Connecting over coffee in church is not new, but it has evolved considerably over the last few decades. In the late 20th century, churchgoers gathered in fellowship halls around gurgling percolator urns to sip grocery store coffee and swap family updates. As the country’s booming coffee industry has metamorphized since the turn of the century, so too has the emphasis placed on caffeinated beverages in the church.
Today, if you walk into a church in your hometown, you’ll likely find that they offer freshly brewed coffee at a minimum, or perhaps a complete menu of espresso beverages hand-crafted by volunteer baristas in carefully curated church cafés. Some megachurches such as Watermark Community Church in Dallas, Texas, even open their coffee shops to the public during the week.
Whether a small church plant is serving free brewed coffee or an established church is offering cappuccinos and smoothies, their mission is typically the same: to create an environment for people to connect in meaningful ways. Churches often view having a coffee service as an opportunity to make visitors feel welcome, too.
Over the years, the worship studio of Michael Graves Architecture has worked with hundreds of faith-based organizations including many churches that have creatively adopted serving coffee as part of their DNA. Three of them – Bay Area Community Church, Redemption Community Church and The Bayou Church – have each established unique ways to incorporate coffee into their gospel-focused mission.
Bay Area Community Church
Opened in 2006 and expanded in 2015 and 2019, Bay Area Community Church’s (BACC) main campus in Annapolis, Maryland, houses two distinct cafés – one in the main lobby that offers free hot coffee and handcrafted espresso beverages and smoothies for purchase, and a sleek and colorful café in their student ministry space designed explicitly for middle- and high-school aged kids to gather over food and drink. Both cafés include expansive seating areas and are operated primarily by volunteers.
BACC Annapolis Campus Pastor Brian Hopper noted that the initial desire behind including a café in the church’s design was to recreate a fellowship hall atmosphere in a modern context that could help facilitate conversations and relationships over coffee.
Beyond that, the cafés also create opportunities for church members to serve. “Hospitality is a spiritual gift, it’s one of the areas that we believe the Lord gifts people, which is the desire … to want to help someone feel welcomed, to feel served, to feel noticed, to feel loved,” Hopper said, “and in both of our (café) spaces we have built teams of folks who love serving and love using their gift of hospitality.”
He shared that roughly 20 people serve in the main café each Sunday, with a smaller team of volunteers in the student café. “It’s not just making coffee and wiping down counters, but it’s more than that to help really engage with people,” Hopper said.
Redemption Community Church
In Laurel, Maryland, Ragamuffins Coffee House is flipping the script on coffee in the church. Rather than serving coffee in a worship environment, Ragamuffins is a thoughtfully designed and curated café that is transformed to host a church service on Sundays. Jeremy Tuinstra and his wife Catie are managers of the café, as well as Redemption Community Church’s (RCC) pastor and assistant, respectively.
“I had been pastor for about 13 years of the church that owns the coffeehouse, and we decided to go a different direction, to sell off our own building, and to try to get down into the Main Street community and love and serve our neighbors from an up-close and personal position,” Tuinstra said of the decision to open Ragamuffins seven years ago.
Now, alongside his wife and among his many other responsibilities, he crafts high-quality, Instagram-worthy lattes during the week and exposits the word of God on Sundays. But, like churches that serve coffee on weekends, it always comes back to relationships at Ragamuffins as well.
“I think we learned that we’re worshipping God all week long, and the way we love and serve our neighbors all week long is part of the worship that we offer to Jesus with our lives, so there’s a lot of fruit through the coffeehouse through ongoing relationships,” Tuinstra said.
“The coffeehouse is a safe place for us to meet people that might otherwise not come to a church,” he explained, citing examples of customers from different faiths and backgrounds who feel welcome in a café environment and sometimes grow to feel comfortable asking him about his faith as well. Catie Tuinstra shared the story of an RCC couple who initially came to Ragamuffins for coffee, became curious about the church, and ultimately joined the congregation and were recently baptized.
The Bayou Church
After a hurricane destroyed their ministry center in 2020, The Bayou Church in Lafayette, Louisiana, expanded their facility to reach more people in the greater Acadiana region. They included a robust, modern café in their design that features wood accents contrasted by a dark blue-grey brick backdrop. The Bayou began welcoming people to their expanded campus in summer 2023.
Located in the church’s spacious lobby amidst a sea of sofas and tables, The Bayou Beanery offers regular attenders and visitors alike quality coffee and specialty espresso beverages alongside sweet treats. Volunteer Beanery Team Lead Stephanie Laughlin has been a part of The Bayou for 15 years, and she shared that the café is proud to partner with a coffee roaster and a cookie company based in Lafayette.
On Sundays, The Beanery is staffed by dozens of volunteers who brew coffee, craft lattes, process transactions, and cultivate relationships. Laughlin emphasized that amid the bustle of serving over 200 people across three services attended by roughly 2,000, the heartbeat of the café is connecting with people.
Beanery volunteers get to know not only their congregation’s coffee orders, but also their stories. In fact, Laughlin and a fellow team member have created a Beanery podcast focused on sharing the testimonies of church volunteers, missionaries and staff.
Across states, denominations and decades, coffee in the church has and continues to be a beverage that fuels meaningful connection, extends a welcoming handshake to visitors, and creates an opportunity for congregations to grow in Christlike hospitality.
Meredith Winter authored this article on behalf of Michael Graves Architecture – Worship Studio, www.michaelgraves.com.
