‘How can we engage with our community more effectively?’ This was the question we asked in Welwyn Garden City where I was pastoring a church. Could we keep our church tradition while sensitively seeking to ‘incarnate the gospel’? We could see how a thriving café culture was rapidly developing in our town. Coffee shops were opening up everywhere and this was replicated all over the UK. In fact a staggering 50% of the UK adult population visits a coffee shop. Our own church congregation were indeed part of this café culture with many of them using coffee shops as ‘third places’ between home and work. With this in mind we asked our local Costa Coffee if we could develop a Christian community there and were amazed when they said yes.

What we planned then was a themed event with quizzes, a short talk, discussion and live music - all with the added benefit of being served by friendly coffee shop staff. Our purpose was to help people engage with issues like debt, parenting or the environment from a faith perspective. We called it ‘coffee with a conscience’. People would not only be invited to enjoy a lively evening of chat, hope and humour but we would offer them resources and prayer to help them engage with the issue after the event too. All this would form the basis of the Christian community we hoped would emerge here. What we ran on that first night proved to be so popular that I began discussions with Costa Coffee Management and a few cafechurches were piloted in other stores. Due to the success of these, the Cafechurch Network was formed. This charity was later given the ‘OK’ to put a cafechurch in every suitable Costa Coffee store in the UK. To facilitate this Costa asked that all churches wanting to use their stores should come through the Cafechurch Network. Today other coffee shop chains, seeing the success of our partnership with Costa have been contacting me wanting us to use their stores too.

Stores benefit as cafechurch helps them to be part of the local area. There are great benefits for the church too, as people who might not enter a more traditional church setting interact with people who do. This may be one of the first steps for some towards going to church. For others they may feel that cafechurch in a high street location is the kind of community they want to belong to. This challenges us then to re-imagine how we can help people develop their relationship with God in a café context.

So today this great adventure of faith has seen many cafechurches start all over the UK but there is still much more to be done. In fact I have more store Managers asking me for a cafechurch than I have churches ready to begin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that to ‘seize fervently’ the moment to build fellowship is an act of faith. So I would invite churches to visit the website or contact us for more details. Here is an opportunity to engage with people by beginning communities without selling out on our faith.

More information is available at the website www.cafechurch.net and you can contact the Cafechurch Network by

email: infocafechurch.net
calling (+44) 020 8664 8506
writing to: Rev Cid Latty, Cafechurch Network,
PO Box 1892, Croydon CR90 9AR.