The Community Coffeehouse in Cincinnati

Leadership Magazine in the US has a great article which profiles a church in Cincinnati which runs a cafe for its local community in a challenging area:

We said, “Let’s be a welcoming place, a place where people experience love and grace, whether they’re wealthy or homeless, educated or street people.” A look at the books in the café—mostly dealing with justice issues—shows it’s a Christian place, but not one with a narrow agenda. We have singer-songwriters, comedians, and other events; the independent newspaper listed us as one of the best places to listen to jazz in the city.

The Rohs Street Cafe has been running since 2003. Here’s two ways they’ve managed to develop the Cafe’s influence and prophetic presence in the local community:

  1. They’ve successfully managed to involve and include local community groups, encouraging them to use the Church building: eg. ‘council subcommittees, the Clifton Heights Improvement Association, the Citizens on Patrol, and an AA group.’
  2. For the last 3 years, they’ve been developing a co-operative with a community of Coffee growers in Guatemala who they’ve developed a relationship with.

For them, as with our little cafe at St Paul’s, their biggest challenge has been making their finances work.

And I love this story:

Recently, a stand-up comedian performed at the café, and his routines slammed evangelical Christians and slammed gays. Our manager was aghast: sitting there that night was a leader in Cincinnati’s gay community. So he went over to apologize. But the other person spoke first: “Can you believe what that comedian said about Christians? That is outrageous! You are not like that. I’m going to tell him how offensive that was to me.”

You can read the whole article here.

5 Essentials for Leaders

Brad Lomenick, who leads the conference called Catalyst in the US aimed at young leaders, gives 5 simple essential qualities for leaders:

  1. Be Humble- you’re not that big of a deal.
  2. Be Authentic- your team wants to be led by the real you.
  3. Be Informed- ongoing competence requires ongoing learning.
  4. Be Decisive- no one wants to be led by someone who can’t make a decision.
  5. Be Present- in the moment, focused on now, and physically around. literally.

Which are you good at?

And which do you struggle with? How could you work on them this week?

Missional Meals

With The Lab, we have always found food to be a great way to grow community. In this blog post at the Resurgence, Tim Chester agrees:

Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programs, or put on events. He ate meals. If you routinely share meals and you have a passion for Jesus then you’ll be doing mission.

Read the whole post here.

Discerning your calling

Found this article from Tim Keller which is really useful in thinking about what God might be calling you to do, especially thinking about calling outside of ordained ministry or volunteering with the church. Fits in well with our current series on ministry at St Paul’s.

He suggests three ways in which you might discern God’s call on your life:

1. Affinity
“Look out” and see what needs people around you have that you are particular passionate about.

2. Ability
“Look in” and see what you are good at doing.

3. Opportunity
“Look up” and see what the biggest need of the community around you is.

Download the whole article here.

Lessons for Younger Leaders

Have been thinking for a short while about doing a series of posts on being a young leader - being one myself. The Willow Creek blog (not one I normally visit) has a really good series of posts on young leaders from lots of great leaders much older and wiser than me.

You can read them here.

Social Networking at Work

Thought-provoking post on Q about using Facebook and other social media sites at work. It asks these questions:

- Is it fair to our employers to engage in social media when we’re “on the clock”? 

- For those of us who have flexible work schedules (or even work at home), does social media compromise our attention span and mental capacity?

- Are we sitting behind our computers so much that we miss out on opportunities to develop relationships with our co-workers? 

- If we are always preoccupied with blogging and social media sites, do we give an appearance of impropriety, or even laziness at work? 

Read the whole thing here.

Has Facebook Killed the Church?

Interesting article on the effect social networking may have had on church attendance (written from a US perspective).

What do you think? Has Facebook replaced church as a place for social networking?

So why has mobile social computing affected church attendance? Well, if church has always been kind of lame and irritating why did people go in the first place? Easy, social relationships. Church has always been about social affiliation. You met your friends, discussed your week, talked football, shared information about good schools, talked local politics, got the scoop, and made social plans (“Let’s get together for dinner this week!”). Even if you hated church you could feel lonely without it…

But Millennials are in a different social situation. They don’t need physical locations for social affiliation. They can make dinner plans via text, cell phone call or Facebook. In short, the thing that kept young people going to church, despite their irritations, has been effectively replaced. You don’t need to go to church to stay connected or in touch. You have an iPhone.

Theological Reflection on the Eucharist & Fresh Expressions of Church

Interesting article from Nigel Scotland in the Church of England Newspaper, as this is something that has affected The Lab as we’ve grown as a community:

For several years now the term ‘fresh expressions’ has been on the lips of many Anglicans including those in the corridors of power at Westminster and elsewhere. ‘Fresh expressions’ or ‘emerging church’, as some prefer, are clearly needed and are to be commended. However one aspect of this which seems not to have been significantly touched is the way in which we practice Holy Communion. The structure and ethos of our Common Worship is still largely set in a 16th century time-warp which is derived from the medieval mass. For many this appears to have been a sacrosanct given that cannot and should not be changed.

Yet now in this period of exploration may be an appropriate moment for some serious reflection on the matter.

Treading the line between idealism and cynicism

I’m a bit of a dreamer - I have big ideas and big pictures in my head of what things should be like. The problem with this, though, is that when reality hits hard it can be so easy to lose faith in my dreams and instead fall into being overly cynical and critical.

This is a great little post from Tim Chester on the need to protect your idealistic spirit from being trodden down into a spirit of cynicism:

Ideals are not a stick to criticize others. Instead, we should use our ideals to define our direction of travel. We are sinners living in a sinful world so we know we will never completely arrive. We live by grace. But our ideals keep us pointing in the right direction. There will be compromises and failures, but we know what we’re aiming for.

And ideals should make us bold as we work for Christ. If you want to keep your ideals pristine and unsullied by real life then do nothing. That way nothing is ever tarnished because nothing is ever risked. But a true idealist pushes forward towards their ideals even if along the way there are failures and disappointments.