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The
Devil's Beverage
by
Seth
Worley
I'm
not certain if the following passage is true or not, but
the story is relevant so Ill tell it anyway.
In
Rome, the clergy appealed to Pope Clement VIII to have
coffee banned, calling it "the devil's
beverage." But when the pope tried it, he liked it
so much that he gave it his blessing. Soon the first
coffee houses opened in Europe.
I
wonder why the clergy got all bent out of shape over
this new beverage? Maybe it had nothing to do with the
temperature or the caffeine. Maybe it was the reputation
that it had, and the threat it held toward their
traditional lives. it was something, bold, radical,
fresh, new. As Christians, it is easy for us to fear
change. It is hard to be versatile in this ever-emerging
world. If you've ever walked into a coffee shop (if you
haven't I want to know how you get internet connection
in your cave), you've experienced community.
It
is an accepting atmosphere, an honest environment, a
creative niche. You most likely saw somebody's art
sporadically placed about the honestly-aged walls. You
probably saw people that are stereotypically categorized
as all owning a pair of black glasses, who were doing
anything from drawing in notebooks to reading philosophy
books to typing away on their iBooks. Maybe the
corporate consumer inside of you escaped and ordered a
grande non-fat no-whip white chocolate mocha (with an
extra shot), or perhaps your naturalism led you to a
house coffee (with two equals), or you could just be
there for the cool environment and a hot chocolate (be
careful not to spill it on your PC laptop). All sarcasm
aside, while you were there, you felt something
comforting, yet dangerous.
Something
peaceful, yet revolutionary.
Something
encouraging, yet honest.
What
you felt was community.
This
is hopefully what you feel when you walk into church,
whether you are in a large sanctuary, a renovated
warehouse, or somebody's living room, the air is filled
with gusts of creativity and dangerous exploration. You
are welcomed into community, regardless of your social,
political, or financial status. You're encouraged to
explore, experience, and express.
Unfortunately,
in the modern church, this is not always true. We seem
to be afraid of unscheduled, uncontrolled community.
This is the difference between a church and a
coffeehouse.
A
church building only seems to be able to provide
organized community, where you are invited into
fellowship within the confinements of a structured
environment, limited by time and topic.. By nature, the
church is a structured community. We know what time
things will happen and what room they will happen in. We
are encouraged to show up on time, experience what has
been planned for us, and experience it together. A
coffeehouse on the other hand provides a chaotic
community.
Chaotic
community has no schedule, no structure. People come and
go as they please, when they please. You have options
within the community. The sub-communities you find at a
church, and at a coffeehouse, are similar. You've got
the caffeine junkies who drink it by the gallon. They've
frothed their way through life, and you start to wonder
if they even have jobs. You've got the fans of the
beverage, who hold a special place in their hearts for
the beloved environment, but their busy schedules and
long list of priorities keep them from integrating a
coffee shop into their daybook. You've got the
socialites who show up for study breaks and post-movie
conversations, who have probably never really even read
the menu (because hot chocolate is easy enough to ask
for). And as in all stories, you've got the new kid who
drove by this place everyday and finally worked up the
guts to enter alone, and most likely doesn't know how to
pronounce frappucino. In high school, our group of
friends never really had a place to hang out, except
church. I had an office I had made for myself in a
storage room where we kept the editing machine. I threw
a rug and bean bags in there and we would hang out up
there the majority of our time. Nowadays, my newer group
of Nashville friends hang out at Starbucks. At college,
we hung out at common grounds, the campus coffee shop.
There's
a formula here. People crave chaotic community. They
crave a place to belong where their presence is
inspired. And with our culture, one of the best places
to receive this is in a coffee shop. If the church has
the desire to reach the unreached, it would need to feel
more like a coffeehouse than a church. Just a thought
______
Seth
Worley is 19 years old and currently lives in Nashville,
TN, working as a freelance videographer and filmmaker.
He sucks at writing. He blogs at awakeland.blogspot.com
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