On a stretch of frontage road along the 101 freeway in Marin County, just south of Hamilton Field, you’ll find the meetinghouses for three churches of various denominations, all within several hundred feet of one another. Nothing unusual about that — in almost any community, you can find an area where a high concentration of church buildings is located.

These three buildings, though, haven’t always been houses of worship. You might guess this from their exteriors, as none of the three resembles any of the architectural styles Americans usually associate with church buildings.

In fact, a decade or so ago, these three structures housed — from north to south — a pizza parlor, a liquor store, and a movie theater. If I’m not mistaken, the middle building was briefly a real estate office after the liquor store closed and before the church moved in.

The point of this observation? Tenants change. Today’s restaurant, store, or movie theater could be tomorrow’s church building.

These changes can move in other directions, too. You may have heard the true story of the journalist who, while searching for a place to eat in an unfamiliar city, stumbled upon a Yellow Pages listing for “The Church of God Grill.” When he called the restaurant, he learned that the building had indeed once housed a church. The church had begun serving chicken dinners as a promotional gimmick. The sales of chicken soon outpaced the interest in worship, and the place evolved into a restaurant without even changing the sign.

Residency changes can be difficult to notice. When my family moved into our present home ten years ago, two Rohnert Park police detectives visited us, believing some drug-dealing former tenants still lived there. In the case of the three Marin locations, the exteriors of the buildings haven’t changed much — if at all — from their previous incarnations. Only the signage reveals that, for example, the Calvary Chapel folks now meet where Pinky’s Pizza used to be. I wonder if anyone’s ever strolled in to order a pepperoni with mushrooms, only to find something quite unexpected on the menu?

The sudden change in the man Jesus healed of congenital blindness confused people who knew him: “Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind said, ‘Is not this he who sat and begged?’ Some said, ‘This is he.’ Others said, ‘He is like him.’ He said, ‘I am he’” (John 9:8-9).

But when a person becomes a Christian, no such dramatic transformation takes place on the surface. When the Ethiopian treasurer or Cornelius the centurion or the Philippian jailer first saw his friends after having been baptized, I’m sure no one wondered, “Is this the same man?” These men were new creations in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:9-10), but the newness was spiritual, thus invisible.

This posed a real problem for Saul of Tarsus, a one-time persecutor of the church who was baptized for the forgiveness of his sins (Acts 9:18; 22:16). Saints who had known Saul when he was casting Christians into prison couldn’t believe that Christ now lived in him — Saul still looked the same. They said, “Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?” (Acts 9:21). They were afraid to worship with Saul until a disciple named Barnabas vouched for him (Acts 9:26-28).

Whatever kind of business you’ve previously conducted in your body, you can change tenants. If Christ turned a blasphemer like Saul into a child of God, He can “move in” to save you from your sins (1 Timothy 1:12-16). Your body may have been a temple of immorality — or even of denominational religion — but obedient faith and God’s grace can make it a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:15-20) and a dwelling place of Christ (Galatians 2:20).