What We're Actually Serving

We roast coffee. That's the easy answer.

But if that's all we thought we were doing, we'd have picked an easier business.

Here's the truth: nobody remembers the coffee. Not really. Nobody drives home from church talking about the roast profile. What they remember is who they talked to while they were holding it. What they remember is that someone noticed them standing alone and brought them a cup without being asked. What they remember is the five minutes before service where they stopped being anonymous.

The coffee is just the reason people stand still long enough for that to happen.

Francis Chan says somewhere that we've made following Jesus so much more complicated than it is — that most of what changes people is astonishingly simple, almost embarrassingly so. A cup of coffee handed to a stranger might be one of the most theologically loaded things that happens in your building all week, and it costs about thirty cents.

So when we talk about "serving your church," we don't mean the transaction. We mean the thirty seconds a volunteer spends looking someone in the eye and asking how their week actually was.

We just make sure the coffee's good enough that nobody has an excuse to leave the table early.