Published August 17th, 2004

By: Ken Dean

www.churchbusiness.com

That is why over the past 30 years I have started bookstores and coffeehouses with names like “Pilgrim Place” and “The Phoenix” and been involved with helping people start dozens of community coffeehouses that have the spirit of this original coffeehouse vision that Mary and Gordon made real in their lives.

The Potter’s House is certainly not today what it could be as a good coffeehouse, though its bookstore certainly serves a wide audience with excellent books.  But the essential vision is a core ingredient in all the great coffeehouses I have been part of or visited… Coffeehouses that are authentic third places and that are catalysts for community and spiritual renewal… are coffeehouses that have mind heart and soul because their founders put their hearts minds and souls into them.

Here is the founding story of Potters House in the Cosby’s own words.

The idea first came to Mary and me after a disapointing out of town speaking engagement in a church which felt as though there was no life in it. We stopped for the night at a motel which had only one vacant room, which was above a tavern. The noise from below kept us awake most of the night. As we drove home the next morning and thought of the contrast between the camaraderie we had heard in the tavern and the somber mood in the church we had visited, the idea of a coffe house began to emerge–it could be a church in the marketplace which would say to the city:

We will serve you, we will be with you in the way in which you naturally gather: We will live a little chunk of our life where you can watch what is going on…see whether we know anything about the mercy of God, whether or not there is a quality of being here which is different from what you have found elsewhere.

From the back cover of this book.

Historian Sidney Mead has observed: “In America space has played the part that time has played in older cultures of the world.”  In Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, Jon Pahl examines this provocative statement in conversation with what he calls the “spatial character” of American theology.  He argues that places are always imaginatively constructed by the human beings who inhabit them.

Sometimes this spatial theology works to our benefit; other times it poses spiritual risks.  What happens when our banal “clothing of the sacred” violates our genuine needs for comfort and intimacy?”  Or when we remember that the fleeting pleasures of a shopping trip or  Disneyland escape are designed to fill someone else’s pocket rather than the spiritual emptiness in our own hearts?

This book is a very thought-provoking study of American culture and place.  A common phrase that is often used around architectural circles goes something like… “the places we make end up in turn making us”… There is a lot of truth in that, just as there is in “we are what we eat.”  To some degree in today’s society it might be said that we are what we buy (as consumers), we are what we eat (as consumers), we are what we inhabit in our places (first place – work, second place – home, third place-?), and we are what we do with our time (entertainment, amusement, unbounded titilation…or serious contemplation, study and service to some much more deeply meaningful, creative and purposeful end…)

Postmodern Wells
By Mark Batterson

A few years ago I had a Starbucks moment. I was studying for a sermon at a Starbucks on Capitol Hill, and I usually tune out the mood music, but one line of lyrics slipped through my reticular activating system. I’d never heard the song before and I didn’t know who the artist was. And maybe I just had too much caffeine in my system, but the juxtaposition of words struck me:

There’s a church on the periphery, Lady of our Epiphany.

And I had a thought as I sipped my vanilla latte: as long as the church stays on the periphery, our culture will never experience an epiphany.

Over the last few decades, the church has been pushed further and further onto the periphery of culture. Or in many instances, the church has simply retreated to the comfortable confines of its Christian subculture. So we are inside our churches looking out, but we really find ourselves on the outside of culture looking in.

I realize that I pastor one church in one small corner of the kingdom. And I don’t want to project my passions onto others. But if we are going to turn the spiritual tide in America, the church needs to stop retreating and start incarnating the gospel.

Now Meeting at a Theater Near You
A decade ago, I entered the church planting arena with the traditional mindset: meet in rented facilities until you can buy or build a church building. And then National Community Church started meeting in the movie theaters at Union Station, four blocks from the Capitol.

More than twenty-five million people pass through the Station every year making it the most visited destination in the nation’s capital. We have forty food court restaurants right outside our front entrance. We have large movie screens and comfortable theater seats. And not only do we have a bus stop, train stop, and parking garage. We have our own subway system that drops off right at our front door.

Every once in a while someone will ask me when we’re going to ‘get a church.’ The question is innocent enough and I’m sure it’s well-intentioned, but it does belie a common misconception. Let me clear it up: the church is not a building. You can’t go to church because you are the church! Besides that, why build a ‘church’ when you’ve got a Union Station?

It’s hard to imagine a more strategic spiritual beachhead than Union Station, and somewhere along the way I had a paradigm shift. Doing church in marketplace environments became part of our DNA. Our vision is to meet in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the DC area. And we have three movie theater locations, including our latest launch in the heart of Georgetown.

Coffee with a Cause
Along with our movie theater locations, National Community Church owns and operates the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. We opened the doors to Ebenezers Coffeehouse on National Coffee Day, March 15, 2006. And as of the close of books on 2007, we have served 103,681 cups of coffee. In 2007, Ebenezers was also named the #2 coffeehouse in the metro DC area by AOL CityGuide.

We opened Ebenezers because we wanted to create a marketplace or third place where the church and community could cross paths seven days a week. And God gave us an amazing location. Ebenezers is located five blocks from the U.S. Capitol, one block from Union Station, and kitty-corner to Station Place, the largest office building in Washington, DC. Our property also forms the Northwest corner of the Capitol Hill historic district.

Every day we serve hundreds of customers that live and work in our Capitol Hill neighborhood. And in the evening and on the weekend, our performance space doubles as a venue where we host everything from concerts to open-mike nights to Alpha. We also do Saturday night services in the space. And that Saturday night message is actually recorded in High-Def, downloaded to hard drives, and delivered to our movie theater locations on Sundays.

But here is an important point: we aren’t a church with a coffeehouse. Ebenezers is a coffeehouse where a church happens to meet on Saturday nights. It’s not that we’re a covert operation. We’re neither covert nor overt. We just are who we are. Ebenezers is a very organic outgrowth of our entrepreneurial church culture. And the pictures on the wall, the sleeves on the cup, and the information at the coffee bar certainly don’t hide the fact that Ebenezers is owned and operated by National Community Church. But we don’t flaunt that fact either. We just try to serve a great cup of coffee with a Christlike attitude.

So why would we build a coffeehouse instead of a church building? Especially when nobody on our staff had any coffeehouse experience or expertise before we started construction. The motivation is simple: Jesus didn’t just hang out at synagogues – he hung out at wells. Wells were more than just a place to draw water. Wells were natural gathering places in ancient culture.

Jesus didn’t expect people to come to him. He crossed ancient cultural boundaries and went to them. And that is what the incarnation is all about. So instead of building a traditional church building where people gather once a week, we built a post-modern well where people gather all day every day. And instead of water, we serve coffee – coffee with a cause.

Mark Batterson serves as lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC. Recognized as one of the most innovative churches in America, NCC is one church with three locations. Mark is the author of In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day (Multnomah, 2006) and Chase the Lion: Stepping Confidently Into the Unknown (LifeWay, 2007) Check-out his blog @ www.evotional.com. He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Lora, and their three children.
Printed from the Catalyst website (www.catalystspace.com).

The online version of this article can be found at

http://www.catalystspace.com/content/read/postmodern_wells/

Larry’s Notes:

Christine Pohl has written a book that should be required reading for any Christian thinking about the importance of hospitality. We live in an age where the Christian tradition of hospitality is often confused with so many other forms of “hospitality” practices… From common social niceties like dinner parties that return the favor as a form of reciprocity or the restaurant hotel industry which is called the “hospitality industry…”

I first heard Christine speak at a Lousville Theology conference before her book was in print. She was not at all well known at that time. In the past few years I have seen her showing up at various conferences as a speaker. I look forward to bringing her from Louisville to Cincinnati to “host her” in as hospitable a way as we can muster.

I think that after Ray Oldneburg’s book The Great Good Place this book would probably be my second recommendation for anyone wanting to explore the philosophy and spirituality of “place making” “soul friending” and “stranger care-tending”, especially in the historic Christian tradition.

Larry’s Notes:

This wonderful little book by Lucinda Mosher, published by Seabury Books (2005) is the first in a series of books on “Understanding America’s Religious Diversity”. The theme of “belonging” is the first topic in a series of six or more topics. What impressed me about this book was how wise it was and how accesible it was to an “average” reader. Here is what I have in mind as an example of what I am saying.

The Ninth Commandment prohibits us from “false witness” against our neighbor, and we will be hard pressed to bear truthful witness to the religion of our neighbors if we have little sense of what their religion is about. For Christians, the very life of God is “being with.” When we are commanded to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are commanded to “be with” our neighbors… How are we going to do that?….

We can be of better service- more loving, more respectful of dignity, more likely to establish justice and peace- ie we understand how our neighbor “establishes, maintains, and celebrates a meaningful world, which is what religion does.
The author explores the vocabulary of a dozen or so major faith traditions found across America as those words connect with ways of seeing life as belonging and being part of community. She also looks at how these religious tradtions approach handling stages and transitions.
I think this book is a wonderful way to “catch” some appreciation for how other cultures and faiths see the essential questions of life… Who and I? How do I belong? What mights I become in light of that…

Larry’s Notes:

The slow philosophy is often summed up in one word… “balance”. The Slow Movement is a conversation about quality of life and not just the quantity of life or the efficiency of going about “doing things…” The things that people talk about missing in life often are missed because no one “takes the time” to make room for them. I think this generation of young adults who are committed to thinking about the importance of community and friendships are also very committed to taking time out… to do more practices that make a difference in the quality of life.

I think the spiritual practices that require time fit right into the life practices that require time. Making time to share a special meal and conversation is a gift and we should with gratitude make more time for shared community meals. The cult of “fast food” must be countered with the cult-ure of “slow food”, and slow food can become “soul” food for building community.

1801 Mills and Habitat for Community are committed to building community around hospitality and ideas, and Slow Food and Soulfull Hospitality area ideas and practices that are at the core of our commitments.

From the overview.

Food and Faith is both an anthology of essays and a community building Study Guide similar to Earth Ministry’s previous book Simpler Living, Compassionate Life. This book is an invitation to come home to eat, to remember foods sacramentality, then everyone is invited- farmers, environmentalists,corporate executives, grocery store clerks, migrant workers, ecnonomists, theologians, artists, politicians, truck drivers, scientists and activists…

The authors hope is that “the book helps you discern ways you might embody love and compassion through your everyday food choices and see how choices can help create agricultural and economic systems that embody love.”