In many towns across the U.S., you can locate a number of well-established churches simply by looking for their steeples. But many church plants, including the one I serve, will meet in a variety of different (and usually not ideal) locations before they establish themselves in a building of their own.
Chris Priestley is the senior pastor of Crossroads Church, a church plant that meets in Westover, W. Va., just outside the college town of Morgantown. The church began five years ago while he was still living in Charleston, and every weekend he would drive two-and-a-half hours to be part of it. When it first began, their meeting location didn't even have walls.
"We started with 20 guys in a picnic shelter along the river, so you're dodging goose poop and all that kind of stuff. It was just nuts," he said laughing.
As the congregation grew, Crossroads was able to move into a storefront facility that was more central to the community they were trying to reach.
"My strategy in that is we just want to be as central in the location that we're a part of as possible, so that we can have the most impact there and really know that culture and be a part of it," he said.
Although a fully-enclosed building was probably better than a picnic shelter, it wasn't ideal by any means. The congregation would become distracted while trying to listen to sermons, Priestley says, because curious passersby would peer into the window during their services, and in the summer, birds would sit outside and chirp loudly within earshot of the service. Read more
My own experience in worshiping in a storefront is that people peering in the window during the services were more a distraction to the preacher, not the congregation. Merchants used to display their wares in the windows of their stores. They recognized that window shoppers are potential customers. A congregation at worship in full public view serves much the same purpose.
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