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Yes, skateboard. A "build your own board" area with an array of custom parts for purchase shares space with 900 square feet of trendy alternative Christian apparel. "Our heart," Bill Beyer says, "beats for the younger generation."

Almost as an aside, you find that SKIA has books, Bibles, and music. "We don't want it to be just a store you come into to buy Christian stuff," he says. "The core is the ministry—changing lives. SKIA is where you can come and be ministered to when the church is closed."

These same words might apply to C28, a California-based 11-store chain with wholesale, retail, and Internet sales of alternative clothing for the 18- to 30-year-old. At C28, flat screens suspended from the ceiling play the latest alternative Christian music. The sales clerk may sport spiked hair, body piercings, and tattoos. Comptroller Kevin Miller likes it this way: "The kids who work here look like the other kids. They pray with the customers who come into the store, though, and tell them about Jesus."

C28's mostly mall-situated stores average about 1,800 square feet and do about $850,000 annually. Their competition is other surf-and-skate apparel stores such as Hot Topic, Zumiez, or PacSun. C28 plans to open four new stores this year and have 20 stores by 2010.

Kids are hurting, looking for purpose and direction. "They want something real," Miller says. "A lot of kids will never go to church, but they will go to the mall, and we can break down the barriers there. When customers tell us, 'I heard you are the store that prays for people'—that's where the joy comes from."

"The store that prays for people"—that's how we wanted our independent Christian bookstore in Bloomington to be known a few decades ago. Comparable stores today, however, must rethink their ministry models to survive and thrive as competition increases and the book itself changes. Displaying shelves full of books that meet niche needs but sell very few copies may be an indulgence today's retailers can't afford. Competition may force them to discover previously unrecognized needs among Christians and the general public. But isn't that what Christian ministries have always done?

Still, I wonder—when the pastor runs out of Communion bread on a Saturday night, who will he call for help?

Cindy Crosby, who writes for Publishers Weekly, spent her teen years running the cash register at her parents' independent Christian bookstore.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

"Locking the Doors for the Last Time" and "Bringing the Bookstore to Church" accompanied this article.

The 2008 books issue of Christianity Today also included the annual book awards.

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April 2008, Vol. 52, No. 4