Phat Rok’s Bean Krib

Several years ago (like 8 years ago), a good friend of mine and I were running a coffee house ministry called Phat Rok’s Bean Krib. The name was a little outrageous, but it was a great opportunity to share our faith in a unique way.

Basically our ministry was a support for other ministries. We would travel from church to church setting up in fellowship halls and youth rooms and turn their venue into a coffee house for the night. Some basic decorations, good coffee, and some unique activities transformed a typical youth night into an excursion to a coffee house. We did mostly youth groups, but we did retreats a few times, a couple of adult venues, and even had the chance to “consult” with one church where we showed them how we did what we did so they could get the ball rolling for starting their own ministry.

A year or so into doing this, we had the incredible idea of opening a real coffee house. Our plan was to build a large facility (multi-floor) with space for concerts, worship, small groups, offices, and, of course, coffee. At the time we were still seeing ourselves as support for other Churches, so we didn’t have any plans actually having a Church meet in our building, but rather offer a few area churches a space for small groups and then host weekly worship opportunities and concerts.

So the other day, my friend and I are having lunch, and we realize that Mark Batterson has inadvertently copied our idea. Of course he took it to a level that we hadn’t thought of, but never the less I think royalties are in order, don’t you?!? Anyways…I haven’t read Barna’s new book yet, but if it even turns out to be half true, then alternate venue Churches are not only going to be a neat idea in the next 10 or 15 years but be an essential component of the Church landscape. (Great job jumping ahead of the curve, Mark, even if you stole our idea).

I know Mark’s coffee house is just coming online and so he doesn’t have figures yet for how much money the coffee part of the building is generating, but I really like this idea for a couple reasons. One of the huge draws to a house church over a traditional church is effectiveness of your income. In a traditional church, a lot of your income is tied up in facilities and salaries. In a house church, you have almost no facilities costs, and in most you salaries are less. This means 100 people in a house church network has more money free for ministry and missions than maybe even a 500 member church with multiple staff and a large facility. BUT…if your facility generated income for your church, you could very possibly break even or better on some of your staff and on your facility.

Just think…

1. Building — A successful coffee house needs to at least pay their rent/mortgage if they are going to stay open. This means that while the church may have to supplement some of that for the additional space (offices), the majority of your facility costs are built into what it costs to operate the business and the church can essentially ignore that in their general budget.

2. Staff — Almost every church has a receptionist or two on staff who are in place to greet people when the come in the door and to answer phones. Some smaller churches can’t swing this until they are bigger, but even many small churches find this to be a necessary position, even from day 1. When people walk into the “office” of my coffee house church, they are greeted by a half dozen smiling staff. A second phone line could be answered with the church name rather than the coffee house name. This would free an administrative assistant to handle other tasks since the bulk of phone calls would be handled by the coffee house staff.

3. Impact — We just a new coffee house open here in Ocoee. It is only a block from Starbucks and they still stay pretty busy. There is an opportunity for community impact that comes with something like a coffeehouse that does not come with a new church building. People will stop in and visit a coffee house that might take months of prompting and inviting to even consider coming to a church.

I personally love coffee. I have done coffee house ministry and love the idea of having an espresso machine just steps from my office. But think of the possibilities. What about a bookstore/church (with coffee)? How about a church that owns a movie theater that still shows current movies (would you have shown Brokeback Mountain?)? How about a skate-park with a concert venue that is used for worship before the park opens on Sunday mornings?

• Paintball
• Karate Studio
• Theatre (play/concert)
• Art Studio
• Use your imagination

If Barna is right, we need to start thinking about how we can be the church in new ways. What can we do to increase our effectiveness in the marketplace? Jokingly I told my friend that now we can’t open our coffeehouse because it would look like we are copying Mark, but whether we are copying some other church or plowing new ground, we need to become more intentional about what we do as The Church. We need to get out into the world where people are. I don’t see the Mega-Church model dying out, but I do think we need to start thinking about other options.

BTW…I don’t really think Mark stole our idea. Ultimately it was God’s idea, Mark just got to do it first.