SonRise Community Church had been operating without a building for nearly a decade when Pastor Jeff Arington saw the perfect property: an old restaurant on the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Two years later the church still doesn't have a sanctuary or any pews -- it meets at the local high school -- but it does have a successful coffee shop in the property the Pastor found, where members and passersby alike sip cappuccinos in a trendy Christian atmosphere.
"I've always said the church is not about a building, not about physical structures, it's really about the people themselves," said Arington, whose 275-strong evangelical congregation still plans to build their own church one day.
On the other side of Cincinnati, Inspirational Baptist Church is also opening its doors to the public -- in an even bigger way. In addition to a new, larger church, leaders have unveiled a $21 million plan to develop a skating rink, sports center and pool, all open to outsiders.
"This is expressly for the community. There's not a lot of recreational opportunity for youth around here," said Bishop Victor Couzens, whose suburban African-American congregation has grown in the last five years from 300 to 1,700.
While many U.S. churches have a Starbucks or gymnasium in the building, a growing number of evangelicals are taking a different approach: rather than giving churchgoers good coffee or a sports league, they're offering coffee or roller-skating to the public -- and hoping newcomers will get to know God while they're there.
"Congregations are trying to find a way to tie people together, but also find ways to present the Christian message that isn't so direct or in-your-face, to present a side door into the life of the church," said Scott Thumma, a religious sociologist at the Hartford Institute for Religious Research.
"The megachurch especially has really led the way in these kinds of strategies," he said. "What a lot of congregations want is to have multiple avenues open so that they can bypass the resistance people have when they hear the word 'church' or 'Jesus,' whether it is a coffee shop or a bowling alley."
And while attendance at mainline Catholic and Protestant churches has fallen, nondenominational and evangelical churches who present nontraditional faces have grown.
That's a point not lost on Pastor Arington, whose small church is vibrant despite the lack of an actual building, in contrast to some traditional churches that have closed their doors.
"There are a lot of great, beautiful churches all over the world that are now vacant," he said.
