We recently re-designed our College & Career Bible Study to take on a new form... yes, a coffee shop. Of course, what else right?
We have young college students, the budding young minds of tomorrow, who need an outlet where they can look smart and cool and studious and feel connected in a bohemian-vagabond-artsy sense so we started a Thursday evening coffee shop worship service called Emerge... each week @ 7:30pm.
Emerge features acoustic praise and worship music by our Emerge Worship band lead by Aaron Griffin (vocals & guitar), Brett Hand (bass), Steven Garmon (drums, djembe) and Joseph Pierson (guitar). We also feature - twice a month - worship leaders from the area who come in a do an acoustic worship set; the likes of Kenneth Belue, Cody Stutts, Rock Sandretto and Chace Austin Butler who will be with us October 8th. We host an open mic night every last Thursday of the month and I provide a teaching or discussion each week.
The purpose of this ministry, other than the obvious ministery to this group and giving them an outlet of worship expression, is to be a community for the community in our area. One recent, yet repeated, statistic is that 85% of church-ed kids who graduate high school will actually leave the church most of them indefinitely. Only a small precentage will ever return.
Most average sized churches (65 members +/-) in our area don't have a consistent outreach to this particular group. Our near-future plans are to begin to partner with area churches to provide Emerge as an outlet for their high school graduates and twentysomethings.
My thinking on this is that if we all have a little, and we all put it together, we can all have a lot. (I know that sounds a little socialist, but in this case it's not so bad... anything we can do to reach our liberal college brothers, right?!?! Trust me, we won't be passing out Theories of Surplus Value as our weekly reader. LOL)
If you're in the area and would like to talk further about coming together on this, then I would love to get with you. You may leave a comment here - just your name and church will suffice - and I will look you up and get with you. I will be eventually getting around to each church, but don't wait on me!
Peace and blessings!
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