The Foot of the Cross Christian Store in Great Falls, Montana celebrated their second year in business a few weeks ago. The shop is a nonprofit shop and offers Christian books (both new and used) as well as other Christian products. They are located at 416 2nd Avenue SW in Great Falls, right next to the Greater Faith Church of the Open Door and are open weekdays from noon to four.
Mark Davis, who runs Foot of the Cross, shares the story of the organization from birth to present day: “I was the last manager of the Family Christian Store here in Great Falls.” When the store closed around 7 years ago, during “the last three weeks that we were open, God put it on my heart that we needed to go ahead and have another tangible resource of Christian supplies, books, Bibles, and things of that nature. He only gave me four instructions. Basically, number one was that I was the one that needed to get it open. Two, I was going to pay for it. Three, I had to work there and four was that I couldn't take a penny out of it.”
The process of bringing the new shop to reality began with Mark and his wife praying about the whole thing. They then took money from their retirement accounts to purchase fixtures and the merchandise they would have when they opened. From there, “[We] contacted our attorney, and we opened it as a non-profit. 100% of the net profit that we make in the store goes back to the Christian community in Great Falls in central Montana. No one makes any money here.”The staff at the shop is completely voluntary with all of the proceeds going toward the non-profit work.
Foot of the Cross took its first fledgling steps as a kiosk for a short period. However, rising retail space rental costs prevented them from continuing in that fashion. “Luckily, the church that's next door to us, Greater Faith Church of the Open Door, allowed us to go ahead and rent the space that we're in for a very reasonable price and just basically the utilities we use, so it's worked out.”
The shop has seen some success in their first two years. “We have seen some traffic. Probably awareness is the one thing that we're trying to accomplish a little more of. We've been going out to different churches around town, and they've been allowing us to do presentations at their Sunday services. That's helped a lot because word of mouth is probably our strongest means of advertising.”
The shop offers a selection of products and is able to get almost anything customers are looking for because of Mark’s connections with vendors from his time working with Family Christian stores. “When we closed down the Family Christian store, they were gracious enough to allow me to use most of their vendor resources. So basically, those areas that they were buying from, I have set up accounts with the same companies. We try to carry what we would call ‘A list’ products. The things that are most looked for by people on an everyday basis. But we also have the capacity to order. We do a lot of special orders for people. They'll come in looking for something that we just don't happen to have, but in 99% of the cases, I can get it for them.”
Mark went on to point out that supporting a local business, like theirs, results in the money remaining in the community. More specifically, it supports the ministries in the area through grants that are awarded annually. He explained how that works with their non-profit status: “Because we are a nonprofit, we have a board of directors. I can't sit on the board of directors, because my wife and I funded it so it becomes a conflict of interest. Our board of directors, usually meets in March and April, after we get our finances all figured out, our taxes taken care of, and things of that nature. We determine how much profit we actually made in the previous year and that's when they go ahead and start either contacting or asking for applications from different community Christian Services, ministries, whatever it is, and then they basically start writing some checks out to people that they feel are where the money needs to go.” Grants support new, growing ministries that they feel are positioned to make an impact on the community for the Gospel.
Though he is officially retired, after working for 50 years in the retail businesses, Mark spends most of his time working at the shop, along with the manager and another volunteer.
For more information, you can visit the Foot of the Cross Facebook page or their website: https://fotcstore.com.
