People come to the mall for specific reasons — to shop, to work, to gather, to eat, to exercise — but they don’t really leave the rest of their lives behind. They haul, along with their packages, their troubles and joys and questions. And they might be more willing to check out what God’s offering in a place that’s familiar to them and when they can come and go on their own schedule — not to have to arrive all dressed up on Sunday morning at 10.
So across the country, some religious congregations have begun to have a presence in shopping malls — some by renting storefront space, some by putting their entire church on-site. Think of it like the chapel at an airport: a place some people march right by, but others deliberately seek out.
“I’ve been here only 12 days,” said Scott Bohr, the new pastor of Church on the Mall, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregation at Plymouth Meeting Mall, along the Pennsylvania Turnpike just north of Philadelphia. “I’ve had probably a dozen people” stop by, wanting to talk to the minister — from the single mom who’d just lost her job, who told him, “I don’t know how I’m going to make my rent this month” and asked for prayer, to the mall-walker who said, “I might come try you out. I don’t have much time for church, but I hear your church is different.”
Some mall churches offer worship services. St. Therese Carmelite Chapel at Northshore Mall in Peabody, Mass., for example, schedules three Masses on weekdays as well as weekend liturgies. Others have their church buildings elsewhere, but rent space at the mall where they pull people in with everything from exercise programs to Bible study.
The idea, in many cases, is to be welcoming, but not overbearing; not to roam the mall passing out religious tracts or asking people if they believe in God, but to be there, doors open, day after day, to invite people in to God’s presence, to answer their questions and offer a quiet space, to be ready to listen to their concerns and to pray.
At Church on the Mall, there’s fairly steady traffic in and out of the “quiet room,” a room with a small altar and a place to sit and think or pray, said Dick Smith, 69, a longtime volunteer.
First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly, N.J., rents a 2,500 square-foot storefront in the Burlington Center Mall in Burlington. The approach there is “low-key, but it is evangelistic,” said Elsie Nicolette, who leads the Burlington Center Ministries program. And “you don’t have to make an appointment,” she said. “We’re right here.”
As they walk by the ministries’ space, shoppers see a living room setting, with a sofa, chair and coffee table, a volunteer at a desk — often with a basket of lollipops to hand out with messages taped to the candy such as “Jesus loves you” or “Jesus is my treat” at Halloween. Other space is used for programming — everything from blood drives to Bible study to Christian music or dramas. It’s open six days a week, but not on Sundays when a sign informs people that “our volunteers are worshipping in local churches.” The program relies on about 65 trained volunteers from a variety of denominations, ages and ethnic backgrounds.
At some malls, Christian groups practice what they call “servant evangelism,” offering, for example, free gift wrapping at Christmas or, at Burlington, places for shoppers to hang up their coats.
“So much of our society doesn’t go to church anymore” and “would be uncomfortable going,” said Kathy Badgley, a volunteer at Burlington Mall Ministries. “There are times I will watch the people going by and wonder where they are with God. I try to pray for each of them.”
People do wander in with concerns or crises — sometimes looking for prayer or a sympathetic ear. “We’ve had people who were suicidal, people in the throes of relationship problems,” Nicolette said. One couple had had a fight. He’d thrown his wedding ring into the toilet and flushed it. They wanted to pray.
Volunteer Tavia Leonard, from Fellowship Baptist Church, remembers a man who seemed almost frightening, sitting on a bench and just staring at the ministries’ office. Finally he came over to talk. He told her, “After I leave here, I’m going to kill myself.”
She prayed for help, then asked: “Have you tried the Lord?” As they spoke, his story spilled out: a homosexual relationship, his family turned against him, depression, suicidal thoughts. They talked for an hour and she gave him a Bible. Last year, Nicolette said, seven people who’d been involved with the mall ministry program made professions of faith.
Volunteering at Burlington Mall Ministries “has made me get a more intimate, closer relationship with the Lord,” Leonard said. “I see him working in everyone’s life . . . He’s showing me I can’t predict his ways. He’s ever increasing my faith and my belief.”
That’s not to say everyone is delighted to see a church at the mall.
Sometimes, people scowl as they walk by or refuse to make eye contact or mutter something (and it’s not, “Praise God!”) as they pass.
And some Christians seem to have taken on unofficial mall ministries — one Web site, for example, speaks of a group of Christian friends ministering on Friday nights to “mall rats” at a Pennsylvania mall, trying to strike up conversations and build relationships, although the web site says that “Bible thumping” is discouraged. And it says, “We also realize that the kids will be turned off if they realize we are a ministry. Consequently we don’t make mention of that.” And because they don’t have official permission to be there, “the ministry needs to be clandestine in order to continue operating at the mall.”
At other malls, churches operate right out in the open. Church on the Mall has held vacation Bible school in the center of the mall and, at one time, baptized people in the mall’s main fountain. Formed by the merger of three small churches, Church on the Mall was established in 1966 and a few years later built its own sanctuary and office space, right off the mall’s food court. It owns the building, but leases the land — a 50-year-lease priced at a dollar a year, negotiated with the mall’s late developer, James Rouse, who was a Presbyterian elder.
As part of the deal, the congregation agrees to provide community space, which means its meeting rooms are used for Weight Watchers meetings and youth orchestra rehearsals, for square dancing and ballroom dancing, by Philadelphia Presbytery for committee meetings, by a “Saturday night alternative” group that meets late at night “as an alternative to going out and getting into trouble,” Smith said. A big office building is adjacent to the church, so there’s a lot of traffic past the sanctuary. A recent soup-and-bake sale to the lunchtime crowd raised $400 for the congregation’s mission fund.
Some mall ministry programs struggle with finances.
The Burlington ministries program will complete a four-year lease at its mall on April 30. Last year the program spent $39,000 in rent, with the money raised from a collection of local churches, ministerial associations, businesses, foundations “and a lot of mission-minded individuals,” Nicolette said. The future isn’t secure — Nicolette and others involved with the mall ministry are praying about their budget and the ongoing lease negotiations.
But they do feel called to this work, to evangelism in their own community. The ministry was created after the mission team at First church, Mount Holly, began praying some years ago about “how do we reach out to people who would never go to church?”
So many people think of evangelism as something that’s done overseas, in the “mission field,” somewhere far away, Leonard said. She’s learned she doesn’t have to go on a plane or across an ocean. She finds plenty of people to talk with closer to home, just offering a smile and a prayer from her desk at the mall.
