Isn’t the Light OK?

Michael Spencer, aka the Inter­net Monk, has writ­ten a cool lit­tle short story that, being a for­mer leader of a church cof­fee­house min­istry, I can com­pletely iden­tify with:

internetmonk.com » The Cof­fee­house: A Story

The cof­fee­house isn’t really the point, of course. To me, what stands out is the idea of work­ing within the sys­tem to ulti­mately change the sys­tem. It’s the idea of being mission-minded, even within the walls of the church.

Speak­ing from expe­ri­ence, I would always con­coct these grandiose ideas of how we were going to change the min­istry of the church with music, art, and hos­pi­tal­ity — not only that, but change people’s minds about Chris­tian­ity who weren’t in the church. But just like a rela­tion­ship has to be built slowly, change takes time. I never saw the amaz­ing Christ-centered arts hub that brought believ­ers and “unchurched” together, and would get frus­trated after a while that all we were doing was pro­vid­ing a Chris­t­ian gath­er­ing place for a Sat­ur­day night (and a “safe place to take your friends where they can hear about Jesus”). But who knows what it might have opened the doors for, had we stayed and kept the cof­fee­house going?

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