Prepare Your Heart

As you can imagine, inviting your entire neighborhood over for coffee is a little bit of an undertaking. Don’t worry – I’ll walk you through each step and provide calendars, invitations, scripts, checklists, recipes, teaching tips and more.

But first, you must prepare your heart by receiving The Blessing. This is not something I can give you, there is no checklist or form to fill out to receive it. The Blessing comes from three places:

The Lord
Your husband
Your church

The Blessing of the Lord

Be diligent in praying for Divine direction about your Neighborhood Café. Ask for your heart to be prepared for ministry. Ask for a love for your neighbors. Ask for help mending broken picket fences and building new bridges between homes. Ask for front doors to be opened. Ask for doors to be closed if this is not the Lord’s timing or will for you.

Many women have told me they’ve been praying for their neighbors for years, and they’re excited that The Neighborhood Café will help them interact with women they’ve been praying for from afar. This is this often followed by, “I am going to pray about this….” I myself have said, “Let me pray about this,” when I really meant, “I need time to come up with more reasons why I refuse to do this but then I can blame God!”

If you have pre-prayed, you are pre-pared.

No one says this better than Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest (March 20):

The Delights of His Friendship. Genesis 18 brings out the delight of true friendship with God, as compared with simply feeling His presence occasionally in prayer. This friendship means being so intimately in touch with God that you never even need to ask Him to show you His will. It is evidence of a level of intimacy which confirms that you are nearing the final stage of your discipline in the life of faith. When you have a right-standing relationship with God, you have a life of freedom, liberty, and delight; you are God’s will. And all of your commonsense decisions are actually His will for you, unless you sense a feeling of restraint brought on by a check in your spirit. You are free to make decisions in the light of a perfect and delightful friendship with God, knowing that if your decisions are wrong He will lovingly produce that sense of restraint. Once he does, you must stop immediately.

Discern the difference between His restraint and your refusal. By all means, stop when He says stop. But if this is your charge, you must fulfill your ministry (2 Timothy 4:5)! The Lord blesses obedience with a crown of righteousness (2 Timothy 4:8).

I want to encourage you that the Lord’s blessing on your decision to start a Neighborhood Café may not come with a peaceful, tranquil, confident, “I’ve got this all figured out” feeling. I had no “peace” with my decision. This commitment means inviting disruption and loss of time and fear and inconvenience and rejection.

Don’t confuse blessing with peace.

My peace came from knowing I was being obedient to the Lord’s leading and that He was greater than all my fears.

The Blessing of Your Husband

If you are married, it is essential that you have your husband’s blessing to start a Neighborhood Café. As wives, our first ministry is to respect our husbands whether they are a man after God’s own heart, a callous unbeliever or ambivalent about the whole thing. You and your husband may be on the same spiritual page, or you may be unequally yoked. Your conversations may be straightforward or they may be strained. No matter what your marriage may be –

Your passion for women in your neighborhood
cannot exceed
your passion for your husband in your home.

Our reverence for God does not impress our husbands. Instead, they are “won over… when they observe the pure and modest way in which you conduct yourselves, together with your reverence for your husband…” (1 Peter 3:1-2 Amplified). A wife’s reverence, deference, honor, esteem, appreciation, adoration, admiration, praise and devotion for her husband is what wins his favor.

This is not a debate or a battle to be fought and won. However, it will help for you to understand your husband’s initial concerns about your Neighborhood Café, which will revolve around time:

Your time: he may wonder how much of your time this will take from him. How will this disrupt your family schedule? Will he be ignored? Will you be frazzled? Who will fix dinner?
His time: how much time will he be expected to contribute by cleaning the house, putting away his shoes, and repainting the living room before your first meeting?

He may also have concerns about the cost as you look at Bible study books and buy fancy food (and perhaps try to slip in a new sofa in the name of ministry – wink! wink!).

There is no ministry more important than your marriage.

The Blessing of Your Church

Although a Neighborhood Café takes place outside your church building, your church can be a powerful ally in prayer and partnership. A neighborhood Bible study is not a substitute or replacement for church, nor is it recruitment for a specific church. It is a complement to church. Your neighbors may already belong to wonderful churches of their own, and the fellowship at your Café can play a part in unifying the churches in your community.

As a woman who wants to lead other women to Christ, it is also important that you follow trusted spiritual authorities. Before you claim spiritual authority in the boundaries of your neighborhood, ask for your pastor’s advice and blessing (2 Cor. 10:13-14 NLT). Be prepared to explain your heart for neighborhood ministry as well as your plan. Share your ideas about Bible study materials. Be ready to humbly receive any reproof or recommendations your church leadership offers in love.

Look for women within your church who can mentor you and pray for you. Explain your vision and ask if they will minister to you like the faithful followers of Psalm 101:6 –

My eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me;
(S)he who walks in a blameless way is the one who will minister to me.

Ask women’s ministry leaders in your church to recommend Bible study materials or review materials you’ve selected. Your church may also have teaching materials on hand you can borrow. Ask if you may use their copy machine occasionally. Ask for the names of anyone from your church who lives near you so that you can invite them to attend your Neighborhood Café.

“Before you start, see your doctor!”

This warning seems silly on exercise equipment and diet plans, but it’s essential for a spiritual workout that may be more intense than anything you’ve ever attempted before. Ask your church if you can be accountable to them and if they will be your spiritual covering as you stretch into a new area of ministry. Remember, it is the patient who calls the doctor, not the other way around! You must take the responsibility and make the initiative to keep in touch with your church about your Neighborhood Café.

It is each church’s responsibility to prepare God’s people for works of service (Ephesians 4:12), and I pray that you will work together until your neighborhood reaches unity in the faith (Ephesians 4:13). When you are spiritually aligned under the authority of God, your husband and your church, your Neighborhood Café can properly function and the blessings of friendship, fellowship and faithfulness will flow!