One World Cafe

We stayed with my sister-in-law and her family for a few days. They live in Springfield. (I was excited the first time I heard they lived there until I discovered that there is a Springfield in pretty much every state. No funny, yellow families to be found.)

My wife's sister, H, is a teacher and her husband, J, has various roles in Christian ministry. I was interested to talk with J one night while the two sisters were out. We have a lot of similar feelings about 'church' - what it is, what it perhaps is meant to be, what to do about it, etc. Unfortunately we weren't drinking coffee at the time so, as this blog centres around views of life over a cup of coffee, I'll have to wait for another opportunity to go down that road.

However, on another occasion, J showed me around a new coffeehouse that just opened a few weeks ago. It's being run as a project between a number of Christian ministries in the Springfield area and is called Un Mundo Cafe. The cafe is located in a rougher part of the city and is hoped to bring together people from that neighbourhood with people who are into the coffee "thing" and may be passing through. The cafe is proud to use Fairtrade and organic products.

They are still getting the hang of running a coffeehouse. The service is a little slow (but friendly) and you may find that your latte is not quite as hot as you'd like. Apparently the owner wants them served "the way they should be" - just warm enough so you can taste it. She sees it as an opportunity to educate people about coffee. Hmmmm? I'm not sure how much the public want to be educated in the finer points of coffee, but I will make an effort to do some research myself about how a latte should be served. (I'll check online and talk to a few baristas.)

Anyway, I respect what they are doing at Un Mundo. Coffee is such a huge part of contemporary culture, that it might be a good avenue to go down in an attempt to relate a living Christ with society. The vision of Un Mundo is, 'To share God's love to all; from the coffee grower to the coffee drinker and beyond.'

Now, what if Church could be a little like...