Cafe Church Philosophy and Planting Churches
The cafe church can be viewed as an organically based philosophy for planting churches, centered around the idea of making the message of Christ's love relevant to the needs of the local community that the church seeks to serve.
The Alma Mount Hope Coffeehouse Church, of Alma, MI, says:
"The ministry statement for AMH Coffeehouse Church is found in Acts 2:42: 'And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.'"
The goal of cafe church endeavors is to impact their local community with a message of God's love and the transforming power of Christ's love.
Depending on the leadership, some cafe church leaders will provide a clear doctrinal perspective, while others may be more open-minded and comfortable with members and visitors asking questions of speakers.
For example, One World Coffeehouse in Columbia, Maryland was founded by a church member who said, "I felt that our church needed an outreach effort ... and a way to express principles such as multiculturalism and acceptance of others different from yourself."
And the Glebe Café Church, in New South Wales, Australia states that:
"Café Church is a Glebe-based, non-traditional Christian faith community. We aim to provide an inclusive, accepting and welcoming space for everybody, no matter what their spiritual path. Café Church revolves around open discussion, creative expression and alternative approaches to worship. Our core values include hospitality, creativity, discipleship and social and environmental justice."
Read more about this topic: Cafe Church
Famous quotes containing the words cafe, church, philosophy, planting and/or churches:
“The train was crammed, the heat stifling. We feel out of sorts, but do not quite know if we are hungry or drowsy. But when we have fed and slept, life will regain its looks, and the American instruments will make music in the merry cafe described by our friend Lange. And then, sometime later, we die.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it exists! Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches! Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses. Invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That the world is a divine game and beyond good and evil:Min this the Vedanta philosophy and Heraclitus are my predecessors.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment’s sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?”
—Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)