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.

The work that Frontline Community Church do in Liverpool has gained so much attention that the Guardian produced this film exploring their approach, and asking questions about how faith groups can fill in the gaps left by recent and forthcoming government cuts.

I especially love what the church leader says when he is interviewed, and the testimony from those who the church has helped. This is why we do what we do in Newport, and it’s great to see other Christian communities with the same approach who God is leading to do similar things.

HT: Dave

Photos from Hope Newport 2011 which happened last Thursday - Friday. The Alway team cleaned up and repainted some basketball courts in the centre of the Alway estate, and hosted a family fun day and BBQ on the Saturday. A pretty exhausting, slightly dramatic, but altogether great three days.

Around 250 volunteers from about 10 (possibly more) churches took part in Hope 2011, doing projects in 6 different areas of the city, in support with Newport City Council, Newport City Homes, Communities First Teams, local Community Associations, Newport Youth Service and others.

There’s no such thing as ‘sustainable’

Had a couple of interesting conversations over the last week or so about the idea of sustainability - about what it means to be self-sustaining, particularly in terms of financial stability.

I don’t like it.

I don’t like the idea of being self-sufficient, self-sustaining or independent - either as a person, a project or a community.

Why?

1. Because I don’t believe it’s the best God has for us.

I don’t believe the Kingdom of God is a group of people who are all self-sustaining and independent. I believe the Kingdom is a radical picture of interdependence - demonstrating a radical dependency on God and on each other.

2. Because I don’t even believe it is possible, on a philosophical level, to ever be self-sustaining. 

If there’s anything that can be said to be true about this life, it is that it is transitory. Stuff comes and goes. Sh*t happens. As the writer tells us in Ecclesiastes, everything under the sun will fade and die - even the sun itself only has another 5 billion years.

We are so reliant on God for everything, and our lives are only held together by his continuing grace. The only thing that is sustainable is God himself.

So I’d like to see us dare to be un-sustainable, in-sufficient, and interdependent, trusting God and each other to provide for us and to keep us going. Let’s grow projects which are designed to be unsustainable, and build interdependence and un-sustainability into our business plans. Let’s nurture community which demonstrates a radical dependancy on each other and on other communities outside of ourselves.

What do you think?

Planning missional projects - Resources vs. Needs

Thought I’d try out video blogging since I didn’t have any time to write anything for whilst I’m away on holiday. Enjoy.