MONROE – Scott McClure doesn’t ever want a Christian fish symbol to be part of the decor at Vinaccio, a coffee house he co-owns with another pastor in Monroe.
“I don’t want anyone to feel that only Christians can frequent the coffee shop,” said McClure, who is a family and youth pastor at Monroe Community Chapel.
The shop is sandwiched in a strip mall alongside a Coldstone Creamery ice cream shop and a cosmetic dentistry office.
Devotees of java roasted by Michael Jemmett, the man who owns the Vinnacio franchise, could visit the Monroe store time and again without ever knowing its ultimate purpose: to be a church – just without the telltale altar, uncomfortable wooden pews or 8-foot cross.
“All we really want to do is do live together,” McClure said, waving his hand toward the shop’s leather couch, where a woman tapped on a laptop computer, and toward a small table, where a teenage couple whispered to one another. “This is where real life happens, every day.”
“One of the mistakes the church has made is saying, ‘We’re an exclusive club,’ ” he said.
McClure and Jesse Davis, senior pastor at Monroe Community Chapel, invested $150,000 in the franchise, which opened its doors last spring. The business is a separate, taxable financial enterprise from the church, he said.
Yet McClure acknowledged that his salary from the church has begun to taper off – and will continue to shrink – as profits from the coffee shop grow.
The goal of the coffee shop is to have a comfortable environment for non-Christians to interact with Christians, but also to fully finance the church’s paid staff members and the costs of the church building, McClure said.
Ultimately, all the money gained from the weekly tithing basket at the church will be used exclusively to help needy people in the community.
Churches across the country are launching for-profit businesses in a shift from the traditional nonprofit role they’ve played in American culture for generations.
“There are churches that have a chain coffee shop inside the church,” said Simeon May, CEO of the National Association for Church Business Administration in Richardson, Texas.
“It’s a matter of convenience for people attending the church. It’s a matter of providing jobs for some of their youth, and a way of providing an added draw for people to come into the church.”
Congregants at True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo, N.Y., can fill a hunger craving at a Subway sandwich shop.
Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston features a McDonald’s.
Other large churches have fitness centers and barbershops, even credit unions for church members.
But very few have opened those businesses outside church walls.
“It’s common to have a coffee shop on campus, but as far as opening a coffee shop downtown to offset expenses or to feed the church’s needs, we haven’t heard of anything like that,” said Mark Greene, western regional manager for Outreach Media Group, a church marketing and development firm.
More than a decade ago, McClure, a soft-spoken man who is now the father of three, completed an internship at Overlake Christian Church in Redmond. He helped start another church before he quit the business.
“I was disillusioned,” he said. “I struggled with the critical attitudes of people in the church.”
McClure left the church for a job at Boeing. Then he met Davis, who convinced him to help out at Monroe Community Chapel.
“All the while we always had the conversation of what the church should be,” he said. “We thought some things were out of place from what God called it to be and what it had become.”
The pair decided that a downfall of the modern-day church is its walls. They keep Christians in and non-Christians out. The two weren’t mixing, and McClure and Davis believe they should.
“We talked to people in our church who owned businesses, and they had so much interaction with the community,” McClure said. “We thought it was the best way to get involved with the community.”
While snow melted into wide puddles in the parking lot last week, Michael Penick, 38, sat hunched over a laptop computer at one of Vinaccio’s small tables.
“I’m working from ‘home,’ ” he said.
Penick attends Monroe Community Chapel. He’s an enthusiastic supporter of the coffee shop.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity as an outreach to people,” he said. “For Christians to hang out with non-Christians. What an exciting moment if someone says, ‘Hey, how are you doing? What’s different about you?’ Maybe I’m different because I have Jesus in my heart.”
“I know a number of people who have had (that conversation) in here,” he said.
That’s real church, McClure believes.
When the region was hit hard by flooding in November, the shop provided coffee to local church groups who worked to help poor Hispanic immigrant families at Three Rivers Mobile Park.
He said that he and Davis want to work with Jemmett to open enough Vinaccio coffee shops so that they can work directly with coffee growers in third-world countries. McClure envisions a day when church groups will travel to minister to the growers.
“As God blesses us, it’s our responsibility to bless those in need,” McClure said. “We believe God gives people talents and passions. There are so many people who are entrepreneurial, and they should use those gifts.”
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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