South City Church/317 Coffee & Cafe

By Drew Cline, Pastor • South City Church/317 Coffee & Cafe

“The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand” (Psalm 37:23-24 NLT).

I love great stories. I was around eight years old when Star Wars came to the theater, and I was totally transfixed. I’ve loved movies of all kinds ever since as long as they had a great story: Did things come to completion? Was there a full-circle moment? Did the hero save the world?

I never dreamed that eight years ago, God would write a beautiful story around what He wanted to do in our church and my family’s life.

I had spent a lot of my life (18 years) as a Contemporary Christian Music artist and singer/songwriter/worship leader. I was the lead singer of veteran group NewSong and a solo artist. I had chased that dream until I had no more energy to run after it. That led to full-time church ministry in Creative Arts and Worship in Nashville, Tenn. I had always been the “front man” on a stage, so it wasn’t a huge stretch to begin to preach and lead pastorally. God had shown me on the road that my heart was made to shepherd, more than be a stage personality. After an 11-year tenure in Nashville, our family moved back to my hometown of Little Rock when I was called to serve at Fellowship Bible Church to help lead worship and develop all things creative (graphic design, leading the video team, building a studio or helping develop a songwriting culture). While at Fellowship, I sensed that the Lord would lead me to be a part of a church plant of some kind, so I simply focused my time on making disciples where I could.

I got a call to be a part of a youth group reunion at Temple Baptist Church in Little Rock (the church I grew up in). When I got there, I realized the church had fallen into hard times. There were 40 people left from nearly 1,000, and the campus looked like a ghost town. I began to pray for God to bring in someone to turn it around, but I never dreamed that the person God would use would be me. I began to pray that God would burden someone else’s heart about this, but after nearly a year, I couldn’t shake the conviction that God wanted to use me. I met with the pastor, Jerry Kidd (a wonderful former missionary I knew growing up) and, with my eyes fixed on my lunch, told him I thought maybe God was calling me to take his job. I sheepishly lifted my eyes to his, only to find him weeping. He told me he had been praying for God to send someone for that very reason, and in that pregnant moment, we both realized that God was up to something much bigger than either one of us. We both wept and laughed and praised God for what He was doing.

Fast forward eight years and Temple Baptist Church has transformed into South City Church. God gave us a creative vision to replant our church, emphasizing relationships, discipleship and mission. After a few years of ministry in a more “prevailing” model, we were hit with COVID and realized we needed to change our metric from “more people coming to a service, to making more disciples we’re sending out into the world on mission.” It meant everything needed to change. Our efforts had to focus on outcomes that resulted in discipleship, not just producing services.

We began with what the people would give us consistently — their attendance at a service. They would come into our sanctuary, and we started some experimentation. We put them around tables for discussions on discipleship. Later, we dispersed them across the campus to participate in small groups focused on discipleship. We then established a training session during our service time called EQUIP, based on what we are called to do in Ephesians 4, where we taught our people how to share the message of Jesus with their neighbors and to live out the B.L.E.S.S. rhythms for the sake of mission where they live — Begin with prayer (praying for your neighbors), Listen to them and build relationships, Eat with them, Serve them at their point of need, Story (share your testimony/story and the story of Jesus/the gospel.

Ultimately, that led us to cancel our congregational service twice a month and encourage our small groups to gather in different homes around our city. We were helping our leaders to become the relational and incarnational presence of Jesus. They enjoy fellowship over a meal together and share the responsibilities of facilitating a Discovery Bible study, communion, prayer, leading worship, discipling children and praying for one another. We looked to Acts 2 for our form and function and wanted to see God move in our groups like He did in the first-century church (Acts 5:42).

We went from 1 person preaching a message to 10 people facilitating studies through Scripture, from 1 worship team to 10 different people leading in worship in homes. People are growing in their own discipleship and leadership as God has been decentralizing our church.

That has led us to one of our biggest steps of faith. We sold our 25-acre property with 60,000-square-foot of buildings and bought the old P.F. Chang’s building located at 317 Shackelford Road in the heart of Little Rock. We’ve renovated it over the last 13 months, and it now serves as our ministry hub for offices and services. Previously, we used our building for a few hours on a Sunday, but now we’re using it seven days a week. In this space, we started a for-profit business called 317 Coffee and Café. It operates six days a week, helping our church to be mortgage-neutral.

317 Coffee and Café has been open a little over a month offering coffee, espresso drinks and pastries, and the kitchen will open Wednesday, Jan. 8 offering a full breakfast service. We plan to open next week with our full Breakfast and Lunch menu options.

We also rent our space for different gatherings from 10 people to 240. Our lounge and conference room can be rented separately or together, providing presentations on big-screen TVs in both rooms, couches and a kitchenette. This space works great for business meetings, creative retreats, Bible studies or other gatherings. If you would like more information about the space available for rent, contact us at rentals@317.coffee.

We also partner with many compassion partners locally and globally to give a portion of profits from 317 Coffee and Café to their efforts in Homelessness, Trafficking, Drug and Alcohol Recovery, and Adoption.

Our vision is to develop 317 as a brand and launch several locations all over our state. This could foster discipleship relationships that could become house church networks being planted, all while remaining mortgage-neutral.

God is still writing an incredible story around us, and He is the Hero who has helped sustain our church and give us a vision for the future of making disciples in a new/old way.

— This article has been adapted from an article first published by Exponential at exponential.org/south-city-2-0-317-coffee-cafe.