Our coffee house ministry has not worked out quite as we expected. We expected to work in a coffee house, much like Team Clay is doing this month in Croatia. Instead, we found that the coffee house connected to the YWAM in Budapest is still under construction. Meanwhile, they are open (in a different location) every Friday evening, and a bunch of people, including English teachers and their Hungarian students, come to hang out and make new friends.
Justin (the director of the YWAM coffee house) is very serious about good coffee, so volunteer employees must go through a series of training courses to use the machines. We didn’t qualify, so our job is to clean up, chat with people, or pray in another room.
During the week, we paint the future coffee house, blessing it with each stroke of the brush. There are big plans for the new space – library, live music performances, etc – so I’ll have to come back next year and see how it is going…My teammate Laura is constructing her own coffee house experience. She chose a coffee house in our neighborhood, and she goes there everyday to build relationships with the baristas. They have had many good conversations already.
Even though it has not been quite what we expected, we are big fans of coffee house ministry in its various forms, mostly because it’s something that we (you, too!) could very easily do at “home.”
