Where Would Jesus Start a Church?

I work at a small church in Dacula, Ga.  Recently, my pastor (who is a church planter) had a desire and a calling to start a second site focusing on a retail center about twenty minutes from our main campus.  The idea is to start a service for people working retail who cannot go to church anywhere because they work Sunday mornings.  For the past two months or so we have been building relationships with the people there and getting set to launch our Sunday night meetings.  Obviously, to launch a church you need a place to meet.  Since we are a small church as a whole, our budget is minimal and we were desperate to find an affordable space to meet.  Thus we thought, surely a loving body of Christ in the area will be willing to let us use a small part of their facilities to reach out to a group of people they are not.  Hmm…not so much.

We had ten churches turn us away, some for better reasons than others, but ten none the less.  We ended up finding a perfect spot in the retail center for a very affordable price.  The business is named Winestyles and sells high end wines and wine accessories and they are letting us use their facilities on Sundays (since they are closed anyway) for a low cost.  The location is perfect in that everyone we speak to knows where it is, it is walking distance from all of the businesses in the retail center and it is terribly affordable.  My pastor posted a blog excited about the news only to receive very mixed responses.  While some were excited about the new ministry, others voiced strong concern that “perception is reality” and that God would rather us not meet than meet in a place that sells alcohol during the week.  I was a little disappointed in this response.  We are called to reach out to the lost and love them for Jesus’ sake.  We live in a culture where people are rarely coming to church and our location now helps us bring the church to them.  Should location really be the basis for whether or not we reach out to those who need Christ?  Hardly. 

(I’ve found that it is only those who are long time church attenders who have an issue with this anyway.  All the retail workers we have talked to about our first meeting barely bat an eye.)