BY CHAD LONG
CHURCH PLANTER
Twelve years ago, Fairview Community Alliance Church was relaunched as Common Place Church with an uncommon twist—church in a coffee shop. Today Common Place Church has reached young families and college students alike in our small-town community in Lock Haven.
We grew and grew until we needed three services to accommodate our people. It was those very full coffee shop Sundays that the vision for church planting was birthed.
The process of praying, planning, and preparing took years to foster and grow, and then Covid-19 came along and completely derailed us. But God was still working in the background, preparing the way before us.
The coffee shop had ambiance, but it definitely had no extra space. So, after months of virtual services, God opened the door of our local movie theatre to accommodate His church during a pandemic. What we thought was a temporary venue quickly turned into a reawakened vision for church planting.
After many months of praying and casting vision, the decision was made to continue our church planting efforts by planting a second congregation back into the coffee shop. At the same time, we launched a church planting network called Common Places Church with a focus on starting churches where people already gather.
So on September 19, 2021, Common Place Avenue was reborn in the coffee shop, and Common Place Roxy located in the theater had sent out her first group of church planters.
The first Sunday was filled with great anticipation as our church plant team was setting up, making coffee, and putting out baked goods for our guests. At one point the team was praying over our community together and Tony, a well-known individual with special needs in our town, walked through the front door and shouted, “Yeah, the church is back!” and all of us broke out in surprise laughter.
The morning was filled with beautiful worship together, and we had the opportunity to meet two new young families and about a dozen new college students. We shared the Word of God and what it means to trust Jesus and shared a good meal where we all hung out and spent an hour or so getting to know each other.
We have a strong desire to reach the overlooked around us, the surrounding neighborhoods, and the student body of Lock Haven University. Please pray for strategic relationships in this endeavor and intentional discipleship in our pursuit. We ask for the Holy Spirit’s guiding and soft responsive hearts to follow Him faithfully and obediently in this mission Jesus has us on.
