Position

Missionary Café Leader

Ministry setting

Missional café, volunteer community, and emerging faith community

Team relationship

Serves collaboratively with the complementary Sweet Surrender pastoral leader and volunteers

Position Summary

The Café Leader will provide leadership for the daily operation and development of Sweet Surrender, ensuring that the café reflects the ministry’s values of hospitality, excellence, community, and Christlike service. The Café Leader will treat excellent operations and genuine hospitality as integral parts of the mission while working closely with the local and district leadership.
Café Sweet Surrender is a missional café in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro district, a place where people from many backgrounds can experience hospitality, belonging, meaningful conversation, and glimpses of God’s love. In Denmark’s highly secular and culturally diverse setting, the café offers a natural environment in which authentic relationships and spiritual exploration can develop over time.

Vision and Mission

Sweet Surrender explores what church can look like when Christian community grows naturally through hospitality, relationships, shared life, spiritual conversations, and service.
The long-term vision is for a new faith community and Church of the Nazarene congregation to emerge from the relationships and ministry surrounding the café—less traditional in form, while clearly rooted in the identity, mission, and Wesleyan-Holiness theology of the Church of the Nazarene.
The missionary team will work alongside existing volunteers, the local Church of the Nazarene, and Scandinavia District leadership to create environments where people with little or no connection to a traditional church can explore faith, encounter Christian community, and discover what it means to follow Jesus.

Ministry Background

Sweet Surrender was established in May 2013 by the Greve Church of the Nazarene. Inspired by similar café ministries in Poland, it was created as a nonprofit, volunteer-supported space where Christlike hospitality could be expressed in an urban Danish context. Over the years, it has become a place of welcome, relationship, service, and community.
The café’s international volunteer community is central to its ministry. Many volunteers are young, educated Europeans and internationals who live, study, or work in Copenhagen. They bring varied cultural and church backgrounds and create a distinctive environment for community and ministry. The role therefore includes intentional investment in volunteers through friendship, encouragement, shared meals, prayer, leadership development, and opportunities to explore or deepen faith.
Sweet Surrender operates within Denmark’s collaborative culture and values shared responsibility, mutual respect, hospitality, and teamwork. Its ministry seeks to embody Wesleyan-Holiness theology through an incarnational presence—meeting people where they are and allowing relationships to create opportunities for transformation. The vision remains to touch lives ‘one cup of coffee at a time.’

Primary Responsibilities

• Oversee the café’s day-to-day operations and ongoing development.
• Maintain high standards of coffee, food, customer service, cleanliness, and hospitality.
• Coordinate and schedule volunteer teams to ensure appropriate coverage.
• Recruit, onboard, train, encourage, and mentor volunteers.
• Develop the skills needed to work effectively in both kitchen and barista areas and train others in those skills.
• Manage inventory, supplies, purchasing, and other operational needs.
• Maintain appropriate financial records and ensure financial accountability and transparency.
• Foster a healthy team culture marked by shared responsibility, clear communication, grace, and mutual respect.
• Ensure compliance with relevant Danish café, health, safety, and legal requirements.
• Help plan community events and activities connected with the café.
• Support communication, social media, and promotion of the café and its activities.
• Align the café’s operational life with its broader missional purpose in close collaboration with the Church Planter/Pastoral Leader.
• Build authentic relationships with guests, volunteers, neighbors, and others connected with Sweet Surrender.
• Model servant leadership and Christlike hospitality in everyday interactions.

Shared Missional Responsibilities

The Café Leader will serve as part of one missionary team. While café leadership is the primary assignment, both leaders share responsibility for Sweet Surrender’s relational and missional life.

• Participate actively in the everyday life of Sweet Surrender and cultivate a culture of dignity, belonging, and genuine welcome.
• Invest relationally in the café’s international volunteer community and support volunteers’ practical and spiritual development.
• Listen to and learn from Danish culture and the local community.
• Create spaces for meaningful conversations about life, faith, and spirituality and develop activities that respond to the interests and needs of people connected with the café.
• Build relationships with people who would be unlikely to enter a traditional church and welcome honest questions and spiritual exploration.
• Develop and empower local and international leaders so the ministry does not depend solely on the missionary team.
• Participate in regular prayer, discernment, evaluation, and strategic planning.
• Maintain close relationships with the Church of the Nazarene locally and across the Scandinavia District.
• Contribute to the long-term sustainability of the café ministry and the emerging faith community.

Candidate Profile

• A growing personal relationship with Jesus Christ and clear alignment with the theology, mission, and values of the Church of the Nazarene.
• A sense of calling to cross-cultural mission and ministry in a highly secular European context.
• Cross-cultural sensitivity, humility, and willingness to integrate into Danish society.
• Strong relational and communication skills, including the ability to form genuine relationships across religious, cultural, and social differences.
• A collaborative leadership style and the ability to work effectively with volunteers and established leadership structures.
• Creativity and comfort with nontraditional expressions of ministry and church.
• Emotional and spiritual maturity, initiative, flexibility, and a servant-hearted posture.
• Availability for a flexible schedule, including some evenings and weekends.
• Proficiency in English and a commitment to learning Danish and engaging seriously with Danish culture.

Role-Specific Experience and Skills

• Experience in café, hospitality, restaurant, retail, business, or volunteer management is highly valuable.
• Strong organizational skills, financial responsibility, and close attention to detail.
• Ability to create and maintain an excellent, welcoming hospitality environment.
• A genuine interest in coffee and hospitality and a conviction that the café environment itself can serve as a platform for mission.
• Capacity to balance operational leadership with relational presence among guests and volunteers.

The Person We Are Looking For

We are looking for a missionary with a particular passion and gifting for coffee, hospitality, operations, volunteer leadership, and creating an excellent café environment. This person should recognize that ‘business’ and ‘ministry’ are not separate at Sweet Surrender: excellent coffee, healthy volunteer relationships, genuine welcome, and daily Christlike service all contribute to the same mission. The ideal candidate will be prepared to collaborate closely with the Church Planter/Pastoral Leader; applications from a missionary couple or two people with complementary callings are especially welcome.
Creating a place of belonging where relationships can grow, people can encounter Christ, and a new Christian community can take shape, one cup of coffee at a time.