By Amy Galliford
“If it wasn’t for this café, I wouldn’t be here.”
These were the words Mission Capacity Manager Matt Johnston heard at the celebration of the third birthday of Coast Community Church’s Better Days Café, spoken by a regular customer who has now found himself in the church’s embrace after a time of tumult.
This testimony does not stand alone. The past three years have seen a deep renewal unfold in and through the ministries of Coast Community, with this same testimony of complete turnaround echoed over and over. One such turnaround occurred in the life of the recently appointed manager of the Better Days Cafe, Jade – a woman who barely recognises the new person she has become in the past three years.
“The café has given me my confidence back,” she says, with infectious enthusiasm. It’s no small statement for Jade. Five years ago, she couldn’t have imagined the freedom, peace and belonging she is so familiar with now, and she certainly couldn’t have fathomed the God who was pursuing her through her years of trauma.
“I’m a single mum. I’ve been through domestic violence and depression. Years ago, I had help from Christians Against Poverty, and at the time they gave me a Bible. When I went to throw it in the bin, I couldn’t. A few years later in 2021, I was laying in bed, and an audible voice told me to go and find it. I started reading, and a few days later I woke up bubbling over with joy.
“I wanted to talk to someone about Jesus, but I didn’t know anyone that knew about Jesus, so I rang a Christian book-shop and spoke to this lady for 40 minutes, and she told me that the joy I was feeling was the Holy Spirit. I said, ‘The Holy what!’
“I asked Christians Against Poverty for a church recommendation, and they got me in touch with Coast Community. I then found out Coast Community Care had helped me so many times through those years with Christmas hampers and those kinds of things. I had no idea they were the ones that had been helping me.”
Within two years, Jade’s life had turned around. “I was healed from the trauma, I had a roof over my head, I had my life on track.”
The last piece of the puzzle was finding work. After some months of getting her life in order, she turned up to church one day to find Kristyn Crossfield talking about Better Days, a café set up by Coast Community Care specifically to help people re-enter the workforce after suffering trauma.
Some of the team at Better Days.
Matt Johnston explains, “The café began with a gentle nudge from God. There was just this knowing that this place we had was meant for more and that a café would be a great way to host community as well provide training and opportunity for people who don’t usually get it.”
Within months, Jade had landed herself a job.
“I’ve never worked in a place like it. There’s magic in the building, and it’s all Jesus. Magical things happen in that place. You can feel the healing – everybody is accepted, nobody is judged. It’s given me my confidence back.”
Jade (second from the left) and some of the other team members at Better Days.
Jade is now the café manager, committed to being the person her past self would have needed for the dozens of individuals that enter every day. Before work, Jade gets into her “travelling prayer closet” – what she calls her car – and prays over the customers she will later encounter at the café.
“Nobody goes under the radar. Everyone is seen and acknowledged. I try to remember everyone’s names. I’ve got a customer who is 91 years old. She told me, ‘Jade, I’ve been going to a café five years and they don’t know my name… I came here for five weeks, and you call me by my name every time.’”
Given her own story, Jade keeps a special eye out for women resembling herself. “I have a special place in my heart for mums. You never know what battles people are facing. I remember what it was like, and I want to make sure nobody faces what I had to face alone.”
Fortunately for Jade, the café is never short of mothers and babies filling its seats. Around the same time as Better Days Café began, another member of Coast Community was looking to expand her business, NurtureMe, which centres around baby massage classes. The ultimate goal is to help build a village of support for local mums.
“The role mothers play is so important, and I don’t think the culture honours them anymore. Many of them feel like failures, and they are struggling in silence,” says NurtureMe founder Deb Sirone. A remedial massage therapist by trade, Deb’s vision has always been to create a space for mothers to find support, care and community. Coast Community’s focus on Kingdom mission and renewal meant they were quickly willing to support her enterprise with a space within the building.
“I wanted to build a space where mothers could come to the café and have what they needed, and I didn’t want it hidden away. Mothers are so isolated. I wanted them to be close to everyone else,” Deb explains.
A group of mums participating in one of the classes at NurtureMe.
As part of this vision, there are now resources in the church building for mothers, as well as a range of support groups for those facing similar challenges. For example, one group supports those parenting children with disabilities and another those mothering without the support of their own mothers. The real redemptive power of the business, though, comes when mothers place their baby in another woman’s hands and steal away to a quiet room to read, scroll or sleep.
“We hold these discussions, we bake them a cake, we take care of their babies, and they build their own little village.”
NurtureMe gives mums the chance to catch some sleep while their baby is taken of.
Contending for Renewal
Matt Johnston has been amazed at the testimonies flowing out of the church’s ministries over the past three years.
“That is why we do these things. That’s why we put the hard work in to contend for this community. We are not called to be separate. We have been so caught up in our own existence, and I can see some beautiful changes happening post-COVID. We are not here for ourselves; we are here for these people.”
He continues, “Mission is central to following Jesus. God is a sent God. Jesus came to us. He sent His Holy Spirit to us for us to be in community with Him, the living God. If God is a sent God, then we are a sent people. Jesus is very clear about that – ‘As the Father is sending me, so I am sending you.”
Matt recalls the COVID years as a circuit breaker for their regular church rhythms and a time of realignment in the church’s ‘sent’ identity.
“COVID shook our foundations. We couldn’t meet on Sundays, and we were forced to ask questions about who we really are if we can’t gather. We actually exist for others.”
Coming to terms with this identity took courage. Coast Community Senior Leader Renier van der Klashorst echoes Matt’s language, explaining, “We don’t exist for our own being. We are contending for the renewal of the Central Coast. That contending, that wrestle together, requires our vulnerability. We have seen that come to term. Our gatherings have seen forgiveness and reconciliation.”
A Coast Community gathering at the Tumbi Umbi campus.
It’s not difficult to draw a connection between Coast Community’s time of reckoning through COVID and the flourishing Kingdom ministries that soon followed. Renier reflects openly on repentance as the catalyst for the church’s current fruitfulness.
“What we are looking at is a renewal of our Kingdom identity. In Scripture, when people encounter Jesus afresh and they hold Him in high honour, they respond in repentance. That repentance isn’t just forgiveness of sins, but it’s also restoring of relationship. It always brings about renewal.”
It has been their own renewal as a church that has enabled their mission to contend for the renewal of the Central Coast and the people that inhabit it. Jade’s story reflects just this renewal. Her voice sparkles as she describes the healing, peace and deliverance she has discovered in the past three years.
“It was like a veil was lifted. I’m telling you… the grass was greener; the flowers were prettier. He started doing a work in me that was not humanly possible.”
Now, in her passionate dedication to the service of others in her work, her prayer is pure.
“Lord, let me be the light for your kingdom and your glory.”
This story is an example of one of the seven facets of the ethos of our network of churches: Sent With Kingdom Priorities. Coast Community Church, while only one example among many in our network, reminds us that God’s Spirit is drawing His people to champion this value for His Church today.
To learn more about the churches of Christ in NSW & ACT ethos, check out our Who We Are resources.
Read more stories from churches of Christ in NSW & ACT HERE
