It’s no secret that there’s something about a cup of good coffee that helps people connect — whether on Sunday morning at church, around a neighbor’s kitchen table or over a mocha latte at the nearest Seattle-based coffee emporium.
A new church in downtown Salt Lake City has taken the concept one step further. Realizing relational-based ministry can’t be confined to a traditional church schedule, the fledgling Summit Church set up the full-service Main Street Coffee House offering varieties of fresh coffee drinks as an avenue for touching lives throughout the week.
The church and the business are technically separate nonprofit arms of the umbrella Summit Ministries, but the idea is to lower some of the barriers that often keep non-Christians from finding their way into church.
“I thought, ‘What is the kind of place in our day and age where people like to hang out and can sort of build relationships, or sit and stay for a while — where people feel comfortable getting to know each other?’” said Clint Roberts, pastor of the new church and a Southern Baptist North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionary.
“It’s all about atmosphere, and the coffeehouse is that — especially for Generation X people. That’s where they hang out.”
The ministry has become a central component of Global Outreach 2002, an attempt to reach fans of the Feb. 8–24 Winter Olympics. It serves not only as a home base for volunteers sharing Christ on city streets but also as an attraction for crowds with great coffee drinks, entertainment and big-screen television coverage of the Winter Games.
Summit actually grew out of a Bible study for students at the University of Utah called the Salt Company, started by Roberts a few years ago. The group was meeting on Sunday evenings on university property, but Roberts knew an actual church would need something more stable.
“Most of the city of Salt Lake is the suburbs down to the south, so nobody plants churches around here,” Roberts said. “And we thought, ‘How can we plant a church to reach people here? And the vision we had was for a coffeehouse, where the church could meet and the coffeehouse would be open all the time.”
Roberts soon found a building that had great possibilities about a block and a half south of Temple Square in the heart of the business district. But it needed a lot of work.
That’s when Roberts learned of Chauncey Webb, a young man from his home church, First Southern Baptist of Del City, Okla. Webb was not only an accomplished remodeler with a heart for ministry, but he also had a dream of operating a coffeehouse. He took on the project and recently became a NAMB short-term missionary. He joined Roberts on the church planting team serving as manager of the coffee shop and associate minister for the church.
With Webb’s expertise, combined with volunteer labor from the students and members from partner churches, the dilapidated building was transformed into a first-class coffeehouse. Along with the customary tables out front, there’s also a large room with sofas in back to encourage guests to stay and chat. The church meets for worship and Bible study upstairs in a room that doubles as a small concert venue, complete with a picture window overlooking the street.
Employees of the shop are members or friends of the church, and in the first month they worked as volunteers. Some are expected to continue.
Roberts noted a deliberate decision was made early on about exactly where the line would be drawn in operating a Christian business as a ministry.
There was no shortage of creative suggestions for the name, such as “Holy Grounds,” “Solid Grounds” and the equally inspired “Jubilatte.”
But Roberts said too much identification with Christians would only serve to keep away the people they are trying to reach.
“We had to kind of think this thing through from the beginning,” he said.
“When we say ‘Christian coffeehouse, are we going to have a big Jesus sign on the front door and someone with a big smile saying, ‘Welcome, Brother’ when they come in? And we decided that probably won’t do here,” he said. “We’re just creating a place that they like, and let their discovery of who we are as Christians not be from a sign they read but from actually talking with us.”
(BP)
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