Yesterday I met Steve Bartlett – planter of Bayside Community Church in Sydney and director of a newly formed School of Church Planting at Morling College. Bayside (6 years old) is now planting another church – in a Gloria Jeans Cafe. (For those who don’t know – Gloria Jeans is a commercial coffee cafe chain.) It started with a core team of 10-15 from Bayside (a morning church) – and now about 35 people call it home. They meet at 6.30 pm for an introductory interview – and then relax while people order drinks etc. From 7-8 pm they share in an interactive worship experince – with singing, Bible reading, discussion, etc. Sometimes they have EXHALE nights – when they take time away from the cafe setting to interact with non-church friends. What a great idea!
Hi Peter
Great to see you as a blogger!
Greetings from Iben and William to you and Judy.
Neil Cole in his book Organic Church recommends this idea of using existing cafes as church. He tells in the book how he felt God speaking to him one day with the thought “Why start another Cafe Church when there are dozens of cafes out there just waiting to be used.
It’s a great book and well worth reading. There are some excellent thoughts and it certainly changed the way I think about some aspects of church planting.