Save Room for Church Coffee

Why I can't quit the mediocre brew served on Sundays

Photo by Matthew Poetker on Unsplash

Every Sunday morning, I save one cup of coffee for church, even though we have better coffee already brewed at home. I drink a cup at home but then save room for a styrofoam cup filled by an ancient-looking machine called an urn. If you think about it, the word “urn” is appropriate because somewhere in the process of turning Folgiers into liquid, there is a kind of death to the taste.

I’m not talking about the kind brewed and frothed by a believing barista in churches with a coffee shop, but the industrial-strength stuff served in most congregations around the country. And it all tastes the same. Trust me, I’ve been sipping it every week since middle school. It’s Baptists’ preferred kind of sipping

I save room for church coffee, not because it is crafted via a secret process of filtering Brazillian beans for flavor, but because it’s a tradition I just can’t quit. When I grab that mediocre beverage and lift it to my lips, I think of all the accumulated Sundays represented in that styrofoam.

I think of going to church early with my father while he attended choir practice or had an elder meeting, and I being first in line to get a premium donut. Otherwise, midway thru the first flannelgraph, the long johns would be long gone.

I think of Sunday school, where I learned the books of the Bible and competed in sword drills.

I think of mornings hearing the deacons talking about the weather and sports. I think of small groups where the single mother offered her desperate prayer requests. I think of my time as a senior pastor, praying, cup of coffee in hand, with the senior saints before Sunday school.

Over coffee, I’ve heard whispered cancer diagnoses and marriage struggles. I’ve heard pregnancy announcements and job promotions. I’ve heard gossip and grace, sometimes in the same breath.

The taste of that cheap hot liquid brings me back to the Sunday I got baptized, or the Sunday after I first learned my mother had severe dementia, or the Sunday after I lost a job. It brings me to the first sermon I ever preached, to the image of my father serving as an usher, to the Sunday after 9/11 when we knew the world would never be the same.

I’ve enjoyed church coffee in large metro churches and small rural congregations, in Southern cities and Northern suburbs, in urban church plants and mountain hollers. I’ve drank it—black, please—while my kids stirred in too much cream and while septuagenarian deacons explained the coming weather forecast. I’ve held that cup next to my KJV, my ESV, my CSB, my NIV. It’s spilled on church bulletins from Rhode Island to California, from Chicago to Texas.

This is why I can’t quit it. Believe it or not, the sight of a styrofoam cup of coffee in the hand of a saint is, for me, a small reminder of God’s faithfulness, from generation to generation, from people to people, and from community to community.

So this coming Sunday, I will not drink a second cup of coffee at home. I will not drive through at Starbucks. I will lean a flimsy cup underneath that giant stainless steel canister and take another.

As we approach Holy Week and Easter Sunday, you might find my book, The Characters of Easter, helpful.