South City 2.0/317 Coffee & Cafe - Exponential

Project: South City 2.0/317 Coffee & Cafe
Leader: Drew Cline
Website: southcity.org

Purpose

South City Church is seeking to move believers entrenched in the status quo, prevailing model church to gathering rhythms that foster relational depth, authentic discipleship, and intentional mission by meeting on Sundays in homes (CityGroups/Micro Churches) twice a month, instead of on a campus, while continuing to gather for corporate worship on the other Sundays (on campus).

Project Categories

Innovative Approaches to Church Planting
Innovative Approaches to Disciple-Making
Innovative Approaches to Mobilization

Emerging Ministry Leaders Pioneering New Approaches to Church Planting for the Next Generation
Emerging Ministry Leaders Pioneering New Approaches to Disciple-Making for the Next Generation
Emerging Ministry Leaders Pioneering New Approaches to Mobilizing the Next Generation

Big Idea and Overview

Our desire is to help believers understand the identity of the Church, to be that of a “family of families” and live in rhythms that support large family gatherings, smaller CityGroup families and Triads of discipleship. These rhythms allow us to decentralize as an organization and support smaller intentional gatherings for life-on-life relationships and reach the lost through micro churches. We are supporting this vision and paradigm shift with the build out of our new ministry hub called 317. This, being our physical address, also embodies our mission of John 3:17. It will be a full-time coffee shop, café, and music venue, as well as a space for our church to gather on our large family Sundays. This model also allows our church to be mortgage-neutral.

Customer / Mission Field Context

We are reaching 2 main groups of people. The first being those who have been connected to the church in some form or fashion but are tired of the status quo. The second being someone who has never been connected to the church, at least in many positive experiences.

Goals and Desired Outcomes

(Discipleship) To see believers become authentic disciples who make disciples.
(Authentic Relationships) To help believers minimize the importance of the Sunday morning church service as their total church experience. But to see that the church is a family of families, more relational and missional.
(Equipping/Mission) We want to decentralize our church ministries/staff and operations by helping “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph. 4:12). We want to see ordinary men and women grow in their faith and giftings.

Results and
Impact

We have seen over 150 people saved and 45 baptized in 7 years.
We have nearly 100% of our church partnership involved in our CityGroups and often have more people engaged in our home gatherings than in our campus corporate gatherings.
Trained leaders for our bi-weekly home gatherings and discontinued our traditional service twice a month, moving our people towards more relational and missional life together in their neighborhoods.
Started a for-profit business called 317.

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