Finding "Church" in Unexpected Places

“Bye! Love you!”

Where/how do you think I heard that spoken today? Let’s see if you can guess.

If you guessed C, you’re correct. I spent the afternoon at a coffee shop, writing. It’s one of the BIG ones that has been around forever. Think OG of coffee places.

The baristas had been bantering and generally having fun together for the last hour, and shortly after one young man came in for his shift, another employee removed her apron and gathered her things. On her way out the door, she called back to the team of six coworkers, “Bye! Love you!”

When was the last time you said that to your coworkers at the end of a shift? Me? Never. (I’m currently self-employed, so there’s that. But still. Never before, and I’m old enough that some of my classmates have retired.)

And now I’m sitting here, iced mocha in hand, thinking: I’m sitting in their church. When was the last time someone called out, “Love you!” as I walked away from mine?

Where do you find church? Not church as a building, a service, or a place you attend once a week, but church as belonging, a community. People sharing ordinary life, noticing one another, carrying each other through difficult days, and saying “I love you” without embarrassment.

The strange thing is that many of us show up at traditional church every week and still do not experience that. We sit beside the same people, sing the same songs, and leave without feeling known. Meanwhile, connection may find us in a coffee shop, an office, and among coworkers cleaning up at the end of a shift.

Maybe this is an invitation to pay attention. Sacred community does not always appear where we expect it. Sometimes we find it in institutions built for worship, and sometimes we find it in the repeated acts of care that turn an ordinary place into somewhere we belong.

Maybe it’s in places without the stained-glass windows too.

So as I sip the last dark chocolate residue from the bottom of my cup, I wonder if I’m asking the right question. Perhaps it isn’t “Where can I find community?” but also “How can I help create it wherever I am?”