What if your Church was really a Coffee Shop?

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“I’d like a Macchiato and a pimento cheese sandwich, please.”  These are not the first words you expect to hear from the average seeker of the Christian faith.  But then again, "these times are a-changin." 

“Where I was baptized, I didn’t feel accepted and yet I was looking for a way back into the church.  I was spiritual and yet yearning to also be religious,” says Kevin, an avid coffee drinker and a parishioner of The Abbey in Birmingham, Alabama.  Through a community a coffee drinkers, Kevin has found Episcopal liturgy, happiness, and has even joined an Education for Ministry (EFM) class offered through The Abbey.  He will spend the next four years studying Scripture, theology, church history, and probably drinking his fair share of lattes.

In the fall of 2012, the Rt. Rev. Kee Sloan sat down with the now Vicar of the Abbey, the Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers. His charge to her was to build a church without walls in the Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham. Katie had a dream, but she realized quickly the church has no real mechanism for dealing with new and innovative ideas.  She raised money, applied for grants, made presentations to churches, and pleaded with diocesan financial officers and her bishop.  The courage to sign a lease was one of the most challenging steps for a diocese to make. The church might have a lot of experience with liturgy but not a lot with commercial real-estate agents. Her vision was certainly nontraditional. 

The Abbey opened its doors on Valentines Day of 2015.  “I’d like a Macchiato and a pimento cheese sandwich, please.  Oh, and can you tell me about this thing called baptism.”  Since opening the doors, a group has gathered in the back of the shop to celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday afternoon.  There has even been an adult baptism, a confirmation, and 2 old men who decided to be received into The Episcopal Church from the Roman Catholic faith, all conversations that began with a coffee order.

Each Sunday, people gather around a table while others are ordering lattes and sandwiches. “We have been very self conscious about the noise we make as we pray and worship.  There is an uncomfortable tension that exists in our worship in a public space but maybe this is a good place to be,” says Katie.  Maybe this is not much different than the uncomfortable tension of being Christian in the world today that is experienced by many young adults.  “I have so much faith in the church that is changing.  We have had to stop inviting young adults, selling them on a bill of goods and figure out how to be church our young people believe we can be, to regain a sense of genuine honesty that we had lost,” shared the deacon of The Abbey, The Rev. Kelley Hudlow. There is a steady stream of new people who end up participating in the liturgy who would never have darkened the doors of a traditional church. 

 

The Rev. Katie Rengers takes coffee orders from a young customer.

The walls are covered with religious art.  Two large bloc prints are positioned over the altar in the back corner, one of Paul and one of Peter, both with cups of coffee.  Two bookcases are filled with religious reading from commentaries to books on ecology, justice, and liturgy.  On first glance, The Abbey appears to be your run-of-the-mill coffee shop, but once you look around, you realize you are standing in a playground for your faith formation:  books, liturgy, coffee, and a priest and deacon all at one’s disposal. 

The Abbey’s concept is not new.  In many ways, Katie’s vision is similar to the monastic movement of the early church. Many of the medieval monasteries created social enterprises to keeps the business fiscally afloat. Whether it was brewing beer, making wine, or growing food, monastic communities found ways of entering and participating in the local economy. 

Opening The Abbey has not come without risk. The total cost including a generous grant from The Episcopal Church was nearly $200,000.  The Abbey even raised almost $25,000 from crowdsourcing using an Indiegogo platform. Many view this risk to be a radical response to faith.  “I see God working in the signing of our lease. We have faith in God even if we step out of the realm of what is financially safe. It is a step that God has called us to take, even in a secure and financially steady diocese because we believe God is alive.  We believe God is calling us to preach the Gospel in radically new ways,” proclaims Katie. 

In six months, The Abbey is generating about 85% of the cost of running the space.  In a climate where more and more faith communities have to shut their doors due to fiscal constraints, there is much hope in models such as the Abbey.  This fall, the new congregation at the coffee shop is considering having a stewardship campaign.  However, because of the unique model of their community, none of the money given will pay for the building or the utilities. Instead, their proportional giving can be used to respond to the needs of the community at large.  

The Abbey introduces an interesting concept. A coffee shop is safe space for many.  The Abbey has hosted poetry readings, art shows, book signings, and a regular event called “Purple Hours” where anyone can come and have a cup of coffee with one of the Episcopal bishops of Alabama. The evening monastic service, Compline, is said on Wednesday nights. Young Adults from all over are finding a home at the Abbey.  One coffee drinking Christian, Margaret, has found the community to be a place where the voices of everyone are heard.  It has inspired her to return to church.

God takes what is ordinary and makes it extraordinary.  This is our Christian theology.  God takes bread and makes it holy food for a broken world. As a people of faith, we have thousands of buildings, many only open for a few hours on a Sunday morning. The Abbey has found a way of taking ordinary conversations and making them holy, of taking ordinary coffee and using it as a catalyst for transformation.  And the place is open 7 days a week, almost all day long.  “I’d like a Macchiato and a pimento cheese sandwich, please. Oh, and can we talk about scheduling a baptism?”

You can learn more about The Abbey at http://www.theabbeybham.com/