iGod

Oh, for the love of coffee!

It is no secret, Vineyard churches loves their freshly brewed coffee before the start of their services. Socialising is a big thing for us. We know that by putting a cup of coffee into someone’s hands it helps them relax and feel welcomed. But recently my love for a cup of coffee went to another level.

One Saturday morning my wife and I visited the London Coffee Festival in Brick Lane, London. Surrounded by hipsters and foreign students we entered into the strange, mystical world of coffee. I discovered just how amazing is the humble coffee bean and what it goes through to end up in our cups. So here’s how it gets to us.

Coffee trees are only grown above a certain sea level and in tropical regions. They also only start bearing fruit after 4-5 years. Interestingly, much of the world's coffee is grown by small farmers on five to seven acres of land and is harvested by hand.

After the ‘coffee cherries’ are picked they are ‘depulped’, a process that tears off the outer layer of the coffee flesh, exposing the two coffee seeds inside.

This is followed by a period of fermentation, which can take anything from four hours to three days depending on the country, altitude and humidity. The coffee is then dried, taking a further three to five days or almost two weeks, depending on weather. Only when the coffee has been dried down to 12% moisture and a thin shell, called parchment, encapsulates each coffee bean, can it be put into coffee sacks and be exported.

When the coffee reaches our shores it is delivered to roasting companies. Roasters need to have a strong attention to detail, excellent sensory skills and sensory memory. The goal in coffee roasting is to enhance the qualities of the green coffee beans and to develop them to their fullest potential.

The last stage of the journey is, of course, the café. This is where trained baristas come into their own. The coffee has to be ground just right and brewed at just the right pressure. The milk needs to be steamed, but not too hot - otherwise it can make the coffee taste acidic or bitter. And then, only then, can you sit down to enjoy it. You can’t help thinking that this is a lot of effort to get our daily ‘hit’! But grateful I am.

The world we live in is a humbling, awe-inspiring experience of beauty and grandeur. It is something to be savoured and tasted, again and again. We have learnt to take the earth’s riches and do incredible things with them - like make a cup of coffee.

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we see how God puts his full creativity to work in the world. Afterwards he reflects: “God saw all that he made was very good.” We get just around 800 words to describe this incredible act of love, but they are all words designed to permeate our hearts and imaginations and cause us to ponder deeply on our reason for being. And the more we do, the more significant our relationship with God becomes for us.

Just like your cup of coffee, life doesn’t just randomly happen to make itself, there is a creator behind it, along with a complex process filled with passion, love and dedication to the end user – us.

The philosopher Wittgenstein once poured a cup of freshly ground coffee and asked his students to describe the smell. When they failed Wittgenstein said, in effect: “If we haven’t got words to describe the smell of coffee which we can hold in a cup in our hands, how can we think we have the words adequately to describe God?”

This pretty much sums up my feelings of a loving God who feels passionate about bringing us the best, including sending us his son, Jesus. Happy drinking!

ASD

Coffee house theology

 Ed Cyzewski has written a book called Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life. The book is about developing a conversational way to discuss theology to help shape, understand and live out a practical theology.  He guest blogs on Jason Clark's Deep Church site and sounds like it is worth a quick read. I've just ordered it.

"Once we understand something of our own limitations, we learn about God through the sources of theology. We begin with God because God makes the first move to us and continues to guide us in theology through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit instructs our reading of the Bible, our primary source in theology. Our traditions and fellow Christians (both local and abroad) inform our theology and provide perspectives that challenge and sharpen our theology."

Have a good week.

ASD

Coffee, Camels and the City

Each day I have a ritual, I get off the train at Liverpool Street station and grab a latte from Prets before walking up Bishopsgate to my office in Shoreditch High Street.

Coffee can do strange things to you. For instance, it can start a new world-class financial centre.

Back in 1698 a little band of stockbrokers downed their coffee at Jonathan’s Coffee House in Change Alley, EC3. The story of the successful Square Mile had begun.

However, progress wasn’t always easy. The South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 and coffee house exchanges burned down in 1748.

300 years later and The City of London has become more powerful than any 18^th century coffee drinker could imagine.

325,000 people now work in the financial centre. The City is set to become bigger than New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo. It seems to go from strength to strength. We might not make cars any more, but we do know how to make money.

Last December, City institutions paid out £9billion in bonuses. The Square Mile has now spread eastwards to Canary Wharf where my sister has the fascinating job of being Bishop’s chaplain to the Docklands.

The City has also gone west into Mayfair, where many private equity companies and hedge fund managers hang out.

Yes, London is certainly the place to be. The Russian oligarchs are further proof of this.

So as I sip my coffee at my desk and I think what a great place the City is to work, surrounded by success. Something our country can be proud of.

Hm! I have an idea.

Maybe I should start a church in a coffee house, call it café church, and see where it takes me.

Maybe I could start a global denomination and have offices in London, Amsterdam Tokyo and New York.

Maybe there could be new tall glass cathedrals in all the major financial cities of the world, designed by Sir Norman Foster.

I could easily see myself as the high tech, commodity pastor, thousands of business workers flocking on Sunday to the most amazing services ever. And those who couldn’t be there could have the services streamed live to their laptops.

Of course, I would have to patent everything to protect intellectual rights. (You know what Christians are like!) Ah, yes, I can see it now, I could be as big as Jes….

Wait a minute, wait a minute…I see what’s happening here.

No wonder Jesus made the point that the poor would inherit the earth, not the rich. He knew what he was saying when he said it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Human nature being what it is and all that. 

It is pretty easy to worship success, isn’t it? We just copy its attitudes.

Maybe there is something in Thomas á Kempis’ classic work, Imitation of Christ. For instance, how many times have we prayed to be more like Jesus?

More to the point, do we really truly mean it?  To be really like Jesus would probably change our lives beyond all current recognition?

As I said, coffee can do strange things to you. 

ASD

Coffee at a price

The great thing about the blogosphere is that you start reading one post which then it takes you to another then another...

I dipped into Richard Frank's blog (vicar of much-loved All Souls Church, St Margarets, Twickenham) to read his extract on Mark Green's article posted on LICC's site. Following the link through I came across Brian Draper's interview (an old  college friend of mine) with the producers of Black Gold who’ve shot a powerful documentary on the plight of Ethiopian coffee growers.

These two British filmakers have made "a hard-hitting documentary feature film which explores both the economic chasm and, paradoxically, the intimate relationship between coffee grower and consumer."

It well worth dipping into while slurpping on your tall skinny decaf latte or a 'whatever coffee', as an Aussie girl once said to me in Pret's.  We need to know this stuff.  We need to have a conscience.  There are consequences to our consumerism which, quite frankly, ignorance is really no excuse in our present green climate.

Here's a further extract:

"The Francis brothers came to realise that both growers and consumers seem oblivious to each other. In Seattle,at the original Starbucks store, one worker, Janine, beams without a hint of irony that “we are in the business of touching people”; meanwhile, in Ethiopia, we see Tadesse visiting his farmers to ask whether they have any idea how much a cup of coffee sells for in the West. They look unsure, offering guesses of a few cents per cup. When he tells them it’s more like $2.90, they don’t know what to say."

I am not sure what to say either. 

As a coffee lover I am challenged by the economics of the bean. I'd like to think my purchase touches people beyond the corporate world of Seattle's finest and beyond. The thing is with Starbucks you have to pay extra for ethical coffee. Surely, there's something wrong there.

If tea is your preferred cuppa, you might be interested to know you can make a difference to persecuted Christians living in tea-growing regions around the world in places like Indonesia.  Open Doors has launched the Great Big Tea Party concept, which encourages UK Christians to hold tea parties in each other's homes.  Each cuppa bought goes towards supporting and encouraging Christians having a hard time of it. Very worthwhile thing, if that like that sort of event.

Well, I think that's beverages covered off today.

ASD