Introduction
My name is Bruce Umpstead, and my wife, Gina, and I are small group ministry leaders of the Coffee Shop Connection (CSC, formerly the Coffee Shop Church), which is a network of small groups that serve as outreach opportunities for people seeking God who are skeptical about traditional venues like the local Christian church. The ministry's updated website is www.coffeeshopconnection.com.
The last twelve months have brought many changes. Most significant to the ministry was a hard-wrought decision to leave our home church when we moved our family north of Lansing, Michigan to DeWitt. We are now attending Northpointe Community Church (www.northpointecc.org) and have started looking for ways of integrating our small groups into its outreach effort.
Northpointe is a vibrant church of 800 regular attenders, growing explosively from a 2001 base of approximately 200. The two Sunday celebration services are contemporary, and the pastoral staff is focused on outreach, evangelism, and discipleship.
Small groups are essential in the church's execution of mission, boasting more than 50 traditional small groups. The connection and reinforcement of the sermon topics and the small group support materials have impressed me. The church also uses informal groups as "crowd breakers," forming new groups of newer attendees or funneling new attendees into existing groups. I participate weekly in a men's accountability group and, as a family, we recently started attending a bi-weekly neighborhood group after trying out two other groups. This has been great support in our effort to join the church while maintaining our existing ministry.
"Connection" or "Church"
Early on, the pastoral staff and I saw an immediate fit with Northpointe. It was at Senior Pastor Ed Short's prompting that we decided to change the ministry's name from the Coffee Shop "Church" to "Connection."
Here is the rationale. From the outset, our CSC groups were made up of people that, for one reason or another, were estranged from traditional church. We designed these groups to help people establish or foster a personal faith in Jesus. Our tag line is "Connecting with God in a comfortable place at a comfortable pace," and we trained other group leaders to be open and responsive to spiritual seekers.
Ultimately, we hoped to use the groups as a way to draw people to God and to the home churches of our group leaders. In the past 18 months, we were successful in helping about 15 people in establishing/reestablishing their faith and starting/restarting their journey of following Christ. But, prior to our move to Northpointe 6 months ago, we were unsuccessful in helping group members making in-roads in local churches.
In examining the Coffee Shop ministry with Northpointe's team, we realized the structure and function of our groups gave fledging believers enough support to grow comfortable in their faith, but as this comfort level turned into community, there seemed to be less urgency to connect with a local church. In essence, the groups became "cell churches," which was not our intent and in no way supportable by our small group leadership team.
Unable to convince our unchurched members to start attending weekly services, we realized our groups lack the motivation and mechanism to move members from group meetings to church services. The name change was a not-so-subtle attempt to re-emphasize the ministry's original intent. Our next step was to work to convince current Coffee Shop group members that local church was part of taking the next step in following Christ.
From A to B— Agonistic to Believer
By way of background, let me explain the type of people that were showing up at the Coffee Shop groups. www.Dictionary.com defines them as agonistic as "one who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism" or "one who is doubtful or noncommittal about something." With some liberal license, I apply the label "agonistic" to anyone who doesn't acknowledge the power of God in their personal lives.
Our Coffee Shop groups have seen all varieties of "Christian" agonistics, from the narrowly defined variety who doubted God's active presence in the world to the broad variety that doubt God's love for them and/or purpose for their lives.
To a person, our new friends self-described their religious views and upbringing as "Christian." Some did not own or had not read the Bible, but they believed in the God of Christmas and Easter. Invariably, they joined our groups searching for answers to troubling questions that God had yet to answer— things like depression, broken marriages, troubled pregnancies, and dire financial situations.
Much of our initial group discussion was spent looking for answers to basic questions, and eventually we witnessed several members make a profession of personal faith. This often came in the form of surrendering their problems to Jesus for healing and guidance, resulting in life changes that left them different people.
In this way, I believe our groups were meeting the challenge of moving people from agnosticism to belief, A to B, which is the fundamental challenge the Apostle Paul gives us in Romans 10:9-10; 13-15 (NIV):
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. … for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
From B to C— Believer to Christ-follower
As a natural progression, our more established groups started building on their faith and personal belief with life application by using discussion-starting books as Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Life® and John Ortberg's If you want to walk on Water, you have to get out of the Boat. We witnessed these industrious texts challenge our members, and the life change continued.
But something was missing, and the change in home churches helped me see it.
I was immediately attracted to Northpointe Community Church because of their rhetorical substitution of "Christ-follower" for "Christian." The pastoral team realized that the later term is washed out because of centuries of misbehavior and sin in the guise of Christianity. In sermon after sermon, the pastor constantly emphasized Christ's call to follow him.
Within the first few months of attending Northpointe, we heard challenging messages on difficult subjects, such as sex, evangelism, stewardship, and openness to God's leading—week-in-and-week-out. This was done with a level of sensitivity for the unchurched people in my group.
As I listened, applied, and grew from what I heard, I became more convinced that the unchurched members of our Coffee Shop groups need to be in a local church if they were going to become long-term Christ-followers. I had found such controversial topics hard to broach in stand-alone, small group settings, especially with newer believers whose lifestyles may contrast dramatically with Biblical doctrine.
Gina and I soon made it our goal to help our group members move toward regular church attendance. Our effort has met with mixed results. On the positive side, the change in our home church resulted in two unchurched group members becoming regular attenders at Northpointe within months of our decision to attend. And we have had several others visit.
We have also experienced some recalcitrance to church attendance on the part of the Coffee Shop group that I facilitate. This group of newer believers has become an extension of the friendships that initially drew the members to the group, and the comfort level of the group has grown strong, almost to the point of exclusivity.
The situation is further complicated by the checkered church backgrounds and family connections of group members, making finding a single church that fits neatly with all group members difficult. My latest foray on the subject was rebuffed.
I am starting to see that simply believing can be a comfortable place to rest, especially in light of the harrowing path Jesus calls us to walk when we decide to follow him. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that moving someone from belief to Christ-follower has proven more difficult. Jesus explained why Matt 10:34-39 (NIV):
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
"a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
a man's enemies will be the members of his own household."
Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
My Lesson Learned: Not my Decision
The goal of the Coffee Shop Connection is to move people from agnosticism to belief to Christ-following, of which participating in a local church is a quintessential element. For this reason, I have not given up on my group. Here is what I determined:
- I am going to start praying for each member of my group to discover a local church that will help them grow, and I am going to add it as an item on our group's prayer list. This is one of the more dynamic vehicles for personal change, and accessing the list for helping in finding the right church will help the group see my earnestness about the issue.
- I had to realize that church attendance, just like salvation, is a personal decision. Each person in the group has their reason for not attending. The Holy Spirit posits the opportunity, and I cannot take responsibility for their choice. This understanding takes the edge off the push in getting them to attend.
- I realize that the bond of the group is reinforcing the decision not to attend church; therefore, inviting group members individually, outside of the group, would probably work better. I can improve my chances if I match personal motives for possibly attending with opportunities my new home church offers.
- Someone inside the group of friends will have a better chance of bringing others to the group, so focusing on getting one person "hooked in" to our church will pay dividends with the entire group in the future. One group member suggested a local church "tour." This gives the individual members a chance to select the church that is right for them, so I plan to identify a particular event at Northpointe, like one of the quarterly outreach event the church schedules, and offer that as a "tour" opportunity.
Ultimately, I believe God will draw our group members to a local church and continue the spiritual growth process started in the Coffee Shop Connection. As we go forward with Northpointe and start training new group leaders, we will build in the methods and means by which group members are introduced to our church or other local churches, so attendance becomes a natural progressive step in the spiritual journey from Agnostic to Believer to Christ-follower— A to B to C.
