RICE en:trust

CT Studd, a hero of mine, once said:

Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell

Last year, while watching stand-up comedy at a pub in Glebe, I couldn’t help noticing that stand-up venues would make a great venue for church. They are a comfortable and relaxed, have good facilities (food, drink and amenities) and are natural meeting places for people in our city. They are  setup so that all the chairs, couches, stools and tables face a small stage from which a person speaks for 30 minutes. Perfect!

At the same time as this began to dawn on me, I heard about Guy Mason who planted a churchJames Squire Brewhouse in Docklands, Melbourne. It surprises me that so few churches have used pubs as a venue for church planting. Well not really. A columnist in the Sydney Morning Herald wrote: in the

A paper prepared by the NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service for the 2003 NSW summit on alcohol abuse outlines the costs: alcohol played a role in 50 per cent of cases of domestic violence and sexual violence, 37 per cent of road injuries, 44 per cent of injuries resulting from fire, 47 per cent of assaults and 16 per cent of child abuse cases. It was a factor in more than one-third of homicides. More than 3600 people were dying each year from alcohol use and about 72,000 were hospitalised. The last time it was calculated at the end of the 1990s, alcohol misuse cost the community $7.5 billion a year.

Christian’s hate the abuse of Alcohol and the harm it inflicts on the innocent, so we reject pubs as a place to be used for by Jesus to build his church.

I am a fan, however, of the three-fold approach to engaging culture: reject what is evil, receive what is good, and redeem what is broken/lost. Though we lament and reject Alcohol abuse, we seek to redeem its use in moderation, receiving it as a good gift from God to his world. Hence, hold church in a pub may be a good way to begin to redeem something which is so often abused.

The last two Sunday nights I visited two pubs between the City and Bondi.

The first was The Light Brigade in Paddington. It  was almost empty at 9pm when we visited one Sunday night. The girl behind the bar said that its quite a slow season for pubs at the moment. She said their upstairs bistro is not open on a sunday night, but is able to be rented during the week. I told her my plans to plant a church in a function room at a pub and she said some pub owners would like it because pubs are fairly empty on a sunday night, and at present the season is fairly slow.

The second was The Local Taphouse in Darlinghurst. This pub surprised me, because despite what the bar lady said at The Light Brigade, this pub was packed on a Sunday night with Stand-Up Comedy downstairs, and a busy upstairs restaurant and bar. This pub defineately wins the points for the best range of Beers on tap, and for being very artistic birdcages hanging from the roof.

Over the next coming months I will be joining a group of young guys who are dreaming to creatively transform the City with the story of Jesus. Please join us or pray for us.

Because the tomb is empty.

Toby Neal

Note: Toby is a student at Moore College and also part of the group of 30 men who are part of the en:trust coaching group.  We would love for you to pray for him and his family as they prepare for the work of church planting.  Check out his blog at Middle Children Of History.

I spent the last 2 days in a church multiplication seminar with Ralph Moore.  Who’s Ralph Moore?

Ed Stetzer quotes him and holds him up as an model/example on church multiplication strategies in almost all of his books (Planting New Churches In A Postmodern Age, Planting Missional Churches, Breaking The Missional Code: Your Church Can Become A Missionary In Your Community, 11 Innovations In The Local Church: How Today’s Leaders Can Learn – btw if you’re serious about church planting, you should be reading every single one of Stetzer’s books!). Stetzer ranks this guy with Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll in speaking of church planting movement leaders. He says, ‘In the US I’ve been encouraged by leaders such as Neil Cole, Bob Roberts, Ralph Moore, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and Jimmy Seibert who emphasize multiplication of disciples, workers and churches rather than just growth. A growing band of leaders are seeing the church as a movement.’

This guy is a legend in church planting circles and the reason why you haven’t heard of him is because when we think church planting we think Acts 29, Redeemer or Sovereign Grace or New Frontiers.  The church planting world is much bigger and has been around much longer than you think. While I have great respect for what I would call younger church planting movements in the states and even in our country, time will tell whether they’ll produce church planting churches (i.e. churches that are able to multiply first and second generation church plants – church plants that actually go on to plant daughter and granddaughter churches).

Ralph is a much older man who has not just planted churches, but who planted his church Hope Chapel, California in 1971 with 12 people growing it to 3000 in membership.  Under his leadership Hope Chapel alone has gone on to multiply 29 first and second generation church plants (church plants that have planted daughter churches, and who’s daughter churches have planted granddaughter churches).  In 1983 he led their 30th church plant on the island of Oahu, Hawaii where he now continues as lead pastor of the 2500 member congregation. He’s not just a pastor who is big on discipleship and does it personally, but is also a church planter.  He currently also leads the Hope Chapel church planting movement which spans 700 churches in their network (4 of which have been planted in Australia and another starting in Manila).  In fact his book is on the recommended reading list on the A29 website – ‘Starting A New Church’, which is the book I recommend to guys thinking about church planting, and is one of the best practical books I’ve come across on church planting.

I’m even more excited that Ralph has been gracious enough to give of his time to spend a whole evening coaching and hanging out with 30 of our en:trust guys this coming Monday night.  This will be a tremendous opportunity to hear from and pick the mind of a guy who is passionate for the gospel, has a big heart for the lost and has been raising disciples and church planters for over 30 years.

Eugene Hor
RICE en:trust director