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St.
Mary The Virgin Church,
Hartfield. |
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| Café Church | |
Café Church started
at St. Mary’s in January 2006 as a different kind of church event for those
who did not feel comfortable in the traditional services we had offered up to
then.
It aims to be:
- Authentically Christian – based on the core beliefs of the Church, offered in moderate and reasoned form.
- Highly approachable – unthreatening, interesting and not belittling any other beliefs, whether Christian or not.
- Up-to-date – showing that faith issues naturally spring up everywhere without being unscientific, controversial, intolerant or difficult to take on.
- Freely given – encouraging participants to take what they wish, at their own speed.
- Broad – touching on our early, medieval and modern church traditions.
- Inclusive – welcoming people of all ages, in families, in groups of friends or as individuals, and requiring no prior knowledge or special behaviour.
We gave the event a
café/cabaret style and tried different things; by asking those present what
worked and what didn’t, we reached the present format.
This is an event of about 50 minutes, where people are served coffee and hot
croissants round café tables. We kick off with some talk, some visual and
some musical input, after which those present discuss the ideas themselves and
feed back their thoughts. Then there is a final session of gentle guided prayer
and meditation by candlelight.
The atmosphere is more like a relaxed supermarket café than a traditional
church, with plenty of chat, people wandering around serving coffee and
croissants and children moving between tables. During the meditative
session we encourage some moments of relative peace and reflection by use of
simple Taizé
style singing, but no-one minds if the children chatter on.
Numbers have grown, and we have gone from using just the back of the church to
now taking several pews out as well to fit everyone in!
We are following the church’s pattern of working through the Bible from the beginning on a three year cycle, but we don’t make a big thing of this, preferring to go where the spirit takes us.