As the worship band exits the stage on Sunday morning, the pastor steps up holding the usual sermon supplies: a leather-bound Bible, an iPad with notes, and a latte from the church coffee shop.
This was an ordinary scene at the hip church we used to attend in Houston, where a brown paper cup was the accessory of choice for the pastor and most congregants. We all lined up before the service to purchase our Monk’s Blend teas or vanilla lattes. “Worship is just better when I’m caffeinated,” I often heard people say.
The Starbucks pumpkin spice latte has its own Twitter account, where it is pictured wearing sunglasses and reading a book in a leafy autumn scene. If the personification of this favorite seasonal beverage isn’t a signpost of a coffee-fascinated culture, I’m not sure what is. Following the continued growth of Starbucks and independent shops over the past few decades, Christians — for good or ill—have likewise become enamored with coffee. All manner of congregations, from suburban megachurches to trendy young church plants to mainline churches, have established coffee ministries, built cafes into their facilities, or opened independent shops.
A recent report by Louisville Public Media’s Gabe Bullard shows how Christians have actually shaped the popular coffee culture in the trendy, midsized city (also home to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary). What this coverage shows is not cultural bifurcation, or the Christian tendency to mimic pop culture, but innovation and community building, one cup of coffee at a time. Christian baristas and coffee shop owners introduced pioneering practices that carried the city’s coffee scene along.
Public perception, as Bullard points out, often assumes that Christian involvement in cultural trends like coffee must be veiled proselytism. This has left many customers asking, “Why do Christians care about simply serving good coffee, if not as an opportunity to evangelize?” My husband has been working in specialty coffee shops since his teens, and the Chicago location he now manages is our second home. Watching him and other Christian friends work their way quietly through the coffee scene, I’ve observed the theology behind their work, and I’ve seen how coffee can be a uniquely-suited vocation for Christians to live out the image of God.
A Third Place
Historically and globally, people have come together around food or beverage—dinner tables or restaurants, living rooms or bars. The coffee shop occupies a unique place in 21st-century America, what the article (borrowing from sociologist Ray Oldenburg) calls “a third place, ‘between work and home,’ where people gather.”
The craft coffee revolution—driven by Starbucks and independent shops—may have had ideal timing, blossoming in an American culture where food is optimized to be convenient, cheap, and quick and drinking maintains a degree of its prohibition stigma.
This third place creates an opportunity for the essential Christian act of communing. It gives baristas and customers a place to gather over a physical experience like latte or a carefully-crafted pourover. The joke at my dry Christian college was that young evangelicals clung to coffee as the church-sanctioned stimulant. There may be something to the fact that Christians can gather around coffee without offending anyone’s convictions about alcohol or imposing on individuals in recovery.
For my husband, who—like a few of his colleagues—holds a theology degree, hospitality is a Christian discipline. It’s a command and practice throughout Scripture, it’s a tool Jesus used and a ministry he received. As coffee shop employees create hospitable spaces, they live out part of their calling as image bearers.
Cultivating Creation
When I sip a single-origin espresso from a farm in Kenya, I taste cherry, honey, and dark chocolate. I know the baristas arrive an hour before opening to sample the coffee and optimize the specs: temperature, extraction time, and dosage. I know that the roasters took time to profile this year’s crop, sample roasting, “cupping” (tasting), and tweaking. This artful approach to roasting and brewing brings out the unique flavors of the coffee; preserves and enhances the quality (for which the farmer labored) for the consumer; and glorifies God in his creativity.
Just as we’re called to work and work hard, there is an artistic function of our stewardship to cultivate the creation God gave us. Citing Psalm 104, a barista in Louisville says, “God gave us wine for our enjoyment and our pleasure, it's certainly true for coffee as well…God put those flavors there for us to find and enjoy. It's part of our role as humans to cultivate the earth, take care of it."
In a video by CT’s This is Our City project, Richmond, Virginia coffee-shop owner David Blanchard responds to the idea that all work should be a means to evangelism: “I think there’s more power in Christians enjoying creation and enjoying it to its fullest…it’s us, as his creation, living the way we were supposed to live.”
Dignifying Persons
On the other end of the business, coffee farmers, like nearly all agricultural laborers, face a serious financial challenge to grow quality coffee and compete on a global scale while also providing a living for their families. Many Christians have adopted fair-trade sourcing as a justice issue, starting or supporting organizations that help coffee farmers achieve sustenance.
There are plenty of examples. Roswell, Georgia-based Land of A Thousand Hills is a Christian coffee roaster founded as “a simple and tangible opportunity to make a difference in the reconciliation of the Rwandan people” by partnering with farmers and paying them a living, sustainable wage. Second Chance Coffee Company in Wheaton, Illinois, focuses on opportunities to develop their employees. Owner Pete Leonard hires primarily ex-convicts, who often struggle to find good work after being charged or incarcerated.
My husband views his management responsibilities as opportunities to help grow virtues in people, Christian or not, as they engage in this stage of their career. Part of image bearing is dignifying persons, whom God created, loves, and wants to bring to wholeness.
Whether brewing, roasting, farming, or ministering, as Christians wield their vocations in creation, they live into and honor the imago dei. The Christian involvement in the coffee scene shows how we’re building the Kingdom on earth as it in heaven—with subtlety and excellence.
Andie Roeder Moody is a content marketing coordinator at Christianity Today and assistant editor of The Behemoth. Andie plays with words at Wayfarings and tweets silly things as @andiemoody.
