“House Blend reached out to me, and it was like family,” he said. “Instead of just saying, ‘I’ll be praying for you,’ … they took action and have supported my family. It’s been an experience that’s hard to describe.”

Josh Taylor, pastor of families with children at Westpoint Church in Winter Garden, Fla., founded House Blend four years ago with such a purpose in mind—connect with people “to see community happen,” and love and serve others.

“A cafe provides unique opportunities to hang out with people and do life together,” he said. “In the process disciples are made. Unfortunately, people often find a better sense of community in their local bar than they do in church culture.”

While its focus is evangelical, House Blend stays away from advertising itself as a Christian-based business, to draw people who may be hesitant of anything to do with a church. It desires to reach people where they are–primarily in the workforce—where, according to Josh, a large percentage of the population spends 40-80 hours a week.

House Blend “exist(s) to be God’s church in the marketplace,” and hopes to be an influence in the business world while demonstrating how to manage its finances. Of the cafe’s net profit, 100 percent goes back to the community, as team members (employees) as well as guests (customers) regularly unite to serve the local area.

“We try to get involved in things where we’re not just writing a check, but creating a relational connection,” Josh said.

These outreach events have included helping with home renovations, landscape projects and public school endeavors, as well as bringing meals to low-income, inner-city residents. House Blend offered a Thanksgiving meal, set up a shower trailer and had hairdressers give free haircuts to homeless individuals last November. Josh said they try to participate in a ministry event several times a year, if not once a month. Often it involves partnering with service organizations.

House Blend also hosts one of Westpoint’s SENT (small/community) groups every-other week that invites attendees to dream about how they can serve together. The group members jointly volunteer in the community on the weeks they don’t meet at the cafe.

Josh’s most valued aspect of managing House Blend involves helping people live in community in a way that honors God and sees individuals choose Jesus.

“My heart and passion has always been to see people who at one point didn’t have life, now have life. Any time we get to see somebody give their life to Christ, no question, that’s my favorite part.”

The cafe hires both believers and non-believers, an intention God has blessed.

“We’ve definitely seen fruit from that,” Josh said. “The first person we saw choose to follow Christ because of this ministry was one of our own team members.”

Maria Sorrentino said working at House Blend “rejuvenated (her) relationship with God.” Others impacted by the cafe include Gary Oakley, a member of the Westpoint SENT group that bi-weekly meets at House Blend. Gary has cerebral palsy, which has limited his mobility. The cafe community was there when his physical health took a nosedive for two years.

“We were able to walk with him on a deep level through that time, praying and picking up and taking him to the doctor,” Josh said. “He’s at a place where he’s come a long way physically.” Gary is planning on running in the New York marathon for his third time in November.

House Blend’s two-block distance from a hospital allows its staff to minister to people who are hurting emotionally when they come through its doors. Josh said he has received e-mails from individuals thanking the cafe community for praying with them. He sees these everyday situations as key chances to serve others and glorify God. To him and the House Blend family, evangelizing is more than fundraisers or food drives.

“We (people in church culture) do a lot of dreaming and scheming and planning of how to serve … the least of these,” Josh said. “What I’ve learned is, it’s much more important to just take the time to simply walk across the street and do life with somebody than to plan a big outing or mission trip. Just do life with people…. That’s so much more valuable in my opinion.”

Josh personally learned this life lesson through a homeless man who regularly visited the cafe for about a year. He would come in wearing the same clothes and toting a laptop, looking to use House Blend’s wifi. Josh said no one really got to know him very well, as he usually came in during the cafe’s busiest hours. Then one day the House Blend crew spotted a police car and ambulance through their windows. The man had been living in a homeless community across the street, and was murdered.

“Here we are, we’re supposed to be about serving the community, and we don’t even know about a homeless camp right across the street from us,” Josh said. “That was a big conviction for me on the importance of walking across the street and saying, ‘We love you, you matter.’

“It’s not about us who have, providing for those who have not, it’s about looking into the face of God, and allowing the Holy Spirit, once the relationship is made, to prompt our hearts with, ‘This is what you need to do, this is what you need to give.’”

Josh said House Blend is interested in franchising or partnering, and has had interest not only from locals, but also from people as far away as Italy and Brazil. However, he said many people don’t realize how much work must go into maintaining such an operation, and recommends those interested have a familiarity with the restaurant business before diving in. Josh has 16 years of restaurant experience, and has worked in jobs as basic as washing dishes to as involved as bar tending.

Yet Josh also said he and his staff are more than willing to help train individuals who wish to do a residency at House Blend in order to learn the ropes of running the cafe. To him, the effort is well worth it.

“I don’t know of a better way to connect with people and create community than around coffee and great food and a great mission.”

Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work with her husband in a few years.

“Right off we knew we wanted to take part in church planting and taking the Gospel to the nations,” said Johnny Grimes, a pastor and church planter. “There was no debate in it. We knew that is who we are.”

Branch Life in Birmingham, Ala., is a church plant that grew from a group of non-believers seeking truth. While serving on a local church staff, Grimes led a few men in a Bible study. When some of them became believers and hungered for a deeper knowledge of what it means to follow Christ, Grimes agreed to lead them in examining systematic theology.

Four years later this core group became a church of seven. Within four weeks they grew to about 25 people. Today, 1 1/2 years later, about 75 people–a mixture of punk and indie rockers, hipsters and an “older generation,” all ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s–meet in a two-story building in the heart of Birmingham’s business district. Even though their members make up a variety of demographics, Grimes said they’re on the same page–they have a passion for telling the world about Jesus.

Grimes said he’s always been fascinated with London. He learned more about its lostness while at an Upstream Collective conference hosted by a Branch Life sponsoring church, Hunter Street Baptist Church. Here Grimes started asking questions and taking steps toward international involvement.

“We didn’t know what to do or how to do it. We just started talking to people who maybe had an awareness of what was going on there.

“I think people get discouraged with missions, wondering, ‘How can you plant a church and already be passionate about going to the nations?’ We just started doing it,” Grimes said. “We want to do so much more than just give money. We want to give money–yes, that’s vitally important–but we want to give time, money and resources sacrificially.”

With these goals in mind Grimes and other church members prayed and felt God confirming their desire to be involved in London. They joined a Hunter Street group that had already been planning on visiting the city, and went on a vision trip. There they identified partnerships and existing needs, and ruled out a few ideas.

Focused on the London borough of Camden–the punk rock capital of the world, according to Grimes–Branch Life’s next trip this May will include bringing musicians to play in pubs and at King’s Cross Baptist Church with the goal of developing relationships.

Grimes said Branch Life members originally thought they would commit to a few years of missional involvement in London. Then they visited the city and knew that wouldn’t be enough.

“We realized three to five years wouldn’t knock a dent in it, and it would take years and years of prayer, resources and planning,” Grimes said.

Branch Life since has committed to focus 10-15 years of sharing the Gospel in the U.K. capital, but Grimes thinks their presence will extend beyond that.

“Probably as long as we’re alive we’ll have a partnership with London,” he said. “A lasting impact in cities like (this) requires lifetime commitment on behalf of churches like us. It takes people committing their lives to sharing the Gospel.”

Grimes has no regrets when reflecting on Branch Life’s evangelistic core.

“I don’t think churches have to get to a certain amount of people, programs or finances before they need to become passionate about the nations,” he said. “Whether (your church size is) 5, 50 or 1,000, you should be passionate about taking Gospel to the nations from the start.”

Grimes said with evangelism as a part of a church’s DNA, members and visitors know that’s what Branch Life is passionate about. Missions isn’t an idea that sneaks up on them.

“It’s strategic, and it’s good stewardship of what God’s entrusted to us.”

Written by Natalie Kaspar. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in Texas. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work in a few years.

“It’s not a trip, it’s a relationship,” Billy said. “Mission trips imply this is a trip for a certain time, but this is a blood brother-type relationship.”

LifeWay has been involved in reaching the lost in Bryansk since 2000 when Russian immigrants to the Seattle area requested help with a summer camp in their native country. After assisting the Russian believers two years in a row, the church agreed to take their work in Bryansk, which is located about 250 miles southwest of Moscow, to a new level.

LifeWay helped the local believers purchase old Soviet camp facilities that have since hosted multiple summer events focused on sharing Christ with Russian youth.

Billy said LifeWay’s long-term partnership with Bryansk believers can be seen as a triangle. One side involves helping existing churches develop a mindset of expanding the kingdom and partner with bodies of believers in the United States. A second side is developing new churches primarily geared toward reaching younger generations. An underlying or third side includes assisting with recurring summer camps and upcoming leadership development programs.

In addition to watching more than 5,000 students come through the summer camps over the past seven years, LifeWay has seen a new church planted that reaches Russian young adults. The average attendee at History Makers Church is 13-30 years old. Billy describes the group as “young people … reaching very, very disconnected young adults.”

“We believe … we’re going to see God use this (area) as a missionary sending place to the rest of Eastern Europe,” he said. “God is doing some real work in that direction.”

However, individuals in Russia aren’t alone in feeling the impact of this long-term relationship.

“We are trying to grow a partnership that … when you agree to this work overseas, you’re also agreeing to apply the same principles to your home church. The lost around the world aren’t more important than the lost across the street,” Billy said. “It’s not an either-or, focus internationally and not focus locally. It’s a both-and.”

Billy believes while each church needs to follow God’s leading in involvement, not being involved internationally is not an option.

“Churches so badly need to do stuff like this,” he said. “There’s an unlimited amount of places in the world where people can. It’s biblical. Ultimately you have to be responsive to what God leads you to do, (but) you have to connect.”

As far as how to be involved, Billy recommends churches join “something with a strategy. Stop the random mission experiences that become refrigerator magnet missions.”

Instead of sending teams to different locations each year, he suggests a church seeks where others are strategically involved in international partnerships and then takes a vision trip that allows a small team to get hands-on exposure. This can present opportunities for projects to develop and follow-up teams to return to the location.

Billy said while LifeWay is continually learning how to develop long-term international partnerships, he is interested in assisting other pastors and their churches–regardless of size–with connecting in specific ways with the work in Bryansk, and can help point to other needs in Russia. Two churches in the Seattle area currently are joining LifeWay in working in Bryansk, with a third considering a vision trip to the area. Two ministries also are involved in seeing the lost know Christ in this part of Russia.

Contact Billy to learn more about long-term international partnership opportunities in the Bryansk region.

Explore more opportunities for international vision trips by learning about Jet Set tours.

Written by Natalie Kaspar. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in Texas. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work in a few years.

People love a good story.

Think about it. What imagery (if any) comes to mind after hearing a sermon? Most likely it involves a compelling story that was told, either from the Scriptures or a present-day event portraying what the speaker was trying to teach.

It’s why people love to hear testimonies, why we enjoy getting lost in quality movies or books and why Jesus spoke in narratives. Ernest Goodman says whether you call it the “Sabido Method” or propaganda, stories are powerful influencers.

“In life’s soap opera, God’s story, we are the characters. He uses the story arcs of our lives to incite, inform, engage, and influence. Being missional is publicly living our story instead of insisting on skipping to the moral at the end,” he says.

As individuals look for guidance and leadership, they seek examples that create starting points from which to spring or goals to which they can aspire. According to Almost an M, “Presentation without demonstration is just conversation.”

Instead of simply talking about how Christ-followers and churches can live missionally, we want to share some examples of people who are. For the next few weeks we’ll be posting about pastors and lay people who are going through the ups and downs of daily life like the rest of humanity, but they’re doing so while focusing on telling the world about Jesus.

We’ll share stories of a church with a long-term partnership overseas, a church plant that is making missions a part of its foundation, a church’s advertisement beginnings that attracted a unique people group, and a woman’s postmodern mentality.

Know of a story worth sharing? Tell us how your church is thinking and acting like a missionary. We’d like to help communicate your example to a world hungry for stories.

The pastoral leadership of Stonecreek Church in Milton, Georgia, was troubled that missions involvement historically had been reserved for a church’s faithful core. They asked, “How do we engage a broader audience with opportunities for personal, global ministry?” This question led Stonecreek to begin a strategic partnership with Compassion International.

“Child sponsorship through Compassion International has been the perfect introduction to global ministry for the broader audience of regular attenders as well as our engaged ministry partners,” explains Ken Murphy, one of the church’s pastors. “We love our partnership with Compassion International because we are confident that behind every child sponsorship is a holistic development program supported through that child’s local evangelical church. For an investment of $38 per month, sponsors are introduced to personal ministry with their sponsored child through letter-writing correspondence, and opportunities to pray for their sponsor child’s family and learn about the cultural practices and challenges their sponsored child faces.

“Child sponsorship through Compassion empowers local international congregations to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name and minister to the child’s extended family and relationships within the community. It is an effective strategy to build the local church and minister to the poorest of the poor. Child sponsorship places the sponsor (and their family) at the center of this missional endeavor.”

Missions no longer is reserved for a select few, but is accessible and possible for anyone who attends Stonecreek through its partnership with Compassion International.

Murphy continues, “Our desire is to see the personal ministry of child sponsorship change the heart of the sponsor and awaken a desire to engage further in global ministry. Compassion provides consistent communication and better follow-up than we could ever do on our own.

“We are finding that engaging our people personally in the life of a specific child makes missions accessible and possible. It is our ‘front door’ to missions. It’s personal and transformational.”

Stonecreek Church is a 10-year-old congregation located in the sprawling suburbs of North Atlanta. Its mission is to lead people to pursue life in Jesus as their greatest passion. For more information, visit their Web site at www.stonecreekchurch.org. For more on how your church can partner with Compassion International, visit www.compassion.com or call (800) 336-7676 and request the Church Relations office.

Not a crowd.

I have been thinking about a partnership idea I believe will work. What if you were able to link together a:

• National church planter

• Sending or sponsoring church and its pastor

• Cross-cultural missionary

Think about it for a moment.

The national church planter could use the support, mentoring and coaching of a pastor and a partnering church. He could also benefit from working with a young congregation’s church planter who is willing to exchange ideas and grow together with a national church planter and his congregation on another continent.

The sending church (young or not) is able to directly link to the mission field and to a specific national church planter who understands the local context and, obviously, knows the language. Always a benefit. Not to say that a sending church needs to be language-ignorant. I think it’s possible for a church to learn the language of a target group and be ahead of the game when considering overseas partnerships.

But what would be the role of the cross-cultural missionary? Would he or she be the “crowd,” as the saying goes?

Not necessarily. I think this individual has a lot to offer in this equation. Often one of the missing elements of church plants worldwide is that of engaging globally from day one. I know this from experience. If I had one “do over” in my church-planting life in the States, it would be that very thing—to not wait to have our church plants become involved on an international scale.

The missionary can help the church planter and the sponsoring church in understanding how to engage in other cultures—to help both look beyond their local context. This can involve breaking down cultural barriers such as language, local customs and church traditions, among others.

The missionary can also help the other two parties look at missiological issues like reproducibility and creating dependence. While multiplication is crucial to both the church planter and sponsoring church in expanding the work in their respective fields, unhealthy dependence from a foreign supporter—especially in financial terms—can crush it.

Additionally, the missionary can help with missiological applications, such as mapping the target city or community, searching for a person of peace or learning about oikos/tribal evangelism.

If you have an interest in forming such a triad, please contact me through The Upstream Collective and we can try to initiate some conversations.

Written by Larry McCrary. Larry and his family have lived in Europe since 2001, and have been involved in church planting both in the United States and in Europe. Larry is co-founder of The Upstream Collective, and is passionate about seeing the church think and act as a missionary both in its community and internationally. Larry blogs and tweets as part of an effort to influence the conversation of missions.

Some may be able to relate to the young man’s experience in this classic funny language video, along with this example of frustrations in learning a language.

While my own communication experiences both in the United States and while living and working overseas haven’t left me red in the face on too many occasions, I repeatedly have wished I could speak another language fluently–or at least well–to effectively communicate the heart of a matter to someone.

For example, wanting to tell my “adopted” Czech grandmother, Babička (BAH-beech-kah), about why I decided to leave my friends and family in the United States to live in her city for a couple of years. Babička speaks Czech and Polish, and when I lived near her, admittedly I often relied on her granddaughter to translate. Babička and I have loved each other through actions when words were absent, but I still wish to talk to her in her own language, to tell her about this Jesus who loves her more than I ever can.

Granted, I’ve been able to use my native tongue as a tool in developing relationships and making connections in international settings (i.e., Babička’s granddaughter). Ed Stetzer shares of how one can share the Gospel through teaching English while developing relationships in international settings. I know of Americans who have relocated across oceans and helped establish effective ministries based on teaching English.

Thankfully, people of other nations are interested in learning my native language as their second, third or fourth. Larry McCrary, who has lived and worked in multiple European countries since 2001, notes, “56 percent of all Europeans can converse in two languages,” while “11 percent can converse in three.” Based on 2006 U.S. Census Bureau statistics on the English language, 80 percent of the U.S. population aged 5 years and older speaks only English at home. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any other statistics on multi-language speakers in America–please comment if you know of where such information exists.)

Granted, this doesn’t mean members of this 80 percent are incapable of conversing in other languages, as well. Yet living in the South where I can find Spanish billboards and nutritional facts on my groceries, I still don’t know many America-born citizens who can communicate (beyond the occasional mis-pronounced “Hola,” and “Gracias,”) in a language other than English.

Regardless of how well I may be able to teach English to people of other nations, sometimes I think the only thing I’m communicating is, “I’m a foreigner who is too lazy to learn your language.”

A man who identified himself as a believer living in Europe commented on McCrary’s blog, “I can’t tell you the dream it would be to have a group (on a mission trip) even TRY to learn the language…. Americans are generally seen here as nice people, but nice people who think really highly of themselves. That is deduced in large part by the lack of ATTEMPT to speak the language.”

According to this individual, learning the language is important before trying to engage another culture. Taking it a step further, McCrary suggests that instead of only a few people from a church learning some of the language before going on a mission trip, why not the whole church be the missionary that focuses on reaching a specific people group and learns its heart language cooperatively, with the goal of repeatedly visiting that location.

A whole church learn a language and be a missionary to a people group? Is this possible? Effective?

McCrary suggests setting up a learning center or computer lab in an extra room where the congregation meets, and utilizing online and local resources, as well as abilities within the body of believers (i.e. people who already know the target language and can tutor others). He also offers tips of key elements on which to focus when first learning a language, such as the alphabet, basic greetings and expressions of politeness, and suggests following the online news and progress of sports teams of your target location.

If this is something you might consider for your own body of believers, experts encourage you to start now. Almost an M notes Gladwell’s findings in Outliers that true mastery of any subject requires 10,000 hours, which is supposed to be achievable within 10 years.

Learning a language is a journey. Yes, moments of sheer humiliation certainly lie ahead as you learn. Start now. Be patient. It’s worth it.

I wonder if this would work. I have never tried it and I am sure someone has so I would be interested in how did it work?

Instead of you bringing your church to “do” a basketball camp or soccer camp that you could bring a group of people to “attend” a soccer camp in Europe? What if you were able to equip your participants to come and live life side by side with a European and be able to share your faith with them in some natural ways? Not to mention learn some pretty good soccer skills.

You see most of the time we want to go on a mission trip and and “Do” something so that someone can attend it and thus hear the gospel. What if we simply get involved in something that is already going on and find ways to tell our story in that way? To me this is the more natural way to share our faith. It is being the salt and light to a group of people.

From Larry McCrary, with permission

Want to try something different?

Each year we always have friends here in Europe who wants to send their students to the states to be immersed in English and the US culture. It is really a ready-made opportunity to be salt and light to young people from an unreached population. I have also had business people who have asked me if they knew of a family that they could live with for a month in order to learn English. If you cannot go on a trip why not try this way?

There are some really good inter-cultural exchange programs and organizations out there. We recommend Summer In the USA, a program that focuses on students from the Basque region of northern Spain. We do not always need to recreate something. Many programs, such as those found in local universities, even help offset the costs of hosting a student with a weekly stipend. Pray about whether the Lord might be leading you to a certain people or place. If you know of a worker in a particular place that you support or your church does why not start there? Do a google search on the topic and see what you find out. Then find a good match for your family.

Better yet, collaborate with other members of your church to make this a “reverse mission trip.” Prepare as through you were going on a trip to whatever place you feel led. Learn what you can about culture, history, language, and geography. Make contact with nationals, believers, missionaries, and expats living in that place. Ask for insights, ideas, and warnings. Then, instead of going on a trip, prepare your homes to host an exchange student.

You could work together to handle things like local transportation, excursions, and events. Be intentional. Share life. Teach. Learn. Love whoever God brings to you.

Many times, you’ll find that the relationships built through this sort of program turn into lifelong friendships. After the student returns to her home, follow through with emails, letters, and phone calls. You may be able to visit them in their home country someday.

We’ve seen lives transformed through the power of personal interactions like this. People have come to faith, and churches have been planted overseas as a result of this sort of intentional engagement.

Let us know how your experience goes!

Adapted from Larry McCrary, with permission

Every year, we invite church leaders to come with us on week- long trips. We arrange meetings with church planters, national beleivers, and nonbelievers. We talk about worldview, cultural translation of the gospel, and missions strategies might pave the way for a church planting movement.

Sure, we could do all of this back home in the U.S., but there’s something about walking the streets, sitting down to coffee, and interacting with people on their terms that allows you to really get a feel for the need and opportunity overseas. Church leaders can see first-hand how God might use their churches to engage the nations missionally.

The best part is the fun we have. Hanging out, taking theology, technology, and every other – ology we’re not qualified to discuss. We see the sights, visit the cathedrals, tour the ruins. We pray for the people.

These trips change you. They ruin your perspective and re-calibrate your opinions. Please follow along as we chronicle the trip. Feel free to comment, as questions, or express your jealousy. Please pray for us. That God would guide our steps and conversations, and that it would be His vision we gain here in Rome and Marseille.