Chaplain in a Tea Shop… one semester and many tea cups later…

The question of how to gain access to the community and neighborhood around one’s point of call, be it a parish or other, is a pressing question for many clergy. This is a report out on one possible methodology, ensconcing oneself in a café in the area in which you serve. 

Location, Location, Location…

The Scented Tea Leaf is a block from my office at the Christian
Campus Center. They have iced tea on tap, a wide variety of
hot teas, pastry, soups, and chicken pot pie.

Choosing the right location is paramount. It needs to be a place that you naturally want to hang out in, and can afford so to do. It needs to be a place that has regulars, people that spend a few hours in that location near daily (you will become one of those regulars). It needs to engage the demographic, and hopefully a few known individuals, that take part in your ministry.

Passive, Passive, Passive…

This is a ministry to which your structured goals must be few. If you go in with active intentions about how this will bring people into your ministry or have x number of meaningful pastoral conversations then you will fail. Your goal is simply to become a regular, part of the woodwork, but with intentionality and active observation of the community around you.

Collar, no Collar, Collar…

So this might be a big hurdle for some of us… but this is a ministry where blurring the lines between personal life and clerical life is essential. The regulars need to know you are a cleric of the church but also be able to relate to you as a regular member of the community. This means sitting in the space with a collar on and in street clothes. I strongly suggest getting stickers to cover the back of your laptop… an “Episcopal Church Welcomes You” and a “Pride Flag” sticker will go a long way.

Patience, Patience, Patience…

This is a looong process. It will only really start to show fruit after it has become such a habit that one almost forgets one started going to the café with any intentions towards it being a ministry. If you are not ready to put in a six-month commitment of ten to twenty hours a week spent in the café… then don’t start.

The Fruit, the Fruit, the Fruit…

So what have I found one receives from doing this after six months…

The majority of my administrative work, liturgical planning, and sermon prep happens at the café. The ten to twenty hours I spend here every week are not extra hours but my general work hours. This is pretty much what every other regular is doing in the space as well.

Walking around the neighborhood I constantly see people I know, and know something about them. When you spend this much time with a group of people having the brief one on one interactions and group conversations that occur in a café, everyone becomes known entities. When I walk around my neighborhood with members of my ministry and am able to say hello to people we meet it has a meaningful positive impact to the ministry participant.

I have had some amazing practical, theological, and pastoral conversations, and they occurred in that order. Conversations will start with the day to day. Then at some point conversations will move into the philosophical and theological. If you can show you have both a knowledge of theology/religion (its important to understand everything the “spiritual but not religious” are thinking and reading especially new paganism and eastern religions) and also a non-judging curiosity of the faith lives of others then one will start having pastoral conversations with the regulars.

From there one will get to the point where mutually interesting events might start coming together. Probably not Sunday Worship, but maybe a book discussion group or a interfaith forum… more probably a community event. It is all about building up the network of mutual interest and associations.

This network is the true fruit of being in the café. Basically one is growing the potential energy one has to make a kinetic impact. One is expanding the area in which meaningful events, which will allow your ministry to have an impact on the community, can happen.

So that is it, a six-month report out on basically moving my office to a local café and seeing what happens. So far there are no regrets and a lot of good coming out of it. A lot of it is little stuff, but it’s all the type of little stuff that builds up to great stuff.