We launched a new meeting in the cafe today as a replacement for our midweek ‘recover’ programme which has come to an end after 3 months. We are basically looking to start a midweek church plant with some of the locals who frequent our building Monday-Saturday but are nowhere in sight on Sundays. Normally, our cafe shuts at 2:30pm during the week, but we have been finding that people like to hang around the place and finish off their drinks etc. So we have decided to extend our opening hours on a Wednesday until 3pm and have a musical set in the corner of the caff.
The long-term plan is that John, one of our recent converts, who is also a world-class musician, will play some tunes (both Christian (yeahhh) and ‘worldly’ (booo) in the background and we can look at single issue hot topics every week from a biblical perspective. We have absolutely no idea whether it will work or where it will lead but we are giving it a bash.
Now, I know that we supposed to follow the good old evangelical tradition of naming things but we just can’t be bothered. We know that we should have formed a committee to call it ‘super cool church’ (even though it’s not) or ‘the dining room’ or ‘God space’ or something but people around here just don’t care (and nor do I). It is the ‘music thingy happening at the mission’ as somebody informed this week. Not sure the title is catchy enough – but we’ll see!
Anyway, we launched it with some music from a guy called Steph Macleod who shared his testimony of how Christ saved him from homelessness and addiction. Catch up with him here. He was very calm and down to earth and his music really touched the 20+ people who hung around to hear what he had to say.
He played/spoke for an hour and people came and went for a smoke, drank tea and ate cake. There was a good mix of unbelievers, church members, young and old and we are hoping in the coming weeks to build on the foundation we are setting here.
It was interesting watching how the Christians coped with the set up. Nobody introduced the guy or started with prayer. He just kicked off, did his gig and closed with a song. I could almost feel the anticipation as I stood at the end to go over and shake his hand. They were waiting for a prayer or a word or some notices, anything to make it feel like a proper Christiany thing. I didn’t do any of those things because that’s how we roll here in Niddrie. Just always pushing boundaries. No introduction, notices or praying! Just people hanging out, having a good time and a bit of chat about Jesus.
Life on the edge.