Full of (coffee) beans

A small church coffeehouse in Vinton is doing its best to bring the community together with a place to hang out.

Source       http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/207693

By Tonia Moxley
981-3234

JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Jim Bown talks with a patron at Vinton’s only coffeehouse, Sacred Grounds — a mission effort hosted by Thrasher Memorial United Methodist Church and staffed with about 18 volunteers. Organizers say the effort is nothing more than getting people in the community to sit and chat.

VINTON — Green Mountain organic coffee. Biscotti. Free Wi-Fi.

The description may read like an upscale commercial coffee shop, but Sacred Grounds is more than Vinton’s only coffeehouse.

At its best, organizer Jim Bown hopes the nonprofit venture, located in a wing of Thrasher Memorial United Methodist Church, will bring the community together.

For those thinking the coffee is a bait-and-switch to boost church attendance, Bown says hold up a minute.

“If we could detach it from the church, and move it to the edge of the parking lot, we would,” he said.

There are no strings, religious or otherwise, attached at Sacred Grounds. There’s no preaching, no proselytizing — not even a profit motive. While donations are gratefully accepted, if you can’t afford $1 for a fresh-brewed cuppa, no problem.

“Just relax and enjoy,” Bown said.

Bown, 78, a retired Sears executive from Illinois, got the idea for Sacred Grounds from a Presbyterian church in Colorado Springs, Colo., where members serve coffee and made-to-order omelets, he said.

That combination of inexpensive food, free time and coffee “gets people together,” Bown said. “If you get together enough, you make really good friends.”

Bown said he envisions a place that welcomes teenagers after school, that brings church members together with the homeless, that exposes the community to the artwork of schoolchildren and Keen Mountain Correctional Center inmates.

To Bown, the coffeehouse ministry is more about opening up the church to the community than the other way around.

“The church has a lot of brick and mortar, and I think it keeps people out,” he said.

“We’re trying to make the church less imposing,” Thrasher Associate Pastor Don Baldwin said. “We’re trying to be a lighthouse, not a fortress.”

To bridge the divide between the church and the secular world, religious groups across the country are forming coffee outreach ministries.

A recent National Public Radio report profiled The Front Porch Cafe, a project of the Christian Reform Church in Ellsworth, Mich. When economic hard times closed that community’s restaurants and local gathering spots, the church opened a volunteer-staffed, nonprofit cafe. The cafe has become hugely popular among Ellsworth’s 500 residents and has even brought in outsiders, according to the report.

Locally, Christian discussion groups have advertised regular gatherings at Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea in downtown Roanoke and Coffee Depot in downtown Christiansburg.

Sacred Grounds started two years ago as a Sunday morning coffee stop for Thrasher church members going to and from services.

Since then, Bown and a group of about a dozen volunteers have turned a maze of old church classrooms into a beautiful open space graced with large windows that can accommodate up to 100 patrons.

They’ve filled the space with a plush sofa, tables and chairs and even private meeting rooms where civic groups sometimes hold events. Those same volunteers staff the coffeehouse six days a week.

Customers are welcome to brew a large selection of teas and Green Mountain organic coffees at three Keurig single-cup coffee makers. Biscotti and energy bars are also available.

It’s been a little slow to catch on with the general public, and church members stopping by before or after Sunday services still make up the bulk of customers. Still, the venture attracted about 40 nonchurch customers this spring and makes enough through the honor system to cover its costs, Bown said.

Later this month, the coffeehouse will hold an outdoor movie night and host a CD release party for the local band Humble Praise.

“It’s going to grow,” Bown said. “I’m real excited about it.”