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At Saxilby we have been holding informal “Café Church” services for just over a year. Peter Pillinger helped with our first one and from there we in the church have begun to develop the format. We have usually had a clip from a film to illustrate a passage from the Bible; films we have used have included The Lion King, The Sound of Music and Sister Act. Typically services have used Power-Point to play music tracks, show the words of the songs and images to illustrate the theme.

Below are some extracts from the current edition:

After attending the Fresh Expression exhibition at the Cathedral in March, Laura MacBean and Margaret Mason felt we needed to review what we were doing. Were we in danger of sliding into a rut and getting too comfortable? Soon afterwards a small group met to plan Café Church for the rest of 2007. A major innovation decided at the meeting was to invite two of the Housegroups to lead two of these services.

When those of us who had attended the small group brought the news that we were to organise a Café Church service back to the other members of our Housegroup the immediate reaction was less than positive. However bit-by-bit we realised that what seemed impossible was possible with God.

We devoted a House Group meeting to planning the Café Church service. We prayed for unity in the Spirit and that’s what we got. It was the best planning meeting ever! We decided the theme was to be Service.. But how should we explain that?

We thought about the previous Café Church services and realised that when you stripped away the technology (e.g. laptop, projector, DVD, MP3) what was left was still someone standing up front leading everyone else, and that does not happen in a café. After some consideration what we ended up with was pretty minimalist - more IKEA than café church. We decided that instead of having a self-service café, the housegroup members would be waiters with Alan Measures, using his professional experience, to be the Maitre D’hôtel.

As people arrived Alan greeted them and assigned a waiter to escort them to their table . Everyone was given a menu with puzzles on the back to keep them amused. After afternoon tea had been served, there was a cabaret in the form of a word association game. We took the word “servant” and for each letter we had to think of words beginning with that letter that related to service. The children were very good at this; so it was a good all-age activity.

Several people said how effective they had found this practical demonstration of the theme and how loved they had felt. As a Housegroup we found it deepened the bonds between us.

Since then another House Group has provided an open invitation to a cream tea and also organised the next Café Church. Their theme was Finding God in the Garden. which compared passages in the Bible with film clips from The Secret Garden.. We could pray while making a bouquet, the children made a garden in a tray and everyone took part in a quiz. The afternoon tea was pretty good too! The second Housegroup have also found that leading Café Church has deepened the bonds of friendship. It’s also shown both groups how we can develop and exploit our talents.

So we are still finding new ways of combining the informality of a cafe with learning to worship God in new ways.