School is back! This is self evident, not only because I can now walk down the street without being gang tackled by young kids on skate boards, but by an even more interesting indicator. It is the crowd of anxious parents each morning and evening outside the school gates of the local Infants/Primary School each mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

On any calculation the bulk of these parents, if not all of them, are non-Christians. Friendly, caring, concerned and responsible they may be, but converted they are not.

So where does the coffee come in?

Recently I came across a church with the good fortune to be adjacent to a local school. During a mission at the church a group of parents decided to set up a small mobile stall inside the school grounds (with the school's permission) to serve good quality coffee and muffins to the parents. Guess what happened next?

1. Local church-attending Anglican Christian people met other local non-church-attending people who were not Christians and started talking to them.

2. Conversations turned to church and life and meaning and God and Jesus and the future.

3. Invitations were extended to local people to come and hear a good talk about Jesus and to learn, first hand, what the Bible was saying, as opposed to what people had been falsely led to believe it was saying.

4. After a long conversation one person actually came to the point of wanting to follow Jesus!

5. Oh, and Christians were actually linked to good quality coffee rather than the grey sawdust of the distant past.

Not every church can do this easily. If your church building and your local school are some distance from each other it will be difficult. However, before it gets dropped into the too-hard basket, think about what was happening.

Just like a very good fisherman, this church realised that there are certain areas where the "fish' will usually gather. In this case, every afternoon outside a school gate 15 minutes before the children rush out. Therefore, they set about creating an environment in which conversations could take place.

Some of the church members were fearful. They prayed, they prepared and they trusted. And the result was a small, but very significant, local evangelistic activity.

Is it possible that your local church could run a "coffee cart' or "Twinings Table' in conjunction with your local school? Tea drinkers can be pitied but they should never be ignored. Maybe not every week but the period leading up to Easter, or just prior to a special outreach event, or close to Mother's Day or Father's Day? With prayerfully prepared members from your church who knows what might eventuate?

Jim Ramsay is the CEO of Evangelism Ministries, the outreach arm of the Sydney Diocese. Click here to visit the Evangelism Ministries web site.