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In a small thrift store tucked next to a motel near a California interstate, Will wrestles a duct-taped vacuum cleaner out of its box. He has worked at the thrift store for two months—the same amount of time that he's been sober and has lived at the Inside Out Men's Home, a rehabilitation center for chronic alcohol and drug abusers.

Will speaks carefully about the decisions he made before coming to Inside Out. "I chose alcohol over her," he says, when asked about his gold wedding band. "But I never touched her. I never did that."

"She said she didn't want to see me anymore," he adds. "But she hasn't moved or changed her phone number."

Will has kids, too—and hope for getting his life back on track.

Main Place Christian Fellowship, which operates the thrift store in Tustin, California, and the rehabilitation center in nearby Santa Ana, traffics in the hope that encourages Will to try to change his life. As a plant of Saddleback Church 20 years ago, Main Place's ministry has burgeoned, planting seven churches of its own and expecting to birth a dozen more by 2020, says pastor Rich Mathisrud. As a church planter, Main Place spends much of its time running businesses to locate and serve the downtrodden. Its church-planting abilities surprisingly come from starting nonprofit businesses.

"We want to use resources to reach as many people as possible," says Mathisrud. "We're just a little church with a big vision trying to honor our great God."

In two decades, Main Place has started a total of six businesses in Orange County and planted seven churches. Its businesses include the thrift store, half of which sells office supplies; a bookstore; an elementary school; and two theaters, Curtain Call Dinner Theater and, most recently, the Village Theater. Its seven churches are scattered across the West Coast in Tustin, Irvine, Orange, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Los Angeles, California, and in Tijuana, Mexico. Main Place's businesses invest in alcohol- and drug-addicted men to provide the finances necessary for church planting and community work; then it puts its profits back into some of the most crime-filled communities in the county. Is this any way to run a church? Actually, it is.

The Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), whose main offices are located in Chicago, is the guiding organization for Main Place and 600 similar efforts in 200 cities and 40 states across the country. The named "grandfather" of CCDA is longtime social-justice worker John M. Perkins (see "Grandpa John," CT, March 2007). Since the 1960s, Perkins and his wife, Vera Mae, have served the poor in their Mississippi backyard and elsewhere, eventually helping found the CCDA in 1989.

"We champion a clear obedience to the gospel," Perkins says, quoting James's injunction to "visit the widows and orphans" as a shorthand mission statement for CCDA. The ultimate goal of the association, Perkins says, is to follow "the Great Commandments and the Great Commission"—to love God and neighbor by bringing the gospel of one to the other at the grassroots level. In obedience to this goal, a CCDA organization may or may not plant a church, but it will likely start one or more businesses to fuel community outreach and growth.

Main Place manages to do both. Pastor Mathisrud says the church wasn't trying to start a business, let alone six; it just wanted to help.

A burly man named Dave, with tattoos up one arm and down the other, operates Main Place's thrift store. As a manager, Dave has already finished the Inside Out rehabilitation program; in Main Place parlance, he's a graduate.

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March 2008, Vol. 52, No. 3