The room is the ministry
We did not build a cafe to fund a church, and we did not open a church and add coffee. It is one thing. Somebody eating breakfast twelve feet from somebody praying is not a compromise, it is the design.
Bigfork, Montana
A house of prayer with a kitchen.
Not a cafe that plays worship music, and not a church that happens to sell coffee. One building, one purpose, two things going on in it at once from half five in the morning.
Why
There was nowhere to go at six in the morning.
Not in the Flathead in February. The churches were locked, the diner did not open until seven, and if you were awake at five because something had gone wrong in your life, the options were your kitchen table or the cab of your truck in a car park.
So we took a building on a creek, put a twenty foot window in the end wall, and unlocked it. The coffee came because people who are awake at five need coffee. The breakfast came because they had not eaten. The huckleberry pancakes came because if you are going to feed people you may as well be excellent at it.
The prayer was always going to be there. It just turned out that keeping fixed hours, out loud, three times a day, is what makes a room feel like it belongs to everyone rather than to whoever booked it.
What we hold to
Four things we will not trade
Hospitality before persuasion
Nobody gets handed a leaflet, cornered, or asked what they believe. If the coffee is good and the room is warm and somebody remembers your name, that is enough work for one morning.
The hours do not move
Six, noon and six, every day, whoever shows up. Two people is a gathering. It has run on mornings when it was minus eleven and one person came.
The food pays for the room
Prayer is free, the sanctuary is free, the help is free. Breakfast, coffee and evening rentals pay for all of it, which is why we care so much about the pancakes.