cafe Archives - Page 3 of 7

Language Café

Christ Church Roxeth (in Harrow) realised that it was having little impact on its neighbours of other religions and cultures and started looking for ways to serve them.

Harrow, North West London, is an area with an 'ethnic minority majority'. In the 2001 census there were 41 different ethnic groups with 2,000 people or more.

It decided to launch a Language Café for women on a housing estate in the area, using a community centre there.

The women meet every Wednesday afternoon and sit in small groups discussing a topic. There is no formal teaching, but the leaders use pictures and other resources to stimulate conversation on that week's theme, giving the women an opportunity to develop their English language skills.

The team offer free refreshments and look after any children who come.

We are yet to discover if it will develop into a church of some sort,

says Caroline Newbold, one of the team,

but we are clear that we are Christians and we encourage the women who come to write down names of people they are concerned about on a prayer board. We pray for those concerns after the meeting every week.

We have had some encouraging feedback from the women about this and they have started to open up to us about situations both here and in their home countries, although language and cultural differences mean that building relationships is a slow process and patience is essential.

We have lots of ideas for developing the work of the café, including offering the women a chance to take part in a new version of Alpha for speakers of other languages in the new year.

Easton Methodist Church

If the doors of the imposing Grade II listed Easton Methodist Church were kept closed, passers-by on the local high street would miss all that goes on inside throughout the week.

So, says minister Chris Briggs,

We have the doors open.

That way, the residents of Easton, a semi-rural town on the Portland peninsula, can know that the church is there for them, whether it is open for a service on Sundays or a coffee morning during the week.

An event on Friday mornings has integrated the church’s offering of both community and gentle evangelism since early 2005. A café opens for one and a half hours from ten o’clock in an alcove in the large church premises. It serves speciality drinks and simple food at waited tables laid with cloths and flowers. Background music is Christian, but – Chris says – this probably helps to create ambience more than carrying a deep message.

Because we are waiting on people, they are greeted, and so are gathered up in a welcome,

Chris explains.

We try to make it obvious – there is a big banner outside reading ‘Café Church’.

The idea is to indicate that elements of both ‘church’ and ‘café’ are present at the same time.

‘We have the doors open’ – that way, people can know that the church is there for them

Those who visit Café Church come from a variety of churches on the island and from none. Up to a quarter of those attending can be from no church.

Team members sit at the café tables ready to chat and talk, and Christian literature is on each table, including perhaps a short printed liturgy for one of the ‘God slots’ which punctuate the morning.

Everyone quietens and listens,

says Chris.

The idea is to provide food for thought.

Alongside the café is a chapel area created by use of screens. Within is a candle gate, a prayer board and an open Bible.

Spontaneously people go off in twos and threes and pray for one another,

says Chris.

Sometimes the chapel area is well used, sometimes we wonder whether anyone has been in there at all, but there is usually evidence that someone has.

Lighting candles and pinning notes on a prayer board can be a non-threatening way of offering prayer. Both churchgoers and non-churchgoers use the chapel area.

Chris describes Café Church as containing

elements of church in itself. For many it is a time of fellowship,

he says.

Once in the doors, people find a warm and welcoming community, while the Christian element, though obvious, is not heavy.

By drawing its separate offerings of coffee mornings and church services together in one weekly ‘Café Church’, up to 40 local people are finding that the doors of the church are open for them.

Under the Canopy

Youth and community development worker Dan Evans tells how a fresh expression of church aimed at 18 to 30-year-olds is providing 'shelter and a place of diversity' in Mumbles, Swansea.

We have got a good mix of people; some of them have grown up in church or been 'burned' by church in some way and others have had no experience of it at all. It is primarily for the 18 to 30s though we do get people coming along who are a little older than that!

I'd say that the wider church tends to be very good with children's work and young teens but seems to be haemorrhaging people in the young adults age range. We now have a regular core group of about 20 but we can have up to 60 coming along for music nights, mostly 'post'-students in their late 20s and early 30s from the Mumbles area.

I oversee all the youth activities offered by Linden Church so Under the Canopy is only part of what I do. I lead it but I'm always looking for other people to get on board; it can be a struggle and a drain at times.

I'm trying to develop a team and there are two or three of us who are fully committed to this at the moment. Thankfully there is a real understanding from the church, and people are very supportive of it, but it's difficult to get individuals to take it a stage further and help in running it.

The name, 'Canopy', first came about because we thought of it in connection with the Rainforest as a place of refuge. We meet on Sunday evenings at the community Red Café – run by Linden Church – but we developed four very different approaches to our Sunday gatherings, saying that all these styles of Sunday come 'Under the Canopy'. They are:

branch 1 – Transmission (alternative/creative prayer and meditation)

branch 2 – Headspace (discussion and debate over current affairs)

branch 3 – Sustenance (a good hearty feast)

branch 4 – Unplugged (the best live acoustic music)

Under the Canopy is building and developing because it's fairly organic. It all started when we launched music nights on the last Sunday of the month. We then wanted to develop the faith side of things so we came up with so-called Headspace nights when we have panel discussions on major topics. At our most recent Headspace we looked at the Benefits System and Government reforms. We have people with different views on the panel to look at things from a Christian perspective. In the past we've looked at 'Is the Bible really true?' and 'Does Love Win?'

I have done a theology course and it was when I was looking at the Early Church that I realised the importance of eating together as a community. So we introduced Sustenance, a meal on the third Sunday of the month. Around 15 people come along to that; we do some slow food and spend a lot of time being in relationship with each other.

We have tried all sorts of things when looking at prayer and meditation for 'Transmission' Sundays. At one point we tried something called Nine – this centred on nine different Bible verses with a theme. We then asked nine different people to present those verses as creatively as they could in five minutes.

Looking ahead, I don't want to be too forceful in what I want people to get out of it. I'm happy if they just want to come and be together but if this is church for some people, I'm more than happy with that as well. My hope in the next year is for it to continue to develop and that people will support us, grow and come to faith.

Our seafront base at the Red Café is great because the building has been run as a community project by Linden Church Trust since 2001 so lots of people – young people in particular – use it for all sorts of activities. Partnership is very important in that Linden Church is strongly linked in with churches around Swansea. I also meet up with others involved in youth work and we support each other, which is vital. The work is demanding and we all need to be reminded we're not in it on our own'

JustChurch

A new church for young adults has been growing in Bradford since the appointment of a city centre Mission Priest, Chris Howson, in October 2005.

The church takes inspiration from Micah 6.8, which exhorts concern for justice, and by liberation theology, expressed by Chris as

get involved in your context.

Liberation theology teaches people to act first, reflect later,

he explains.

Our job was to hit the ground running, to see what worked and ditch what didn't.

One of the first ways Chris sought to grow church was through JustChurch, a weeknight meeting that focuses its worship on the writing of letters on behalf of lobby groups like Amnesty International. Around 15 to 25 young adults attend, most of them new to church practice.

The old Anglican chaplaincy centre near Bradford University where JustChurch meets is also host to a fair trade café. On the first Friday of every month up to 80 young adults – most new to church – meet there for an evening of live music and poetry called Soul Jam.

It's about being alongside people and having fun, so people discover that this is a church that lets them be themselves,

says Chris. But he is also concerned to connect people with the wider church and holds a weekly Eucharist on Sundays at noon. Soul Space is a relaxed, informal Anglican service where the Bible is told as a story rather than read and discussion replaces a sermon.

We emphasise listening and making discoveries for ourselves,

explains Chris. The service, attracting around 25 young adults, lasts about 50 minutes, then moves to the café for refreshments. Sundays also see an afternoon discussion group on faith issues and an evening service of Christian meditation.

Young adults are introduced to any of these events through friends, and through actions such as peace vigils in the city centre, work with campaign groups, and a bike repair service run by church members jointly with a local squatters' collective.

Our aim is to encourage real discipleship, to show that the kingdom of God is about showing love, and that we can make a difference in the world,

says Chris.

TANGO

The TANGO community project at St Mark's, Haydock, has been running for 12 years. The project's chair, Avril Chisnall, and co-ordinator Christine Kay explain how a fresh expression of church has become part and parcel of the ministry there.

When we first started TANGO it was quite a difficult thing to know how we were going to bring God into it – especially when volunteers joined us from the community. We didn't want to impose something which involved us standing there quietly to pray so instead we always treated it as an invitation to come and reflect on why we were there as part of the project. And then we always finished with a prayer. Then people began to trust us more and started to join in different ways.

We now do have a cell in TANGO and cell is important to our church but that's OK for those people who genuinely want to go forward with God and enquire and learn more. That's the right environment for them but we've got lots of people in our teams who are sort of 'iffy' about God. We know he's in their lives but they've not acknowledged it themselves so how do we get them to move on?

We've introduced what we call the 'Three Ps' as a way of opening up some of these issues. Chris and her team regularly meet with all the other teams once a fortnight to look at Purpose, Problems and Presence of God. We also have breakfasts when staff and volunteers, which we consider to be our church, get involved with a God slot.

I think people now realise that church isn't doing it to them but church is here as part of the community – and church is not a stuffy old place, a building they have to go to; instead people actually make the church, us and them together.

I've been a member of the Anglican Church for many years and love it but I feel very frustrated that the church is stuck in the way it sees how church should be done and they're still expecting that church can carry on as it is. Many churches are seeing their numbers dwindle but are still not prepared to change their ways of doing things. They might introduce some new songs and various creative ways of doing things but it's still very much traditional church and won't reach the people we live among.

I appreciate that it's scary for church people and leaders to support a fresh expression because it's risky but Kingdom values are the important things. All those years ago, God asked me to do something different with a team of people and the result is that it is 'not the same church as I'm used to'. It's forced me out of a way of viewing church into seeing people differently and trying to communicate his way with them.

I get really wound up when people try to measure what church is. We certainly believe that what we have with our volunteers and community members is very much a church. The frustration kicks in when people come along, ask you to fill in a form, tick boxes, and say, 'How many people have you had in your church this week?' Most of the time I simply do not know the answer to that but we know that what we do here is very much a one-to-one with people. Thanks to God, we change people's lives by meeting them, praying for them or talking about God to them. We can't measure those sorts of things and that's really difficult.

It is often not measurable in an 'official' way but I'm looking at what happens here in Kingdom terms. As such, it doesn't matter that I'm a lay person; I will keep on doing this stuff because God has asked me to do it and pass it on to other people to do as well. We also know that's what we need to do and investment in other people with God's values is vital.

If TANGO goes on for another 12 years that'll be down to God and the investment we've put into the people's lives for them to want to carry on doing Kingdom business in an ordinary way. Lay people are so important to this type of fresh expression it's important to risk letting those who are not ordained take the lead and do what God's asked them to do.

I'd say, 'go out there and have a go and really listen to what God's saying to you.' We've passed the idea of TANGO on to three other parishes but it's not the same TANGO that we've got. They're doing the same sort of things but they are different people in different sorts of community. That's why it's very important to find God's heartbeat for the community in which you live but – for goodness sake – get out of your church and go and do it.

Coordinator Christine Kay adds:

God is the heartbeat of everything that we do; without him it would just be impossible. Every morning, before we open at 9.45am, we have what we call Quarter to TANGO when as many of us as are free come together. It is not a formal prayer time by any means but we give out notices and things that are coming up in the week but there’s also a time to share.

In the past we've done lots of things which we've been brave to do but we've been even braver to stop them when they've not been working. Now we're looking to do something called TANGO on a Sunday. Lots of people find Sunday a very long and lonely day so we've decided to give it a go, it will be in our café – a chat over a cuppa about some question brought up in a very informal way. We're not really sure how it's going to pan out but I feel that God is asking us to do this and we're just watching this space at the moment.

You are not going to get people into your churches in this day and age; they just want you to go out to them. They don't even want that, they don't know that they want that, the only way to be with them is to be where they're at; not threatened by anything that's churchy. That's why we try not to use churchy words at all. We are just ordinary people; they respect that and respond to it as well because they see we're not holier-than-thou. Hopefully they just feel comfortable and safe in the kind of environment we encourage here. God is opening this up for each of us to be part of other people's lives and for them to be part of our lives as well.

Café Lite

A fresh expression of church meets in Droxford village hall, Hampshire on the third Sunday of the month. Launched in September 2011, it now attracts up to 100 people to its informal sessions. Rev Stuart Holt explains how it has developed.

As Rector here I was very fortunate that my parish released me from services in Droxford, Exton, Meonstoke and Corhampton twice a month so that I could be involved with mission events on the ground. I felt that it was time to stop talking about mission and actually do some!

Retired priests Canon Anthony Hulbert, Canon Marion Mort and the Ven Barrie Hammett are helping to lead services and offer pastoral support to regular worshippers in our four churches while I'm fronting Café Lite and a puppet ministry in schools.

We decided to set these things up for a year and see how we got on. It all started in September; it's really encouraging to see that new people are coming in and they're bringing their friends with them. We've never seen these people before. Things are developing too because some of them are now wanting to be baptised and have their babies baptised.

My other project is a Sunday morning puppet show at Meonstoke Infant School on the last Sunday of the month, called Puppets and Praise. This means that I now have two fresh expressions of church in these ancient, rural benefices.

Café Lite runs on the third Sunday of the month in Droxford Village Hall and we have most of the Sunday newspapers, bacon rolls, worship and chat. No money came from church funds to support the café church or the puppet shows. Instead we have made them self-supporting with private individuals funding different components so – for instance – someone has sponsored the bread for a year, somebody else has paid for the bacon and another person buys all the papers.

I thought it important to offer excellence which is why we've also got a professional Gaggia coffee machine for all those 'flat whites' we have to prepare! The numbers at Café Lite have reached 96 which is quite something for a tiny little parish of 1600 people in the middle of Hampshire.

When deciding what resources to use, I finally went for what was around when I came to faith in 1967, Norman Warren's Journey into Life – mainly because it's very clear and simple. I ended up buying 100 copies from the States. Again, for worship, I had previously used Youth Praise and I use it again now because it really deals with key issues of faith; I found that it was as powerful now as it had been all those years ago.

We started from the beginning with the music because it's for the dechurched as well as the unchurched. I know it can seem strange to many people involved in fresh expressions that we would focus on worship and singing at such an early stage in the life of this community but the people really wanted the music to express some strong messages about God and Christianity. It doesn't seem to be offputting because we're drawing in a huge cross section of people, including those from a local social housing estate, an equine horse healer and an international tea taster from Twinings teas.

We also have those recovering from drug and alcohol addictions at a nearby rehab centre. They are accompanied by a staff member and it's great to see them there. We are now also actively involved in Christians Against Poverty and have CAP money coaches there.

Almost as soon as we started in the hall, I was asked, 'What is your strategy for these people?' My answer was, and is, 'Preach the gospel and be open to the Holy Spirit. That's it.'

Our immediate challenge is that the hall is licensed for 120 people and we have already got up to 96 coming along; if everybody in the Café Lite community turned up we would be over the 120. It's a wonderful challenge to have because we had no idea how it was going to go or if anybody would turn up at all. We're also having fantastic conversations. People have asked if I could do a wedding blessing for them because they got married in a register office but would love a blessing; others have asked about preparing for baptism for themselves or their children.

Again, when it became clear that people had taken up the idea of Café Lite, I was asked what my strategy was going to be for discipleship. I said the answer was definitely not to make them go on some sort of organized course; people wouldn't want that – especially as they had never been to church anywhere before and had actually turned up because we offered them a bacon sandwich! We are now developing a nurture course to help them tackle some key issues in a way that's relevant to them.

Puppets in Praise runs from 9.30am to 10.30am in the hall at Meonstoke School. It is something that's definitely encouraging people to take that step into Café Lite. Families are invited to watch and participate in the event with parents then being able to do follow-up work in the classrooms with the children. We have had 75 coming along to that. When I did a pilot for the show last year, I asked four of the young people to download new worship songs to their iPods and learn them over the summer so they could help with the singing.

We also have lots of children at Café Lite, usually around 29. It was suggested that we should 'do' something for the children as a separate entity but I said we needed to ban the words 'ought', 'must' or 'should' in our Christian lives and that I didn't want Café Lite to be turned into a Sunday school in the village hall. It's a church in its own right.

Interestingly some people got very indignant about seeing kids with i-Phones at Café Lite. It doesn't bother me because that's what kids do, they text each other. What was wonderful was the fact that they were actually texting, 'I'm at Café Lite, it's brilliant.' Another girl filmed it on her phone and sent it to a friend to say how good it was.

Some people also come along to regular gig nights at The White Horse pub in Droxford when I and the Rev Andy Bridgen play music from the 60s and 70s as The Rockin' Revs. We always invite people to Café Lite from there!

The churches here have been serving this stretch of the Meon Valley for hundreds of years and we are glad that Café Lite and Puppets in Praise are also helping to meet the spiritual needs of those around us. I've no idea what will happen or who will come week by week but I want us to take some risks in spreading the gospel.

Generation Project

Matt Caldicott leads the Generation Project, set up in 2011 by Rugby Deanery to connect with 20 to 30-year-olds in the area. Matt tells of the story so far, including the launch of Park Pastors.

I started in post in July last year and my brief was to connect with young adults. It was very much a blank sheet of paper and I thought about trying to reach this 'missing generation' in pubs and cafes but it was July, and quite sunny, so – on my first day – I went to the park!

I had previously visited Caldecott Park with my own kids but I didn't really know it that well. It underwent a nine month Heritage Lottery Fund restoration project in 2008/09 and it's a beautiful place, a little piece of heaven in the middle of Rugby.

I started to visit it three times a week to prayer walk and meet people. After a week or so, I thought it appropriate to tell Trevor, the park ranger, that I was a Christian hoping to connect with people there. His first reaction was, 'There's a better park down the road for you to do that!' But our friendship has grown over time as our relationship has deepened and now we work together from a position of trust.

My first aim was to meet people of peace and I made contact with many of them during the summer, including:

deanery clergy and other local ministers;

those involved in local specific mission focused ministries so as to try and not 'reinvent the wheel' and repeat something that's already happening;

people with no links to church at present.

An interesting, and positive, challenge in this area is that Rugby churches are connected through the Revive network. This means that church leaders from all denominations meet and work together regularly, renewing vision for the church's mission in the area and the emergence of new projects. As I was coming into such a strong environment of Christians doing all sorts of things across the town, I asked myself, 'How can I start something new with such a lot going on? Where are the gaps?' The park has been such an answer to prayer because it offers a unique base for ministry.

A turning point came when Trevor and I started to chat about the possibilities for the park's Café which had been closed due to the economic downturn. The original idea when the park re-opened in 2009 was that it would become a community hub, but that project had never been realised. We started to dream dreams about, 'What if it reopened as a joint venture; a council-church-run community café that connects with people in various ways? I proposed that we would offer Park Pastors, running along the same lines as Street Pastors, as a spiritual thread to that. We would be based at the Café.

During my times of walking the park I had a real sense of it being a place of peace and restoration and I wanted to work on that theme of the peace of the place. We could ask people the question, 'If there are things in your life that are broken, how can we help you to be restored?' Ultimately the idea is to grow missional community out of that.

Rugby Borough Council welcomed the idea of opening up the Café again, put in more than £20,000 for catering staff wages, and even provided us with Park Pastor t-shirts and sweatshirts to signify our 'official presence' within the park. We will be running a pilot 'year' from April to October and the aim is to work towards establishing it as a charity so we can attract funding. My appointment currently sees me running the project for three days a week with the rest of the time spent in pioneer ministry training with the CMS Pioneer Mission Leadership Training Course.

Thankfully I also have a colleague, Aaron Lincoln, who is working alongside me on this. As a church planter he had been called to the area three years ago but he really felt God calling him to get involved in something new – not the traditional church plant he had done before. We started to meet and it has developed from there.

Park Pastors plan to launch at Easter, when the Café is scheduled to re-open, and I would seek to have a mixed-age team. We will welcome all we come across but we do also hope to focus on young dads. There are lots of places for young mums and their babies to go but we want to put the park on the map as a good place for guys to come too, somewhere they can meet other blokes that understand the pressures of family life.

The council has also provided us with a wooded area of the park to install a permanent outdoor labyrinth and we will provide guided meditations for iPods. Hopefully that will be ideal for people working in the centre of town who want to get away from it all for a while at lunchtime.

In another development, I have also become chaplain at Rugby College of Further Education; it is relationship building time at the moment but I can see that in the winter – when we can't be in the park so much – we will be able to base our missional community there.

I have been thinking very much of the theology of the guest: God is here, now, with us and in the conversations we have with people but – in the park – we are on someone else's turf as well. We have been so privileged that the council said yes to us; we are guests in this environment. It turns the tables on what we think about mission and shifts our perception of who holds the power.

If we adopt the attitude of a guest, it takes away some of the barriers as to what is expected of us. It will help us think creatively about how we approach mission and focus us on collaboration, both with the council and the people who visit the park. The very word 'pioneer' can have some very difficult connotations attached to it; I don't like the theology of 'claiming' – it’s too Gung-ho for me and speaks less about Jesus than we might think.

Joining in with what is already happening in a community means that you don't have to try and make people jump through hoops to do things or go somewhere they wouldn't naturally connect with. As Park Pastors, we can offer an added dimension to what is already going on in the life of the park, and hopefully illuminate God's presence through missional community drawing alongside the people we meet.

We have to bring the gospel into new places but when you're invited into someone else's environment, you can't make all the rules, you have to adapt. We need a mixed economy, to be flexible and connect in ways that surprise people.

St Ives Café Church

St Ives Methodist Church, Cambridgeshire, hosts Café Church once a month. Minister Matt Finch explains how the church's new website has also helped to 'open the door' to newcomers.

We recently launched our new site and it is fascinating to see how it is being used. I'm finding that it acts as more of a front door than the church's real front door; I'm getting regular emails from people asking things like, 'how do you come to church?', 'Is it all right to just turn up at church or do I need a special invitation?' The internet allows them to step across the church threshold and allows us to step across the threshold into their world too. In time I hope the website will become a real focal point for what's going on so that it will create a community outside the building.

At St Ives Methodist, the journey has always been about a mixed economy approach. The pressure with that revolves around working with those folk used to established ways of doing things and those who bring in newer idea. I'd like to say that all parts of the church at St Ives are finding renewal in what we are doing but there are always going to be difficult and honest discussions about the best way forward.

For us at the moment, fresh expressions is about seeing what can be done with a real missional intention in this church setting. Café Church is a case in point; it is now attracting an average of 100 people – sometimes up to 130. For those folks there's no doubt that it's a real blessing; we've got an all-age band together and it's interesting that – apart from me and one other person – the Café planning team is made up entirely of people who weren't in the church three years ago.

Discipleship is developing through those planning meetings because we talk about faith as we look ahead and talk and work things out. We engage with people where they are and try to answer the questions they have.

We don't have to advertise the Café Church at all because it's all about drawing together different networks and making them feel welcome. Email is important and Twitter increasingly, because just one email will be sent around to everyone's personal network of friends. You just have to have the trust and confidence to let the information go out there and be distributed. It's a real joy to see how things develop; someone who has been on the fringes of church and is now café regular recently said, 'I want to be confirmed'. I'm still trying to work out what that would mean in a café context.

Café Church takes place from 10.30am on the 3rd Sunday of the month with tea, coffee and pastries served from 10am. We also offer a podcast from of every service Church for those who would like a taste of all our service without committing themselves to coming.

There is space to talk with others, join in the activities, reflect quietly, sing a song if you like or just read a Sunday newspaper. We know that lots of people want to talk about faith, even want to come to Church, but find a traditional service hard to understand, or boring to sit through, or just plain confusing.

As a church the children stay in every week because we had recognised that a traditional Sunday School wasn't working for us any more. We also understand that weekends are precious times for families to be together so we wanted to create a fun, engaging space where children and young people can feel welcome too.

We provide good quality children's toys and activities in the back corner of the church so, yes, it can be noisy at times but that's the way it is with children. I appreciate that some people can find that difficult but I've also had messages from others saying, 'The reason we have stayed with you is because you don't send our children out.' When they are encountering church for the first time they really don't want their kids to go out to another room with a stranger. They want to be together. I suppose we are making a stand for how families operate these days and changing our way of doing things in order to accommodate those who know nothing of the way that churches traditionally work.

For those looking for a creative and engaging place to think about God, we have a monthly alternative worship service called Breathe. Some of those who come along have been Christians for many years while others would struggle to identify themselves as Christian and are just looking for a place to reflect on spirituality.

We also have a young adults group known as Phos (Ancient Greek word for light) trying to think through life and faith in the 21st Century. They meet in people's homes to look at various topics, talk about them together and pray. If I'm honest this is struggling a bit but trust that the Holy Spirit will guide us in what is next.

I've now been here for nearly four years and the idea is that St Ives Methodist Church should become a centre of excellence, a place which could inspire and change a whole Circuit. We have run the mission-shaped intro course for instance; we provide café resources for other churches, I meet with leaders and try to offer a central hub where people can find out more about this thing called fresh expressions of church. What does it look like in reality? What does it mean to be a place for waiting on God? We look at these things constantly and we know there is no such thing as a 'quick fix' as we see how God shapes what we do and around those who seem to like the idea of joining us.

1st Sunday@5

Castle Square United Reformed Church in Trefforest hosts a Café Church every month. Leader Gethin Rhys explains its development since launching in September 2008.

Our original vision for 1st Sunday@5 is so very different to what we have ended up with but that's part and parcel of allowing the vision to change over time. The church in Trefforest, a village in the south east of Pontypridd, is right next door to the University of Glamorgan and 1st Sunday was originally promoted through the university chaplaincy.

However, after the first few sessions it became clear that we were not reaching the people we were aiming for. Another church in Pontypridd had started an all-singing, all-dancing café service, complete with live bands, at the same time as us and that attracted the students. We couldn't compete with that. After a few months we were at the stage of thinking Café Church was an interesting experiment that hadn't worked and we would let it die a natural death.

But then I was approached by some of the people who were members of the Baptist Church up the road and they wanted to explore different ways of worshipping. We did a couple of services in their building rather than ours but our premises turned out to be more suitable. They formed the core of the group, to which various people have since been added. It's mainly made up of local residents, one or two of whom are regular churchgoers at other local churches and others who have got fed up with traditional church but are still interested in spiritual questions. They find Café Church to be a good way of exploring those issues.

I also run Sacred Space, another Café Church, in conjunction with local Anglicans in Porth. Sometimes I carry over the same theme, though slightly amended.

At Trefforest, at least one session a year is led by someone other than me. It's informal and we have opportunity to maybe watch a DVD clip and then have a chat about it and take part in associated activities. We say the Café Church offers 'good coffee, great cake and inspirational worship'.

It was interesting that the Café Church members led the way in asking me if they could have Communion. This meant a lot because many had previously lost touch or became disillusioned with traditional church but still wanted to share in Communion. What I did was to use bread and wine as a theme for our time together and we had different kinds of bread and different kinds of wine on hand. We talked about the significance of bread and wine in different cultures and I then asked everyone to get a piece of bread and pair it with whatever wine they wanted – the one led into another and it was then very natural to share Communion together.

1st Sunday has developed in a very different way to the Porth Café Church in that it has drawn in people who had left traditional church, whereas in Porth we have appealed across ages and across theologies within traditional churches. Our main problem in Trefforest comes with leadership because inviting people to share leadership responsibilities for something they see as part of the traditional church – which they feel very disillusioned about – makes it very difficult. One of those who comes along is an active lay preacher. She has very much enjoyed attending 1st Sunday@5 and not having to lead. I have respected that but we will have to look at people who are willing to find a way of continuing it as my term in the church is likely to end in about a year's time.

East Worthing Café Church

In 2009 a group of Christians hired East Worthing Community Centre for 'a couple of weeks' to trial a café church. Now, over two years on, and an average of 50 people attend East Worthing Café Church every week. Leader John Beales explains more.

It all started when I was on the leadership team at a Christian Fellowship in nearby Sompting. Driving past East Worthing Community Centre one day, I felt that God gave me a 'nudge' about using the venue. The hall at the Centre had previously been used by another church in the town but they had moved to different premises and the space had not been used by a church for some while.

I had been Elim trained and was previously an elder at Elim Christian Fellowship in Worthing for three years so I knew the area and people. My wife and I had no plans to start up a church at all but every time I went by the Centre it was as if God was saying, 'go on'. Right from the start, when we were beginning to pray about it, I spoke to all the church leaders in that part of Worthing and involved them in our thinking and plans. They were very supportive of us starting something there.

As we are not a denominational church we are very much entrenched in the fraternal team for the south of the town. It's not like I'm a lone ranger in this because some of these people have known me for a very long time! We may join up with something in Assemblies of God but we are open to what God wants us to do and there is no intention of treading on other people's toes.

The result of our prayers was that I got together a few friends I knew and we hired the hall for a couple of weeks to see how things went. Today East Worthing Café Church is running every Sunday – apart from five Sundays in the year when the karate club gets the first shout on the hall!

People come in for their coffee and cake and then we do what many would see as our 'religious thing' at the start of the service by lighting a candle. It's a bit of a statement from us and the statement involves us loving Jesus and loving them; we certainly won't make people feel condemned at all. We don't read out long passages of the Bible to them but they are really interested in it. The proof of that is them asking us all sorts of questions! All of us will go through the Book of Mark in different ways, according to age.

The café church runs from 2pm to 4pm and we have a break in the middle for about 25 minutes. They can stay or go, come in for five minutes or stay for a long time. People don't like long blocks of worship – instead we use DVDs that get their attention as part of our aim to give God the chance to get their attention too! I'm an illusionist so I may also do a trick. It's trying to use Scripture in a way that appeals to people today. A lot of people don't know these stories and they don't know who the Saviour is.

Children are welcome but they have to come with either a parent or an adult and they are then responsible for them. We get about 50 people on average and roughly a dozen kids between the ages of three and 17. It's well mixed and about quarter of the people are unchurched. We also do fun activities in the half term, As an illusionist it's great to be able to use those skills in God's service by highlighting biblical truths in a way that people can understand. Our intention is not to force 'church' down their throats. That's why I also hope to develop my IllusionandTruth ministry and use it as a tool to reach out to people with the Gospel through mime, drama, illusions and escapology in a fresh, fun and creative way.

I heard Bishop Graham Cray speaking at Christian Resources Exhibition about fresh expressions of church and that particularly made me think about the way we do discipleship. We now have a Bible study night on Tuesdays but we believe that discipleship is not about signing on a dotted line and 'joining' something. Discipleship, to us, is not about coming along on a particular course – it's more relational than that. 'Less of religious, more relational' is one of our straplines.

For some of the mature Christians it has taken a little while before they understand what we are doing but we stand together as a group of ordinary people who have been transformed by a relationship with Jesus Christ, and we believe the purpose in life is to make Jesus Christ known to all who want to meet him.

We are not religious, and for us church is not boring but a place to meet like-minded people on the same journey. East Worthing Café Church is very much a real church because the church is us and the people who come together. Of course, there is always a question of what to do next. My prayer is that we won't slip back into being church as people may have experienced in the past – and been hurt by in the past.