000 pyramid reference here)

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In the list above, you will notice one thing that most people would say does not belong in a modernized indoor shopping mall. You guessed it, “Church”. However, a church in North Carolina wants to change the public perception of both the mall as a place for a church and a generalized public perception of a church that sets up in a shopping mall as being legitimate and not some “Gospel Gimmick”. The church wants to move out of their “outgrown” space in a commercial strip mall to a bigger space in the local indoor shopping mall.

And the mall owners are not only in agreement and have no problem, but want to partner with the church in future charitable ventures.

In my part of the country, it is very common for dying strip malls as a “last-resort” attempt to keep from going bankrupt to rent real estate to upstart churches. Most strip malls are usually in seedy parts of town (once thriving centers of commerce surrounded by once decent neighborhoods) or the stores that once located there have either gone out of business or migrated to the indoor mall or in fancier strip malls around the indoor mall still adjacent to the city bus routes. It follows a similar pattern that happened when department stores left the inner cities for the surburbia strip malls and the indoor shopping mall that later followed. Those owners of inner city buildings as a “last-resort” started renting their facilities to “storefront” churches to garnish some sort of income….

However, the cold hard reality set in as ninety percent of these churches did not make it and soon dissolved. Nine percent either outgrew the facility and went to a bigger strip mall or used the rented strip mall as a “stepping stone” until the church was able to obtain a viable piece of real estate to build a permanent location. The one percent that stayed eventually decided to rent more space within the strip mall and eventually purchased the strip mall.

The concept from start-up church in the downtown storefront evolving to abandoned strip mall appears now to take a further evolutionary step of “natural selection” into the indoor shopping mall. It does make me wonder if the church going into the strip mall is a catalyst of this particular evolutionary process thinking they will be the “fittest” or have to realize that survival is by the grace of God alone.

Right now, I do not have an opinion of whether this concept of the “church of the indoor mall” is called by God or not. However, there is a part of me that is “intrigued” at the concept because you do not usually hear of a church within an indoor mall while there is another part of me that has some grave concerns of the concept being able to feasibly work long term.

Per the article, the church right now has plans to have a church service on Sunday mornings at 10:30 AM and ending around noon time when the other stores in the mall (except for Chick-Fil-a) is opened for business while using the space during the rest of the time operate a Christian book store, relief distribution center, and gift shop.

I can understand needing the bigger space and being in a part of town where “the community is revolving around it,”. However, if the church service will be held when the mall is generally closed, what is the point of spending the financial resources (almost a half-million dollars per the article plus future monthly rent) on renting real estate space that produces no equity back to the church when the same money could procure your own space that you own and have complete equity and full control of when you can have activities, services, and community wide gatherings (in compliance with zoning regulations and fire marshall occupancy codes, of course)? People that they want to reach out to would still have to drive to this church similar to driving to any other church. The only advantage is probably mall security (Paul Blart?), city bus routes, and a big parking lot.

In order to better reach out to a community in a location that seems to be deemed as being “Community Central”, one would think that possibly holding church services mid-week at night when the mall was open (and tailor the end of service to the time the mall closes) to the vast amount of “community consumers” would be a critical part of outreach and attracting souls into the Kingdom. I’m sure that the mall probably has a “proselytizing policy” within the parking lot and walkway premises but if the people come into the church by their own volition to seek out God, evangelism would surely take place. From the stories I used to hear about ole-time revivals and storefront churches, many of the salvations that took place occurred when people walked by, noticed the action, and stepped inside out of curiosity to see what was going on to later feel the conviction to change and accept Jesus.

…And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singing.
Then I headed down the street,
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringing,
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday.

Johnny Cash – “Sunday Morning Coming Down”

From researching online, the renting of space in an indoor mall is some of the highest rent per square foot of any building zoned for commercial use. Can a christian bookstore / relief distribution center / gift shop generate enough income to partially pay the future rent for 14,000 square feet of real estate without overburdening and overtaxing the regular members and frequent attendees with constant pleas for more money for the balance of the rent plus standard operating expenses such as salaries and other bills / utilities / financial obligations, etc.?

The entire concept in the realm of feasibility also raises other interesting questions. Will some tenants object and eventually move out to another mall or move to another part of the mall? Will some tenants see this as “desperation from possible insolvency” viewing the mall has “lowered it’s standards” and panic by moving elsewhere to another upscale mall when the lease runs out? If another mall replaces this mall as “Community central”, will the church eventually move out of this mall and start over at the new “Community central mall” in a migratory fashion? If a “cult” decided to approach the same mall and wanted to do the same thing, would this church cry “foul” and “persecuted”?

A church is getting ready to find out……