Christ in our Coffee Shops

Today’s blog was guest written by Jewel Evans. To read the Christ in Culture blog from the beginning, click here.

The alarm goes off at 5 am; Monday morning has arrived, like clockwork. It’s time to get up and get the shop open. I keep the lights low, allowing myself a few quiet moments before the NOW BREWING sign flashes brightly in the early morning light. In a little while, my coworker, Alicia, will show up and we will begin our day, serving cups of coffee and tea to the downtown crowd as they make their way into work.

There are moments in the day, especially in the early hours, that provide her and I ample opportunity to talk and catch up about our weekend happenings. My coworker is a nursing student, lives in the historic part of town, and is generally a sweet and enjoyable young woman. As we sip coffee together, our routine of months and months of Monday mornings spent together, she asks me this question: “Do you go to church every Sunday?” It caught me off guard. It took me a minute to respond, recalling just what I told her a moment ago.

Well, yeah, I do, I responded.

 I didn’t realize, since it’s a normal part of my life, that sharing with her each Monday morning about my Sunday at church, would be the avenue for sharing the gospel with her.

Why, she asked.

I didn’t “do church” in front of Alicia, but the reality that my faith carried over into my conduct at the job, made an impact on her. I followed then (and still do) a lot of the advice certain Christian blogs tell you do: work hard, remember your Master, be honest, work above your set expectations, be above reproach, and so on. It’s possible to set a Christian and a non-Christian next to each other and have very similar results when it comes to accomplishing a task at hand. I could be put in the same category of “worker” as my other coworkers, but for Alicia the difference she saw in me came from what I did on the weekends.

My Monday mornings with Alicia began the way they always did, but one particular morning she let her curiosity ask me why, and it led to many opportunities to talk about the gospel with her, and to recognize that my witness to her was not only at our job, but outside it, in the way I talked about my life and days.

I’ve been in the coffee industry almost six years, and I’ve struggled at times with the thoughts that my job isn’t kingdom-minded, or that I’m somehow not honoring God in this field, since it’s not a Christian field. But the reality is that because I am a Christian, the job doesn’t matter; I work as a Christian purely based on God’s saving grace in my life. It’s not what I do that matters ultimately, it’s how I do it that matters, who I am doing it for, and it’s about being intentional in utilizing opportunities that God has given me to share the gospel when I can.

Today’s blog was written by Jewel Evans, a wife-barista-runner-writer in Louisville, KY.