Would you like to effectively get the gospel out into your community? Does your church run Christianity Explored, Alpha, 3-2-1 or a similar course designed to introduce people to Christ – but need to widen the pool of people who are willing to come and consider him and his claims?
Café-style evangelism with Solas, might be one way of doing exactly that!
Over the last fifteen years we have seen people, who would be very unlikely to come to church, listening to Christian presentations in cafés, pubs, restaurants, sports venues and hotels. For many of them, this has been a critical first step in engaging with the church. We have seen these kind of events being used to fill Alpha/CE courses with people who have a genuine interest in matters of faith, but whose perceptions of church are a barrier to their seeking.
Pre-evangelism is often the missing step.
While evangelism might be defined as presenting people with the gospel of Christ, and calling them to respond to it; many of the people we meet in café’s (etc) are not yet ready to make a response. Some have very little idea of who Jesus is, some don’t think the Christian faith is relevant, others have no idea of what the gospel is. Many have very distorted ideas about what the gospel is, which need to be addressed too. Others think faith is all too mysterious and just to for them; while all the time living lives that make little sense without God.
In this context pre-evangelism can be a vital step for many people. Sometimes the goal of pre-evangelistic meeting might be to invite people to read one of the gospels to find out for themselves who Christ is. This is the method that is used by students doing ‘Uncover Luke’. We often contribute to campus meetings, which are very contemporary and topic-based, but which show the relevance of the Bible’s message and then invite people to dig in for themselves. In café’s we often see non-Christian people eager to attend an evening with food, conversation, discussion and a title like “Why do we look for happiness in all the wrong places?” or “Plagues, pandemics and Putin: where can we find hope in a broken world.”
Solas can help
We realise that doing café style outreach, or even pre-evangelism is not always easy for churches to do – and that’s why at Solas we are delighted to help. We have been helping churches across the UK to do this kind of work for many years, and our speakers love speaking to non-Christian audiences, listening to their concerns and thoughtfully engaging with their questions. This is all done with the aims of commending Christ to a needy world, and building up the church.
Some churches think that we won’t come to their part of the country – but we will! Some churches think that they are too small, and that we only work with big city-centre churches or huge university Christian Unions, but that isn’t true either.
What to do next
If you would like an informal chat with us, about sharing the gospel in your community – please send us an email info@solas-cpc.org, and we will get back in touch with you as soon as we can. We’re happy to share our years of experience in doing these kinds of events with you – and to help you chose an engaging topic, and send you a speaker.
Wherever we go, we find people outside the church, who are interested in Jesus. If we are willing to meet them where they are comfortable, and to take their questions seriously there are huge gospel opportunities. For many people, just such a meeting has been a crucial first step in them exploring Christianity, and putting their faith in Jesus and joining the church.
One of the greatest joys we have at Solas is when we get an email from a pastor which says something like, “I thought you’d like to know, that lady who we first met at the Solas café event in town, put her faith in Jesus recently and was baptised on Sunday”. That is pure joy – and what we do this kind of work for!
Further Resources
This article is a how-to guide to running a café style event.
