This coming Sunday, August 2, a Marrickville café will become home to a new church plant, the fruit of months of conversations ministry worker Ross Ciano has been having in local coffee shops.
Regional funding for Mr Ciano's ministry has been guaranteed for at least two years, with a brief of directly connecting with Marrickville's 71,000 residents.
And this is clearly happening. In fact it is a local Muslim café owner who lets church meet on Sundays at 5.30pm for free " "as long as we buy coffee," Ross laughs. "This is the heart of Marrickville, people are comfortable with cafés but they don't walk into church buildings."
Since the ministry started early this year, Ross and Rachel Ciano and their core six-member group have met on Sundays for lunch, a mini church service and prayer before hitting the cafés.
"We intentionally go to different coffee shops on a Sunday because each one attracts a different type of person, " Mr Ciano says.
"We know the baristas, waiters and waitresses by name and we seek to sit next to people who are enjoying a cup of coffee or food and we prayerfully seek to start conversations with them."
Several chats have been had and The Essential Jesus handed out.
Of the 30 to 40 people Mr Ciano hopes to see at Sunday’s launch, themed ‘What would Jesus say to Marrickville?’, he expects half will be locals the team has met.
“There have been some who have had past experience with Christians, so that has made it a little easier…, but for some, just the fact that it’s in a coffee shop, they’ve expressed that that’s a great idea to have that, so they’ll be coming along,” he says.
Mr Ciano's dream is to develop a multi-ethnic leadership team which reflects the local community, and to outgrow the café.
"It's different to a traditional church plant… where you have 20 or 30 people from an existing church starting something in another area " this is starting from scratch, and at one level trying to contextualise the gospel where we're at, while contending for the truth."
Mr Ciano admits the number of Bible-believing Christians in this "desert" is "very low". "I think there are about 100 different nationalities… but we've got people there who are open to talk, which is great" and if it's like a desert, God can turn deserts into fertile places " he promises that in Isaiah a lot of the time, so that's what we're praying."".
While he helps with ministry at St Clement's, Marrickville, Mr Ciano will report directly to the regional leadership.
"We now see a model of independent church planters working beside the parishes but not under them," Bishop Tasker says.
PHOTO: Scott Webster
