The push back I get from a lot of missional practitioners is: “Why not be a regular at the coffee shops and other third places that already exist in your city.” My reply: “We are the only coffee shop in town.” Furthermore, there are no other existing places that allow for the interaction that a coffee shop does. The truth is, however, the worst thing about a church owning a coffee shop is that we own a coffee shop. But through the creation of this space we are able to meaningful conversation with our regulars and the irregulars (we seem to draw a very eclectic cross-section of the local population) in hope of ultimately pointing them to the Gospel creating missional communities of faith centered on Jesus.
The heart of Matthew’s Table is its missional communities. We are gospel-driven to become a multi-site church planting movement with elders preaching the Word at each self-perpetuating, self-propagating, semi-autonomous location. As such, smaller bodies of people gathering together makes more sense. These smaller missional communities allow for a more intimate community, contextualization, greater volunteering, and participation and a wider presence throughout the city as we start new sites. In this model, we envision elders primarily living out their leadership role in a specific community.
Through these elder-led missional communities—framed in the incarnation—each community becomes a missional presence. As people gather in community, they will be sharing their lives one-to-another, will be on mission, and will grow in their gospel understanding. The primary ethos of “being the church” is in the small gatherings throughout the week that will gather together three times a year with other missional communities for a celebration service. The following model illustrates this well.
[I do not remember who or where I got this from. If it is yours, make a comment so that I can give you credit and thank you for helping us visualize what we had been thinking about]
We believe that what is needed more than anything in our emerging culture are more communities of believers who will fashion a new way of expressing their Christlikeness, a way of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and service. Said Lesslie Newbigin, “The only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” And to this end, we find our impetuous to engage our city missionally.
