This is the story of how one person, guided by God, can be a missionary right where they live. The scene is a coastal suburb not far from Sydney.

From little things, big things grow

Not long ago a christian guy started to read his bible in a Community Centre café which many people visited for a coffee or snack, or to participate in one of the regular events in the Centre. He went there every week, intentionally, always at the same time on the same day of the week. Each time he ordered a coffee and did some bible study, making notes on his laptop.

He started to recognise the same people also there at the same time. In particular, he noticed the same two guys having lunch together. After a few weeks one came up to him and asked what he was doing and this led to an ongoing conversation over the weeks. Sometimes the conversation turned, or was turned, to spiritual matters. The two men raised many questions, and the christian was able to give some input from a christian perspective.

A group begins ….

After a few months of this the christian told them he planned to start an informal spiritual discussion group which would look at what the bible had to say about the topics they had raised in their conversations. He asked if they we interested in joining, and they said yes.

The new group was given the name Coffee with Spirit, and the christian, another christian friend and the two men met each week to briefly study the Bible. The content and style varied depending on who was there.

After a while they began to pray about concerns raised by the group. Initially only the christian leader prayed, but after a few weeks he was surprised to hear one of the other men begin to pray himself, out loud and in a very public place! A little while later, the other man joined in.

…. and grows

After a time, two others, a woman and a man, both regular visitors to the Centre, also joined the group. Since then the group has continued to grow, from the one original christian to a membership of more than 10, with an average of around 7 non-church attenders. More than that, they have also seen significant growth in all these attendees. All are willing to participate in Bible study and discussion in a public venue, several are willing to pray out loud, and several have come to the point of publicly expressing their new faith in Jesus.

The progress of one unbeliever

One week as the group met, a man was sitting on a nearby table. Towards the end of their time one of the group members engaged him in conversation (it is part of the group’s missional purpose to intentionally seek to talk to people sitting nearby). The man said he’d noticed the Bible on the table and asked what they were doing.

That conversation didn’t go very far, but afterwards another member stayed behind and talked to him for quite a while. It emerged that he was an atheist and had a lot of objections to, and problems with, christianity.

Two weeks later he turned up at the Centre once more, and this time he accepted an invitation to sit with the group. He only participated slightly in the discussion, but seemed quite comfortable being there. The next week he was there again, and this time took more part in the discussion of a bible passage.

Then as the group assembled a list of prayer points, as it does weekly, their atheist friend, despite all his complaints, criticisms and objections, asked for prayer. This story certainly hasn’t reached its conclusion yet, but the Holy Spirit has clearly drawn him out of atheism and onto the road to the Kingdom.

Not only …. but also

This isn’t the first missional community begun by this christian. Several years ago he helped establish a similar group in a local pub. The group gets together at the same time each week, they have a beer, chat to the other patrons, and then have their Bible study, discussion and prayer. At first they received a few joking comments, but now, four years or so later, they are well known and well respected. Patrons sometimes ask for prayer and talk with the group members.

Coffee with Spirit is now about three years old but it has been cloned twice. There is now a similar group growing at the same venue but on a different day and a third has started to meet at a different café.

All were started by the same christian “missionary” but one is now led by someone else, and soon leadership of a second will be handed on also.

Missional lessons

These are all classic examples of the effectiveness of small missional communities reaching those who will never come into the walls of a standard church service, and probably never be touched by any church evangelistic event.

The key is for Christians to be a constant and observable ‘presence’ in the places where non-believers regularly meet – and that is not inside church buildings! Then the Holy Spirit uses these christians to draw people into the Kingdom of God.

The percentage of newcomers (people not previously attending a church) for these similar groups is around 50% or more, compared to the standard church average of 8% and falling in Sydney. Note also this is at virtually no cost!

The recipe is simple:

• a passion to ‘Go’ and make disciples,
• “Small is Missionally Beautiful”,
• public visibility,
• intentionality,
• perseverance, and
• most importantly – prayer and the Holy Spirit.

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Information on this page, and the photograph, comes from Martin Bragger and his Unbounded Church website.