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Community outreach starts with coffee
Seatlle Coffee house fronts as a community center for the church that provides resources for children, the elderly, and artists, as well as the homeless community...
Between the residential neighborhood of Ballard, Wash. and the busy streets of downtown Seattle sits the Q Café. Inside, paintings from local Seattle artists hang from the dark colored walls and music plays loudly over the speakers. The barista brews a cup of fair-trade espresso as across the room college students, mothers and their children and others busy themselves and enjoy the atmosphere.
“People are curious about this café and why we are here and what we are doing,” said DeAnza Spaulding, the Q Café’s director.
By the looks of the café on weekdays, most would not picture a church congregation where the tables are, or a worship band on the stage Sunday mornings. But until recently the café became Quest church for three worship services every Sunday.
“It gives us an excellent opportunity to explain where our heart is in that we have no agenda,” DeAnza said. “We’re not here to convert people or to force anything on them. We just really want to engage people in their day-to-day lives, and what better way to do that than over a cup of coffee?”
Q Café and community center started as an idea of Quest, an urban and multiethnic church in Seattle, when the young church was looking for a place to settle down. At the time the church had been around for one year and had been renting spaces throughout Seattle to hold worship services. Their search led them to a warehouse owned by the former Interbay Covenant Church, who Quest has now merged with.
DeAnza said the idea came to the Quest pastors to not only convert the warehouse into a church, but into a café and community center that could engage with their neighbors seven days a week through a variety of ways.
When the café started it became a community center that provided resources for children, the elderly, and artists, as well as the homeless community.
The free Internet and computers are used for volunteers to teach classes for the elderly, equipping them to learn basic computer skills as well as web-design and website maintenance skills.
To support the local artist community in Seattle, the Q Café is transformed into a concert venue every Friday for local musicians trying to get their music out in the public. The café also features pieces from different photographers and artists each month and becomes a gallery for people to showcase their work. “We really wanted to give artists who are struggling a space to come and share their craft and to be encouraged by a community that wants to… give them a platform for their work,” DeAnza said.
When the café and community center first started it reserved drop-in times for people who are homeless, providing them with information about transitional housing, shelters and other resources available in the greater Seattle area.
The café also had a children’s center called Creative Kids Corner that provided different forms of arts and crafts for children to participate in twice a month that would teach them artistic forms of expression through arts and dance.
Over the last five years the Creative Kids Corner and the homeless outreach work done in the Q Café have matured and become regular ministries of Quest Church.
To further support the community the Q Café donates 10 percent of its monthly proceeds to other non-profit causes such as World Aid and Save Darfur. They even offer the café space to individuals and organizations to promote causes and raise awareness about national and international social justice issues.
“We try to elevate other people’s work because we know we’re not doing everything,” DeAnza said.
Through events at the Q Café DeAnza said she has seen God work in the community and the church as those who attend the events are examine the issues that are being presented.
“We really have to wrestle with what our responsibility is and question the stigmas we all have about such issues,” she said. “Our hope is that people in this process are leaning on God for his opening of their hearts and eyes and his revelations on such things.”
Church Information:
Quest Church
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