Coffee, Ministry, and the Homeless

(Since the writing of this article, I have given up caffeinated beverages completely. It took about 3 months for my body to completely recover from the withdrawal symptoms that accompany a sudden lack in caffeine. My heart had begun to race and I was experiencing a small amount of anxiety due to multiple lattes a day. While I have been relatively caffeine free for almost 8 months now, I do still partake of the unleaded version of coffee regularly, courtesy of my local neighborhood coffeehouse.)

I really like my coffee. When the particular urge hits me, I will usually drive miles out of my way to get that “just right” cup of joe. I don’t really know why I enjoy it so much. Growing up, I understood coffee to be in the category of drinks that were for older adults only. Perhaps this opinion came about because my grandparents were the only people my childhood eyes ever saw drinking coffee in our house. Alas, over the years, my decaffeinated purity was infiltrated by the juice of the mean roasted bean. From the first cup that I can’t seem to remember, to the cup I had this morning, it has all been “good to the last drop”.

Despite the mundane, everyday role that coffee plays in many of our lives, there is more to this drip tradition than meets the eye. I like coffee because it seems to make us take a break from the rush of life. Even when we get it to go and drink it alone in our cars on the way to work, there is something innately slowing about the experience. Maybe I’m overlooking the possibility that we might be reacting to a caffeine addiction, but go with me here.

My favorite way to enjoy a cup of coffee is at a café with my wife or with a friend. This usually means conversation. Conversation usually means I get to share to some degree in the life of the person I am conversing with. To me, this is at the heart of ministry. If coffee existed in His day, I think that Jesus would’ve been a coffee drinker. I’m not saying that He needed an excuse to minister to someone. I’m only trying to draw the connection between ministry and involvement. If Jesus had not spoken to the woman at the well, would we have ever known about her? Would we have ever known Jesus even went to the well? I doubt it. But the everyday common water well turned into a mission field that day. Just like Jesus, we shouldn’t need an excuse to share in someone’s life; but it helps.

One day over a cup of coffee, I ran into a young girl named Erissa. She said she was traveling, but if the truth was told, she was homeless. She spoke (over coffee) about how she hadn’t seen her parents in too many years, and about how she hopped freight trains all the way from the Carolinas to get to where she was now. Where was she now? In a city she had never seen before with nowhere to live outside of the nearest highway overpass. All she owned was on her back, and she only had enough change for… you guessed it… a cup of coffee. As I drove her to the bus station that rainy afternoon, we talked about home and what it means to have a roof over your head. We talked about how so many people derive their worth from the size of their home, and how who you were really had nothing at all to do with what you had. I left her in the lobby of the bus station with a ticket, a handshake, and some inadequate words about how I hoped she would find her way home someday, but I couldn’t help thinking she was probably closer to home than a lot of us ever are. I found myself wondering if the hurt and confusion of life on the rocks alone would eventually open her eyes to the only home that would ever bring true worth and purpose. A home not in some posh neighborhood in some house that makes a farce out of the poverty of over 85% of the world’s population. No, like all of us, if she ever finds her home, it will be in the arms of Jesus. I can see her, broken on the wheels of living, falling into his embrace, home at last. Maybe someday, she’ll find a house to live in too!

(David Chatel is an anglican priest, worship leader, song writer, church planter, and wannabe mystic who lives in Mobile, Alabama. He and his wife Alison are parents to Ethan and Natalie and their dog/child Chica.)