Signs The Vaguely-Named Building In Your Local Strip Mall Is Actually A Church And Not A Coffeeshop-slash-Art Space

by Mallory Ortberg · September 17, 2015

You’re a wise and experienced person of the world; you already know what to expect if you drive past a nondescript sandstone building named anything like “Living Water” or “Faith Accompli” or something in Greek when you’re not in the Greek part of town. But sometimes you have to ask yourself: is the vaguely-named building at the end of this strip mall a church? If it’s named anything like the following, it probably is:

  • Cornerstone
  • The Architect’s House
  • The Upper Room
  • Granite
  • Mindset
  • Tesselation
  • Harbor
  • The Vinery
  • Tower
  • Wayfarer’s Junction
  • The Exile’s Respite
  • Tapestrate
  • Pressure Gradient
  • The Craftsman’s Companions
  • Altitude
  • The Cave Door
  • The Builder’s Ridge
  • Aloft
  • PaveMeant
  • The Rock/The Well/Oasis, or any combination thereof
  • Solid Grounds (This one SOUNDS like a coffee shop, because “ground/grounds,” but it ISN’T, the coffee is free but it comes with a heaping helping of CHURCH)
  • The Traveler’s Annex
  • Causeway
  • The Potter’s Guild
  • Fresh Harvest
  • The Wanderer’s Portal
  • The Master’s Distillery
  • Interior
  • The Cobbler’s Tools
  • Core
  • The Workshop
  • Safe Passage
  • The Vagabond Depository
  • ReKindle
  • The Lift Ticket, if you are not in a ski town
  • Storeroom 33
  • The Overture
  • Scaffold
  • Delineate
  • Extract
  • Manifest Station
  • Life In Transit
  • Pinnacle
  • The Foundry
  • Jubileadership
  • Heart Forge
  • Apportionment
  • The Catch

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


238 Comments

      2. nicoledieker +6

        That’s the place I was talking about! It isn’t a church, but it’s a religious bookstore, right? With some standard pop titles on the shelves as well?

        1. cuminafterall +8

          I feel like it’s kind of a UU/ Ethical Humanist bookstore? They host things like Wisdom Circles and Death Cafes as well as anti-racist/social justice-y events. Plenty of progressive books with a spiritual/religious bent, not so many inspirational books by megachurch pastors.

  2. jorutter +101

    I can totally see “The Master’s Distillery” being one of those “church by day, bar by night” venues where the youth pastor moonlights as a bartender who wants you to get right with the Lord.

    1. Rillquiet +57

      “We SERVE wine, but we are not DRUNK with wine, see, because what WE’RE drunk with is the Holy Spirit!”

      2. bird_internet +12

        This sounds wonderful. Way better than the church I attended as a child, where only the priest was drunk during Mass.

      4. femmefan1946 +4

        When I was on the Board of Stewards of my (United Church of Canada) congregation, the gay Catholics (Dignity) met for services in our basement.
        We kept it a secret from the older members of the congregation.
        Not the gay part. UCC has been performing same-sex marraiges since the early 90s.
        But they served Real Wine as part of the Mass!

  3. wallofillusion +39

    I have been to a “Cornerstone”; my friend goes to “The Upper Room”; and I am almost certain that I know of a “Solid Grounds.” This list is 100% accurate.

  6. urbino23 +22

    Is this a California thing? Maria Bamford has a similar joke, but I have never seen this in the midwest.

    1. maccrocodile +119

      In the midwest, you don’t have to trick anybody into going to church. They just put up a sign that says “Church of Jesus” and a big arrow that says “Jesus in here!” next to the door.

      1. viviennestreet +17

        I’m from the Philly suburbs, and yeah, this does not sound at all familiar to me. Our churches tend to be pretty obviously churches, unless it’s actually an ex-church which is now a library or Jewish girls’ school.

        1. GreenGrasses +3

          I’m also from the Philly suburbs and we had a The Rock in my small town! Guess it depends which suburb.

          1. Lady_Honoria +12

            I thought you were saying ‘Dwayne Johnson once came to my small town’ and I was both super excited for you and also confused about why exactly you were saying that now.

        2. fromthelandwithlove +9

          To be fair, so many of our churches are Catholic, and therefore St. Mary of the Lamentable Curtains, or some such.

      2. Mrs_Peel +48

        My boyfriend once saw a church sign in Pennsylvania that said:

        ****

        COME ON IN AND MEET JESUS

        CHICKEN AND WAFFLES THURSDAY

        ****

        He said he wanted to go just to see if Jesus was personally dispensing waffles.

      2. cleoreads +1

        I live in Chicago too and I was going to post that I’ve only seen one or two Living Stones type churches, but I’ve seen tons of storefront churches with Bible or Jesus (or both) in the name. Must depend on the neighborhood.

    4. CordeliaFitz +15

      It’s a thing in college towns/college neighborhoods for sure. It gets extra confusing because they often rent the space for secular *gasp* music gigs at night!

      1. bird_internet +15

        In my midwestern college town we had a storefront thrift store called “Crossroads” that was always staffed by suspiciously cheery young people. I shopped there for like a year before realizing that it was attached to a church of the same name.

      2. octopoda +7

        Yeah there is one near my work (a university) that is called the Vineyard which seems like it should be the outlet to sell wine, but it is not.

      1. malloryelis +28

        it is impossible to do anything that the Bammer has not already done, but better; I am merely grateful to exist in her world

    6. Mrs_Peel +2

      I’ve never seen anything like that in upstate New York or the Rust Belt, either. But now I’ll be on my guard around all coffee shops.

    7. Andre_Skiles +2

      Non denominational churches and weird shops that could never be profitable are HUGE in the midwest in affluent white suburbs.
      Yarn store, Scrapbooking store, Psychic store, Coffeeshop/Church, etc.

      1. Alucius_ +26

        It actually met in a movie theatre, so there was the potential for confusion with people looking for the newest Dwayne Johnson theatrical release.

  8. threatqualitypress +73

    Aw man I totally would have gone into a place called Tessellation, mistaking it for some kind of nerd geometry club.

    1. threatqualitypress +37

      or like, imagine a bar where all of the walls and furniture were optical illusions somehow?

      1. logicbutton +29

        WHAT. Please establish this bar immediately, preferably somewhere within easy driving distance of me.

        I would assume it was some kind of sex club loosely named after that alt-J song. A math-joke-making hipster sex club.

      1. threatqualitypress +22

        I dunno, because of how all of our souls are tiled with the spirit of the Lord or something, I bet

        1. littlehuntingcreek +10

          I would have understood Tesserae (mosaic pieces) better, but tessellation just means something mathematical and geometrical to me.
          Maybe i’m too literal

          1. threatqualitypress +6

            Yeah, I guess technically the word is appropriately applied to regular mosaics and non-mathematical situations as well.

          2. Merripat +4

            To be fair, I only got it because English is not my first language and I had to look it up in a dictionary.

          3. malloryelis +20

            you are giving the people who name strip-mall churches way too much credit, they’re just like “hey this sounds like a mosaic and that’s good, somehow, put it on the front”

      2. Merripat +16

        Because we are all pieces in the giant tessellation that is the body of Christ. (Tessellation meaning not the mathematical term, but mosaic.)

        1. threatqualitypress +72

          But bodies aren’t mosaics! They don’t have tiles! You should have to be organs in the body of Christ.

          I AM A SPLEEN FOR JESUS

        2. halloweenjack64 +4

          I went to M.C. Escher; yeah, I walked into a place like that, but when I walked out I was in Amsterdam last Tuesday.

    5. Lady_Honoria +6

      There was/is one here called ‘WORD’ and the front is all bookshelves so I actually did think it was just a bookstore for a long time THEY ALMOST GOT ME.

      Then they changed their sign to the ‘word’ over a photo of a white family, basically the same white family but 10 years later, and a black family photshopped standing between them, and I was like ‘oh I see now, you are a church’

  9. whereszoenow +35

    What about all the variants on city/metro/centre? Or is that an Australian phenomenon?

    Also, as a Christian I feel this overwhelming moral obligation to give “look out! it’s a CHURCH!!” warnings to friends who might otherwise unsuspectingly walk into a place called “cornerstone”.

    1. Yarnybarny +47

      I took a friend to visit my parent’s home for the weekend and my mom almost immediately asks him if he wants to go hear some music at a coffee shop with her and my friend, a music major, is like “sure!” and I had to intervene and be like “Mom! You shouldn’t try to trick people into going to church with you. That is not what Jesus taught.”

    2. meganbelen +9

      ” Also, as a Christian I feel this overwhelming moral obligation to give “look out! it’s a CHURCH!!” warnings to friends who might otherwise unsuspectingly walk into a place called “cornerstone”. ”

      SAME. I feel like much of my interaction with my family now that I am a Christian is alerting them to the subtle churchening they are receiving on a daily basis. (We have a lot of Evangelical Christians AND Latter Day Saints where I live. Like religious West Side Story!)

  10. falcofield +27

    As a kid, we went to “Desert Stream,” which ALWAYS makes people think we were super into the American military.

  11. Jennifer in GA +7

    We have a Revive in my town. Also, The Point. (That’s what it’s called- The Point.)

    We have one called Breakawat, but it’s confusing because we also have a bicycle shop called Breakaway Cycles. Both in sketchy shopping centers. I imagine more than one person has gone to one when they wanted the other.

  12. middlemarch +24

    True story: Alice Cooper started a community center/church/youth art space in Phoenix called “The Rock” and this makes me giggle to this day.

  14. thedaela +86

    “You want to join our small group?”
    “My cell group?”
    “Community group?”
    “Access group?”
    “Accountability group?”
    “Acts 27 group?”
    “We’re going to Extreme.”
    “Velocity.”
    “Ignite.”
    “The Edge.”
    “The Dive.”
    “The Bridge.”
    “The Ramp.”
    “Fire.”
    “Courageous.”
    “Passion.”
    “Echo.”
    “Reverb.”
    “Noise.”
    “Drive.”
    “Elevate.”
    “Radiate.”
    “7:22.”
    “6:35.”
    “4:19.”
    – the best “Shit Christians Say” parody

  16. Eris +25

    This is somewhat foreign to me. I grew up in Dallas, and when someone builds a church, they make sure everyone who so much as drives past it knows for sure it’s a church. (They seem to mostly do this so they can advertise their denomination as prominently as possible.)

    The real fun is figuring out whether all the cars in the church parking lot are there for a worship service, a Girl Scouts meeting, or a Lion’s Club pancake breakfast.

    1. MaggiePye +64

      Yeah, I grew up in Georgia, and even the churches in strip malls/commercial buildings had very obvious names. (Usually following the rule of, “the longer the name, the smaller the church,” so that the church that met in a building that was a laundromat 6 days of the week was something like “The Church of God in His Holiness and His Son Jesus Christ the Messiah and Redeemer, Praise His Name (Coin Laundry Closed Sundays).”

    2. daisicles +13

      I’m from Tennessee and while most churches – even the strip mall churches – want you to know they’re churches, there’s still a few trying to be unique or get the youth or something. So you end up with The Well, one of the Christian groups at my undergrad university, and The Fire Escape, a fellowship club-type place for teenagers in my hometown. I guess half the goal is to trick the heathen youth? The Fire Escape used to host bands and everything when I was in high school and if you weren’t paying attention to the wording of the announcement, you’d think it was secular.

      1. bird_internet +18

        “Fire Escape” is actually halfway clever? Although in the same vein, I used to live near a church that advertised its youth group with a big sign on the lawn. The group was called “Kids on Fire!” D:

        1. daisicles +6

          I actually liked the name quite a bit until I finally caught on to the religious part. Clever…as long as I don’t think on it too hard.

    1. houblonchouffe +3

      I heart The Intersection so, so much. Have seen some amazing shows there, both in its current incarnation and its previous Eastown locale. LOVE IT.

  18. evieskye +19

    I once drove up to a Harvest named strip mall church when I confused it with a bakery. (First Harvest maybe? It was definitely not a Great Harvest bread)

  20. ppyajunebug +4

    There was an actual Christian coffeeshop/music venue in my town, and I avoided it for years, even long after it became a non-Christian coffeeshop/music venue. Because the last thing I needed in high school was to be preached at (I got enough of that from classmates).

  21. queenofbithynia +115

    there’s a corner on a street in my city that partly blocks off the sign on a nondescript rectangular building opposite, so that when I walked towards it the first time I saw it said “MAN OF MEN” and I was interested, and then I came a little closer and realized it actually said “SHERMAN OF MEN” and I was intrigued, and then I got to the corner and saw that it said FISHERMAN OF MEN and I was disappointed.

  22. cosetthetable +7

    There is a fairly nice hotel chain called “Aloft”. It’s not quite as good as sister hotel chain “Element”, but it’s still up there on my list of “chain hotels I hope to find on my way on a long road trip when we’ve decided we can’t drive anymore and are now too tired to find an AirB&B or normal B&B or any other cheaper alternative that is unsketchy enough that I’d feel okay sleeping there”.

    1. tinypaperme +1

      I’ve stayed in an Aloft! Loved it. I think they tend to be in downtowns or airport areas more than in the Wasteland Of Tired Drivers, though.

      1. cosetthetable +3

        Fortunately, when one is driving up and down the eastern seaboard, there is significant overlap between those two things!! : )

        1. tinypaperme +4

          OOOO I had not thought about the East Coast. I live in the Midwest, where there is a whole lot of nothing.

  23. katya +25

    There’s a supposed crossfit gym in my town called The Rock or The Edge or something of which I have always been very suspicious on precisely this basis.

    1. maggiegrift +52

      There’s a Crossfit gym called Crossfit For My Saviour (“I Crossfit for my saviour because my saviour was fit for the cross”)

      2. CleverManka +24

        Do they not realize how…horrible that sounds? Like, um, no? He was supposed to be perfect? The representation of god on earth? He was not FIT for cross? Like the fact that he wasn’t is kind of the whole point? I’m not even in this religion anymore and I recognize the problem, here.

        1. daisicles +25

          You’ve actually thought it through beyond the emotional triggers of ‘Jesus’ and ‘cross’, which is why it makes no sense to you. I find the businesses who use religion to sell things that aren’t even remotely religious in nature to be especially repugnant myself and often it’s partly because of things like this – creepy unintended tone and such. If you’re just going for the emotional trigger, it isn’t so noticeable but absent the emotions…

        1. Lady_Honoria +9

          He’s also white on most of the crucifixes I’ve seen so I feel like I can’t trust them any more than I can trust a Dove ad.

    2. meganbelen +7

      There is a big and rapidly growing contingent of Christian Crossfitters (I do it all for the alliteration) in my neck of the woods. I’m not sure how getting swole equates to loving the Lord but there you are. It’s probably a church that smells of feet.

      1. Unreadaethel +15

        I read a couple of paragraphs of a Christian diet book once (aimed at women, of course). The theme was “your body is a temple to the Holy Spirit, so treat it right to honor God. And by treat it right, we mean stay thin. And by God, we mean God, but also your eventual husband.”

  25. sparkwoodand21 +63

    “the coffee is free but it comes with a heaping helping of CHURCH” –> also the Lutherans’ motto

  26. megalesias +13

    There’s a bar called The Foundry in Northampton…. other bars/coffeehouses in Noho that could apparently double as churches: The Roost, Mosaic, Hinge….

    Many of these names also remind me of the club in Buffy.

    3. louisagiffard +10

      The Foundry is totally also a gay bar/bondage club kind of name. Might lead to some amusing mixups.

    4. Jendi +1

      I live in Northampton too and I was just thinking that. But just to fake us out, “Imagine” was a church pretending to be an art gallery. Perhaps their fatal mistake was to locate above the chocolate shop. Everyone was too distracted by the gourmet jellybeans to wander upstairs.

  27. keristars +22

    “eleven22”

    honestly thought it was some kind of band for a really long time because all i saw were bumper stickers, then i saw it was in a strip mall so figured it was a really popular live music place

    HA HA joke’s on me it’s actually a popular Christian-rock-music church which is super conservative, except they wear jeans and the men have goatees and/or long hair

    1. erinkidd +3

      AUGHH!!! All of the boys I hung out with and crushed on in high school are the 11:22 band! Hello fellow Jax Beacher!

  28. JGlows +25

    A new student arrived at my divinity school and said he was from the vineyard. I was confused because I have a lot of friends who work in the local wine and viticulture industry, and I obtusely asked…is that a church or a an actual vineyard? I guess it’s a church but what the hell, in upstate NY it may not be clear!

      1. JGlows +4

        I am indeed. And I have been meaning to reach out to you since our earlier conversation this summer now that school started.

        1. Mrs_Peel +2

          Neat! (I forgot if I had asked you before, I have a terrible memory). It’s a really lovely place. I grew up in that neighborhood around Swillburg/ the South Wedge.

  29. LacaunaKale +14

    Our local one is called Next Level. It has a large tape deck play button on its sign,and sometimes a guy in a mascot suit out front.

    3. CleverManka +14

      I would totally sponsor a Toast photo essay on all the different mascots they use over the course of several months I’m just sayin’.

  30. extrayarn +16

    Lighthouse/Lifehouse are very popular here. Also “The Crossing” (get it? get it?) and Journey.

    1. evieskye +6

      We had a Lighthouse that was a functioning coffee shop but also a church (which in retrospect seems sketchy). It’s not there anymore and foam was weirdly thick.

    2. ksek +3

      My hometown has a “The Crossing” that is a CHRISTIAN coffeehouse. Best(?) of both worlds!

      It also has a Cornerstone, but that one is definitely just a bar.

    3. Mrs_Peel +5

      Lighthouse immediately makes me think “LGBT bookstore”, for some reason. (Maybe because of Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”?)

  31. Tessa +11

    This is definitely accurate. My youth group was called “The Underground” and in the basement there was definitely a free coffee bar. It was called “Sacred Grounds.”

    1. westprocrasti +10

      Sacred Grounds! Every in-church coffee shop I’ve ever seen has been either “Sacred Grounds” or “Holy Grounds.”

    1. leslieellenjones +4

      My cousin was, at one time, planning to go into business as a microbrewer with that name. I think someone beat him to it, though.

    2. Sof +1

      There is a brewery with that name already! They have a very well-regarded rye beer that I have yet to try.

  34. mbculver +12

    New Englanders, is this a big thing here? Every church in my vicinity starts with “Saint” or “First,” and in strip malls, if it’s not a Dunkin’s or a Starbucks, it’s a place to get pizza and grinders.

    1. megalesias +8

      I think we’re light on non-denominational and/or evangelical churches in general, compared to the rest of the country.
      The only one I can think of near me is called Calvary Christian Church, so no guessing there…

      1. Lily Rowan +7

        AND we (at least, urban we) have extra church buildings, so the non-denom evangelical church in my neighborhood has a former mainline Protestant church building now. And it’s called Hope Fellowship, so not that confusing?

        Also, the Foundry in my neighborhood is a restaurant!

        And now you all know where I live.

  35. Canard +17

    My town has a Sacred Grounds that is for real a coffee shop, but then you get inside and surprise! It is also a church at the same time!

  36. Anna +11

    Yep, I fell for The Master’s Loft, which seems really obvious in retrospect. In my slim defense, I lived in a county without a single bookstore at the time and we were really desperately hoping that it was a new coffeeshop/bookstore. In its defense, there were indeed books and coffee.

    1. fenixdawn +3

      Ditto for “The Carpenter’s Shop.” My only excuse is that I can as a recent (and very secular) transplant to the Midwest.

  37. aravisthequeen +51

    My town has “The Crossroads” but they ruin it by putting “Established 33 AD” right under it, which is weird and also gives the impression that the 1950s building in my town has actually been there 1982 years.

  38. sagerenee +4

    We’ve got a Crossroads, a Cornerstone, and also ” The Journey” which is in a re-purposed Circuit City building.

  39. thebeagee +5

    I used to live somewhere that had a chain of churches called “Cornerstone” and a chain of (unrelated) gas stations called “Cornerstone.” It could get confusing.

  40. renegadeoboe +9

    There is a red brick house next to my mechanic with a sign that looks similar to the local makerspace (about a block away from it in a similar red brick house) called, I kid you not, “Relevant”. I only recently learned it was a church.

    1. CleverManka +13

      I’m still trying to figure out a lot of them and I can’t decide if I’m embarrassed or relieved.

  42. Alucius +14

    I also used to preach at a church that met in what used to be a car dealership. It had a generic name, but I thought they should have gone with “The Transmission”, or “Ignition.”

    Also, I know of a “Lighthouse” that is nowhere near a body of a water.

    1. Herberta +16

      I live in an area with a lot of Greeks and Greek churches and can confirm the truth of this.
      Also, come festival season, they will feed you well without trying to convert you.

      1. ScriptioPlena +9

        We’re a bit like Judaism on that front – not really actively looking for converts, more interested in keeping the ethnic community in touch with its heritage. (Not that this doesn’t take the same nasty forms as in other Christian denominations.) And yes, loukoumades. And gyros.

  44. bugpaste +28

    So I’ve spent the last like 4 days pouring over a list of student organizations at my university for a project. Many of these names also apply to evangelical student groups, it turns out.

    The one that really confused me was The Tribe, because that phrase belongs to MY PEOPLE, dammit, not the goyim. Harumph.

    1. Mrs_Peel +12

      Ooooooh, that makes me mad! Let’s open our own coffee shop where we secretly make people watch Coen Brothers movies.

    2. RoseCamelia +36

      My Cherokee (christian) relative was dating a Jewish man. When the boyfriend introduced her to his family, someone asked her if she is one of The Tribe. She said yes.

  45. daisymerolling +4

    My teen youth group (not catholic, christian) had a coffee shop in the attic called Solid Grounds.
    It wasn’t my jam, it was too focused on morality and so was therefore sexist.

  46. ughanothername +6

    There was a decent local coffee shop near one of my recent apartments and I used to go there all the time. Then I realized it was a coffee shop for an evangelical church and all proceeds went to the church. Oops.

  47. rolotomassi5 +47

    Back when I lived in Spokane there was a store called Beans Rice & Jesus Christ. Not ambiguous at all, but still one of my favorite business names ever.

      1. bird_internet +17

        I used to live next to a tobacco/liquor store called We B Smokin and Drinkin. Not exactly subtle, but I love it.

      3. quiescently +6

        In the hippy town near where I grew up there is a place called Peace, Love & Grilled Cheeses. It’s a hair salon.

  48. Tourlourou +10

    Here in Bozeman, we have The Ridge, The Rock, and The Foundry. 5 points if you can correctly guess which is the art space, the gym, and the church.

        1. celery +11

          I am honestly amazed that I managed it. I spent way too long trying to logic-puzzle it out (“Well ‘the Foundry’ probably isn’t the gym, and ‘The Ridge’ is the least vaguely Christian, and if your neighbor who lives in the blue house does not have a cat…”)

          1. j_bird +2

            Haha, I thought the foundry might be a gym because of strong-blacksmith connotations!

            [Edit: Er, wait, a blacksmith works at a forge, not a foundry. D’oh!]

    2. Andre_Skiles +1

      I feel like they should just combine all that into one supreme nonsensical circus of silliness, called ‘Bozeman, Ridge, and Rock’

  49. ksek +3

    The one closest to me is “The Light” — they left a flyer at our door letting us know that they aren’t a coffeehouse though.

  50. RudyRed +29

    Next up: a quiz in which you have to identify which are names of strip-mall churches and which are names of hipster gastro-pubs.

  51. rawrbook +12

    I read “The Vagabond Depository” as “The Vagabond Suppository” and was thoroughly amused and confused about what that implied

  52. TheSassiestSara +16

    I think what is the scariest is “The Foundry.” My dad owns a foundry. Like a real one, where metal is melted down and turned into bits for other stuff or something (I’m not really good at foundry-ing).

    The point is, it is one of the least church like places I can think of where everyone wears their clothes.

  53. Mrs_Peel +19

    ” the coffee is free but it comes with a heaping helping of CHURCH”

    THIS IS FAR WORSE THAN JUST PAYING FOR COFFEE (flees)

  54. rethoryke +15

    There was an odd variation near here that seemed to be a “coffee-shop/let us stop you from getting help from Planned Parenthood” combo…

  55. Mrs_Peel +10

    I couldn’t help thinking of the wonderful Jean Shepherd story where he thinks he’s going on a date, but the girl has actually tricked him into going to a church-run Christmas party.

  56. leslieellenjones +16

    The strip mall next door to me currently has a line-up of bank, See’s Candy, best bagel place in town, Starbucks, empty store, El Pollo Loco, big drug store, big supermarket (ALSO with a Starbucks inside), awful Chinese food, photo store, empty, the sandwich chain that isn’t Subway, slightly skeevy-looking work training business, dry cleaner. Now I want to grab one of those empty stores (preferably the one between Starbucks and El Pollo Loco) and open a Pagan coffee shop with a misleading name and see how many confused Christians I can lure in.

    1. halloweenjack64 +4

      El Pollo Loco

      We don’t have those around here, so when I see that name I think it’s the place in Breaking Bad.

      1. leslieellenjones +1

        I’ve never watched Breaking Bad, but I’m assuming this is Not A Good Thing?

        What I want to know is why we need TWO places to buy Starbucks (plus the coffee at the bagel place) within a single, not very large strip mall. It may not be meth, but even in neighborhood full of grad students, surely we don’t need that much caffeine.

        1. halloweenjack64 +3

          Well, Los Pollos Hermanos supposedly had very good chicken… but it served other purposes, as well.

          Yeah, that’s a lotta Green Mermaid, and I fully support the pagan coffeehouse idea. Really, a place that sold Pumpkin Samhain Lattes should be just the ticket right now.

  57. sheistolerable +6

    Urban Abbey in Omaha! Husb and I wandered in there once looking for coffee. I was delighted; he was horrified.

  58. bird_internet +11

    That wasn’t even the sketchiest religious thrift store in town– there was a much cheaper one staffed by severe-looking older folks who were always watching televangelist programs behind the counter. I found some amazing stuff there (all shoes were $1!) until they tacked up a sign about how Catholics are the antichrist or something and I grudgingly stopped going.
    *ugh, meant as reply to gingkotree

  60. Lethologica +3

    I would suspect the Citadel (in SF) of being one of these if I didn’t know what it actually was. Any Christians wandering in there for services would find themselves mightily confused, I tell you what.

  61. grace_adieu +6

    I work near one of these called The Creator’s Hands and despite the handmade pottery displayed prominently in the window, I can’t not believe it is at least VAGUELY religious.

  62. bookwormV +9

    I am a sheltered, UK-based atheist. The idea of churches with names that aren’t things like “St Peter’s” or “[Town name] Baptist Church” (and which are in strip malls!) is blowing my mind.

    1. Mrs_Peel +6

      As a lifelong atheist in the US, it’s also inherently weird to me to see a church in a mall.

      (Though, I must admit, when I was living in the UK, it was even weirder to see state-funded C of E and Catholic primary schools).

  63. Tarragoner +7

    Sure Foundation. This is not a hardware store. But it looks like a Home Depot.
    Overcoming Faith. This is grammatically ambivalent. I want this to be a recovery group for atheists.

  64. Jill T +9

    In Minnesota, we have more towns with names that begin with “Saint…” than church names starting with “Saint…” We had to have lots of extra churches for the German Lutherans vs. the Swedish Lutherans vs. the Norwegian Lutherans, because if God had meant for people who weren’t exactly like each other to worship together, he wouldn’t have written the Bible in so many languages.

  66. Glen H +3

    We had a youth ministry called The Swarm, which is about a dozen types of wrong. It was just near the combination model train/cake decorating shop.
    The train/cake shop is still there, but The Swarm seems to have flown away.

  67. Andre_Skiles +3

    I worked at a coffee shop for over a year before I realized it was a church.
    That partially explained the year-round christmas theme.

    Cornerstone is the name of a chain of super churches in my area.
    They bought a huge multiplex cinema to convert to a super mega mega church.

  68. Laura +1

    We have “Taste & See,” which is a Christian-run coffee shop/art space, just to make things extra confusing. It’s actually not very obviously evangelical but there are prayer request cards available and they only play contemporary Christian music there. Also the coffee isn’t great; on that basis alone you might want to try the Lutherans.

  69. Irene +2

    There’s a coffee shop called Holy Grounds where I live that I assumed was Christian, until I saw an ad of theirs for a barista that made a point of saying it was just a punning name, they were not religious. (I am pretty sure it was Holy Grounds. I might be confusing it with another place with a religious-sounding name.)

  71. Kim W

    until today, after reading this post/comments, did i know that christian coffeeshops even existed, let alone were a thing???

  72. ElectricHarpsichord

    There is a night club named “The Bridge” in my town, and I cannot bring myself to go there because I keep feeling like it is a church in disguise.

  73. Halloween Jack

    El Pollo Loco

    We don't have those around here, so when I see that name I think it's the place in Breaking Bad.

  75. Halloween Jack

    Well, Los Pollos Hermanos supposedly had very good chicken… but it served other purposes, as well.

    Yeah, that's a lotta Green Mermaid, and I fully support the pagan coffeehouse idea. Really, a place that sold Pumpkin Samhain Lattes should be just the ticket right now.

  76. cleo

    I live in Chicago too and I was going to post that I've only seen one or two Living Stones type churches, but I've seen tons of storefront churches with Bible or Jesus (or both) in the name. Must depend on the neighborhood.

  77. tejasmom55 +1

    My favorite in Dallas is not really obscure, it’s Fellowship – but it’s in the old movie theater complex, where we used to have kiddie birthday parties at the Laser Tag place. Another one is Watermark.