What are we getting a surprise health inspection? I wonder as I try to stay focused on my conversation. This is odd. I glance over to Chris who is running the barista bar and he’s unconcerned. I figure he must know what’s going on, but I’m suspicious. 

My conversation ends, we part company and I go to up to Chris and ask, “What gives?” giving my head a jerk toward the woman who is now in the corner on a laptop. 

“Oh, she’s a professional Google reviewer who wandered in and is writing up a piece on our place,” he enthusiastically responds. 

Alright, I’ll bite. I figure I’d better go over and say hello and introduce myself, what with me being the pastor of the church that built the place after all. I admit that I do get a little guarded and protective of our space, sort of like the west highland white terrier we used to have. Woof!

I introduce myself to El who travels the U.S. and writes Google reviews for only two things, coffee shops and - drum roll – churches! Cymbal crash. That’s it. No other places. Not restaurants, hotels, shopping malls, or boutiques. Just coffee shops and churches, separately of course. She does this professionally and has been on the road for 15 years. 

I notice her T-Shirt has a saying on it about living in Faith and figure she must be a Christian. I’m smart like that. As we talk more, I discover that she is Jewish. She was born in Jerusalem but moved to Spain in her youth and her in own words, “Was raised a Gentile”. She calls herself a Hebrew though and openly admits that she is Messianic; meaning she believes in Jesus as the Son of God and savior of the world. She came to faith by being caught up to heaven when she was just a little girl and meeting him in a vision. I’ve been around enough and heard enough by now to not second guess what Jesus may or may not do to reveal himself to a person. But I’m hooked like a rainbow trout. I want to know more – wouldn’t you?

We stand and talk for quite a long time as she tells me her story. More of her story is for her to tell. But I discover that she also tutors and teaches people from all over the country who know nothing about the Bible, The Holy Spirit, or Jesus, but are desirous to know more. When she travels through various cities and towns, she meets up with them face to face. Of course, the obvious meeting place of choice is the local coffee shop. Since she met in so many of them, she started writing reviews. She was meeting people who could use a little more support on Sundays, so she started attending various churches and writing reviews of them too. She found us because Google sent her to the coffee house a block or two away and she didn’t like it. She strolled our little business district and wandered in. She fell in love. 

“The only negative in my review is that you aren’t open longer,” she tells me.

We talk a lot more about Jesus, the church and what she is observing in society. She speaks about the gap she sees between people who don’t attend church, but have a hunger to know more, and what the churches offer in terms of an entry level. 

“You’ve got it right,” she says with surprised relief like a person discovering water after a long hike. “I think you have found the perfect balance to be both a church and have the business work. This is easily inviting to people who wouldn’t start off going to church. Usually, I see huge churches that start selling coffee in their lobbies. That only takes the Christian people out of society and into their own closed group. But this! This is something very different.” She exclaims.

“When we started this eight years ago, I searched all over, looking for a church that was doing this.” I tell her. “I found big churches with coffee shops in their lobbies. Those are usually only open for church services and never the kind of place the general public would enter. I also found some churches that had totally separate buildings where they started a coffee shop. But I never found one that was a church as a coffee shop. So let me ask you, in all your travels across the U.S. have you seen anyone else doing this?”

“No” she says. “I’ve never seen this. This is totally unique”. But I think this is what is needed. The future of the church is already shifting. I think what you are doing here,” she stops and pauses, leaning in conspiratorially, “is the future” she concludes nodding her head like a gambler quietly giving you their best inside tip.

It is a gamble being on the front edge. The things we had to learn about tax codes and health permits, and banquet licenses and all manner of business savvy methods would fill a book. How we learned to blend those with a church would take up several chapters. The mistakes we have made along the way would fill several more. The only thing that made the gamble feel less risky is that we heard the Holy Spirit telling us to lead the way into this wild frontier of unsettled territory.

The culture is shifting in many parts of America. The study of revivals shows long periods of spiritual draught in a nation where the church is less dominant, and spiritual fruit is harder to come by. Old methods no longer work, and no one quite knows the new methods yet. People in small pockets of Jesus’ church explore new methods of ministry and immerses themselves in desperate prayer. That’s how John Wesley and George Whitfield began preaching in the open air, touring the country by horseback. The old church wouldn’t let them in, so they came up with a new method. We now call that time the Great Awakening. 

Across the church world I’m reading and hearing more about how we have all been through a national downturn spiritually. What seemed to be working wonderfully was put to the test during covid and we aren’t so sure of ourselves and our methods anymore. Even as I write this, I’m finding the old method of depending on a strong Sunday service to do the bulk of the work for ministry and church growth is in me. I knew we needed to try something new and so we built a different box to house or ministry. But I sometimes fear we haven’t gone far enough with what fills the box and how we train ourselves to use it. It isn’t easy being out on the frontier. But I rather enjoy the view.