My favorite coffee shop
miss going to my favorite coffee shop. It’s close to the Memphis Zoo and Rhodes College and is the apparent anchor to a very eclectic neighborhood. I bring my laptop to research and write but mostly I watch people. This helps me decompress. I hope it opens back up soon!
At the coffee shop I meet all kinds of people and enjoy their company very much. Most are college age to mid-thirty-somethings with a heavy scattering of seniors and business folks.
The ‘Illy’ coffee is some of the best served! This neighborhood coffee shop is a good example of people enjoying life, family, friends and folks living their life. I think good churches should be like good coffee shops.
Sitting in my coffee shop, I watch young parents interact with their young children – which brings back vivid memories of raising my children. I so desperately wanted to walk over and encourage the parents as they kept the pancakes from flying and wiping up the spilled milk. We all need encouragement.
Perhaps this is the very thing the writer of the letter of Hebrews had in mind when he penned, “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25).
I have concluded as a result of serving people in the business world, medical profession, academia and as a pastor – people need encouragement and someone to build their confidence while guiding them to find the purpose they were made by God to accomplish (Ephesians 2:10).
In all my endeavors, I have learned that people are chasing after acceptance, approval, fulfillment, forgiveness, friendship, familial bonds, to learn who they are, their purpose and to find a respite from the non-stop psychological, emotional and spiritual attacks our culture inflicts upon the individual and family. Too, people are looking for unconditional love and God.
After the pandemic of COVID-19 not much in our culture will return to normal. Many people will no longer attend church as they had before the pandemic.
Delivery of education has forever changed in that we realize we no longer need to go to a school for schooling. Telemedicine will be the new and highly successful medical service available; our government will be so deep in debt we will not be able to recover and many politicians will step in and seize control, power and constrict our freedoms.
Having pastored churches and no longer in an official pastoral office, (perhaps in the future) I now focus my efforts in a medical clinic that serves the same purpose as a church does – healing people. Many people do not attend a church, but in the clinic, I pray for some, visit a few and encourage many more.
In the future and without changing the message of Jesus Christ, churches will need to be more like a hospital, coffee shop, school, nursing home, counseling and rehab center all under one roof. COVID-19 has brought many changes to our culture and like many businesses that have changed their operations to stay open, so too will churches need to change to stay effective and current in the culture.
It is understood that people are fearful of COVID-19 and many other things in life. But the followers of Christ should not be fearful for as the apostle Paul wrote, “for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8). Whatever happens in our culture we are all in God’s hands.
We will survive COVID-19, being quarantined, social distancing and the constant negativity, but the farther we get away from “growing in the grace and knowledge” of Jesus we grow closer to our destruction.
Are you growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus? Are you helping people to be accepted, strengthened, encouraged and serving others? Or, are you a socially distant Christian?
– Clayton Adams has a message of faith he would like to share with the community. He would also like to hear from you. E-mail claytonp adamsiii@gmail.com.
Clayton Adams
