Working for a business that occasionally creates promotional materials for ministries, I have noticed how big coffee has become among churchgoers.
I've seen a local church here in Chattanooga that has a picture of a coffee mug next to a picture of a cross on its bulletin. We also received a cd-rom sample from Catalyst Ministries, and at the end of the pitch for their prayeramid scheme, a twentysomething gentleman exclaims, "And the coffee isn't bad either!"
What is up ?!!?
I also used to work with a few students from Lee College, who were coffee addicts. They even brought their own grinders to work. They attend the aforementioned local church, and often bring their mugs right down to the pew with them.
The whole "coffee culture" is something that eludes me. I don't drink coffee. If you want to spend $50-plus per week on the stuff, be my guest. But why has the church adopted coffee as a marketing tool? Is the air chilly in the buildings where these services are held? Is the preaching so boring that people need caffeine? Are these people constipated?
To me, it reeks of just one more thing that's used to "sell church."
Sometime ago, someone decided that salvation was no longer a good enough selling point.
Out in California, you know, that state you hate (Where I'm from), they have coffee theme churches. I saw one of them once on TBN. It was like "java juice your life" or "caffeinate your life" or something like that, and the pastor would sit up there with a cup of espresso. It was bizarre. There was also this massive banner behind the pastor with a coffee cup and that odd slogan...
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 24, 2003 09:56 AMI no longer hate California. Tennessee is pretty much the only state that drives me crazy...
Posted by: Bill Colrus at June 24, 2003 10:00 AMI more or less have chucked the state thing and gone for geographic regions, like, I can't handle the northeast. Everyone's got a chip on their shoulder. The South is beautiful, and the westcoast is the motherland.
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 24, 2003 10:42 AMI hate church fads. Mainly because my church only gets them about 20 years after everybody else. At least there's time to pick out the good parts, but in 2023 you're bound to see the church of Christ coffee craze..
Posted by: cmwillis at June 25, 2003 10:24 PMI was working for a Christian summer camp a few years back, and one of the counselors referred to coffee as "the Christian booze." I replied that where I was from, the Christian booze was booze. But I think there was some truth to her statement: coffee is an "OK" addiction in religious circles (unless you're an LDS). I wonder if the use of coffee in marketing is a subconscious way of suggesting faith as a crutch for life's struggles. That would be depressing.
Posted by: mesh at June 25, 2003 10:38 PM