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Tag: cafe church

Moot’s Arts Cafe Church Vision – gatherings of kindness, cups of friendship

Well, at last it is looking like Moot will be launching its cafe church vision in the near future, but more of that later. People have been asking me why a cafe? and what has this to do with the arts?

I have been reading the Poetry Book ‘Flotsam‘ by Bart Wolffe, one of the talented poets that has performed in the Moot Cabarets. He is a very talented guy with an incredibly tough life as an asylum seeker. He has my greatest respect. In this book of poetry, where he explores what it is like to be homeless and with no money in London, he explores the real day to day struggle of trying to survive in the City, and brings fresh perspective to issues that we often forget about. In the middle of this he dreams about what Could be:

City of Loneliness, of loss, the scraping amidst the barony of landlords and tax collectors, rent gatherers, and supermarkets milking us of our liberty. He dreams. “The ideal world would let cafes be free for all, gatherings of kindness, cups of friendship. A church, a welcome sanctuary, a retreat, without denominations. The democracy of true meeting-places, the universities of life for exchange of thought and word in all tongues” (B Wolffe, 2009, 19).

I think Bart has richly put what we are seeking to build. A place where a church becomes public space again, with a small cafe that practices friendship and hospitality, which we hope will birth relationships, peace, kindness and facilitate expression and creativity, in the search for a common humanity and deep spirituality. We hope to start this once the detail about a place is sorted out.

So thanks Bart for putting this so well, touching the qualities we hope to shift from a dream to an actual incarnated reality, and a new home for the Moot Community. Incidentally, a way to support people like Bart is to support their work, so why not help him by buying his books here from Amazon, and here from Lulu.

POSTED 20.07.09 BY: admin | Comments (2)

Moot's Arts Cafe Church Vision – gatherings of kindness, cups of friendship

Well, at last it is looking like Moot will be launching its cafe church vision in the near future, but more of that later. People have been asking me why a cafe? and what has this to do with the arts?

I have been reading the Poetry Book ‘Flotsam‘ by Bart Wolffe, one of the talented poets that has performed in the Moot Cabarets. He is a very talented guy with an incredibly tough life as an asylum seeker. He has my greatest respect. In this book of poetry, where he explores what it is like to be homeless and with no money in London, he explores the real day to day struggle of trying to survive in the City, and brings fresh perspective to issues that we often forget about. In the middle of this he dreams about what Could be:

City of Loneliness, of loss, the scraping amidst the barony of landlords and tax collectors, rent gatherers, and supermarkets milking us of our liberty. He dreams. “The ideal world would let cafes be free for all, gatherings of kindness, cups of friendship. A church, a welcome sanctuary, a retreat, without denominations. The democracy of true meeting-places, the universities of life for exchange of thought and word in all tongues” (B Wolffe, 2009, 19).

I think Bart has richly put what we are seeking to build. A place where a church becomes public space again, with a small cafe that practices friendship and hospitality, which we hope will birth relationships, peace, kindness and facilitate expression and creativity, in the search for a common humanity and deep spirituality. We hope to start this once the detail about a place is sorted out.

So thanks Bart for putting this so well, touching the qualities we hope to shift from a dream to an actual incarnated reality, and a new home for the Moot Community. Incidentally, a way to support people like Bart is to support their work, so why not help him by buying his books here from Amazon, and here from Lulu.

POSTED 20.07.09 BY: admin | Comments (2)

Meet the Archdeak… Moots future

Where are we going?
How do we make our dreams happen?
How can I contribute?

OK, we now have two meetings (involving food and drinking) on the 30th April and 14th May. We need Mooters to sign up to the meetings or letting us know they cannot attend, by completing the sections of the wiki… Please add your stuff here

POSTED 28.03.08 BY: admin | No Comments

Memories of the Epicentre Art Cafe in the 90s

Steve has posted some long lost photos he discovered of the Epicentre Network Arts Cafe event at Greenbelt in the 1990s. It was one of the founding experiences for many of us now in Moot to get an arts cafe thing going. I have looked back with fond memories. Click here to go the photos.

POSTED 26.02.08 BY: admin | Comments (1)

Positive about some forms of Church

One of the most important functions of church – is its ability to envision and bring hope. There is so much hopelessness and cynicism around at the moment. It is in this context that Church can bring a hopeful reimagination of what can be through the love of God.
One of the darker-sides to our postmodern hyper consumptive and technological society, is the lack of a sense of future. Life is often lived in the eternal present by many we live amongst.
It is into this context that the Church can be a positive expression of hope, bringing peace, love, joy, belonging and forgiveness to a world often characterised by isolation, loneliness and addiction.
The positive challenge to church – is the hope for more expressions of church that live this way. There are many that do, which are often drowned out by the for fundamentalist.
So I am positive about Church and seek to challenge those forms of church who do not have this vision for what they are doing.

POSTED 03.02.08 BY: admin | Comments (1)

Words of Wisdom

On Sunday, a friend of mine asked me what drives you, how do you keep going hoping in things not realised. We had been talking about Moot’s dreams regarding setting up a cafe/art centre church along with intentional communities, as a form of postmodern hub in the complexity of the modern world.

I can understand why he asked, as I have been dreaming about this since I was in my early twenties, and it still hasn’t been realised.

Some of what is driving me, is I am sure because of a seriously difficult time in my life when I was very ill and had an operation that went wrong when I was 19. At that time, I suddenly saw how short life was, and how vulnerable I was, and from that time I have tried to live as if everyday of my life is a blessing. From a young adult I have been passionate about Christianity, and that the Church has often presented and lived the Christian life in a way that either puts people off or in ways that are anachronistic. So I have hungered for opportunities of living a way that was honest to God and honest to now. I am immensely proud of Moot, in the sense that it is a small community with big dreams, and it is out of little things that transformative things can happen.

A saying by Mother Teresa has struck me as a core principle for Moot. That our calling is not to do great things, but to do small things with great love. I hope Moot can continue to live this way, in the complexity of the modern world, and therefore live up to its Rhythm of Life.

Now more than ever, Moot in its discernment phase, is exploring its future, in how it can build towards its shared dreams, so please do pray for us!

POSTED 08.10.07 BY: admin | No Comments

cafe church

New kids on the blog

I am pleased to see that the Sanctus 1 crew in Manchester have set up a community blog. They in Manchester, and B1in Birmingham and us in London and not to leave out COTAS in Seattle are all attempting to do fresh expressions of church in city centres. Intriguing all of them are also experimenting with the cafe church concept as well as what we are doing at the moment as alt worship/network church.

Some in Moot have wanted to experiment with doing cafe – and starting small, we are going to start doing tea and coffee for half an hour before services, alike what headpsace do so well…

POSTED 06.01.05 BY: admin | No Comments

MORE PRESS COVERAGE ON NEW FORMS OF CHURCH – CAFE CHURCH MODELS

I am pleased to say there was again coverage on new forms of church this weekend, this time in the Sunday Observer. Jonathan Bartley used material from moot and from my trips down under to talk about the legitimacy of cafe forms of church. Click here to see the article.

POSTED 02.02.04 BY: admin | No Comments

LOWDOWN ON SYDNEY AUSTRALIA

LOWDOWN ON SYDNEY AUSTRALIA

What can I see, its hot, its cultured and its where they filmed a lot of the matrix. The bridge in the centre of the city should be familiar to fans of the first film. Its where Trinity picks up Neo in the car in the rain. I could get even sadder, so I have left other matrix locations off the blog.

Café Culture

OK, confessions. In the two times I have been over to Sydney in 2003, I spent most of my time in three cafes, mostly because those cafes were excellent. The first is called is an a wonderful café and arts area called Glebe Its also close to Café Church (see Later about that). My favourite café is Well Connected. Its an excellent café, so good that we used some of the images for the moot website. Other good cafés include Satellite, originally set up by the same people as Well Connected. You will find Satellite Café round the back of New Town, near the 7-11 shop.

Arts & Performance

One thing I really like about Sydney is the amazing amount of things going on. There is an independent Radio Station, which a number of musicians I met were involved in. One of these guys is called Rick who produces his own dance music under the name Deep Child. Check out his music here or see the website for deepchild. To listen to the 2 Ser Radio Station Live click here or for the website click here.

Further into town are a number of performance venues. One of these called Club Acustica had a great acoustic cabaret on a week day night. I was pleased to see some one I know perform called Steve Bevis playing his stuff. He has a number of good albums, so check out the website.

Emerging Church & Spirituality

The best thing you could do while you are here, is to attend an event of Café Church, 37-47 St Johns Rd, Glebe, Sydney. It’s a great space, an ex-cinema with loads of chairs for lounging, chatting as well as thinking about spiritual things.Café Church is wonderful!! It does Sunday services, and off the wall explorations during the week. To give you a flavour, see the Windows Media Player Movie below. It is an evening service, where people have been given canvases to paint a picture to represent bits of a story about Jesus. These pictures are then lined up in front of everyone. Then each by one, the narrator reads a bit of the story, and then a jazz sax player and organist/keyboard player improvises to the story and picture, which is illuminated in the dark. Apologies for the darkness of the film, but it gives you a good idea of what went on.

cafechurchwor.WMV

Finally, I need to say a big thank you to Cathy & Andrew, who were involved in Café Church and have done talks with me at Greenbelt. They are an inspiration to be around, and I have now stayed in their house twice in the same year. So Thanks Andrew & Cathy. Here lounging in the Satellite Café.

POSTED 13.10.03 BY: admin | No Comments