It’s Tuesday morning, and I’m writing from my rural community’s coffee shop.  I love coffee, but trying to write here is not really my jam—my introvert’s head can’t think deeply with the background sizzle of small town conversation and the neighbors passing through.  Somebody’s sandwich order just came up.  My eyes linger on Bob Ross brushing out happy little trees on the TV rerun.  

Yet coffee shops can play a vital role in rural communities, serving as key spaces for gathering.  In recent years, some Christian leaders have taken the lead in rural spaces, launching coffee shops affiliated with churches, or bringing their business acumen to create for-profit cafes that play a part in their community’s overall flourishing.

I interviewed three Christian entrepreneurs and discovered how faith-aligned coffee shops in rural areas can create third places, build community connections, and open opportunities for gospel conversation.  

Rural coffee shops create third places.

Every community needs a gathering place, but in rural communities those places can be hard to come by.  The cold formica of the booth in the interstate gas station just doesn’t cut it.  Our coffee shop, The Hub, is relatively new, a spot right at the center of town that was once a covered gas station.  I’ve been around long enough to remember those days.  I’m pretty sure I’m sipping my lavender latte where a gas pump used to stand.  The Hub has become a third place for people to linger and connect.

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third places” to describe gathering spaces outside home (first) and work and school (second).  In The Great Good Place, Oldenburg writes of the importance of “places where individuals may come and go as they please, in which none are required to play host, and in which all feel at home and comfortable.”  Oldenburg goes on to describe how when “there is no neutral ground in the neighborhoods where people live, association outside the home will be impoverished” (p.63).  

Communities are impoverished where third places are lacking, and not just because people hash out business ideas over their Americano.  I talked to Kendra Horst, who in 2024 launched Roots Coffee Co with her husband Mark in rural Yoder, Kansas.  One of the Horsts’ main goals with Roots was to “put another business in town that makes Yoder thriving.”  Part of that thriving is the space to gather and experience joy.  While the Horsts’ business plan anticipated leaning on the drive-through to pay the bills, they quickly discovered that the community hungered for and supported a gathering space.  Says Kendra: “community is really valuable and people gravitate to third spaces.”  

The beauty of third places is the way they foment connection.  A drive-through coffee might just be about revving the gray matter before work.  But a table with steaming mugs could be a date or a business meeting or a prayer group.  Third places call forth the invaluable gift of human presence.  There’s a simple joy that comes from the openness of a coffee shop, from the possibility of discovering one another.  

Rural coffee shops build community connections.

Half a generation ago, Robert D. Putnam documented the decline of community in America and the subsequent loss of social capital.  In his book Bowling Alone, Putnam graphed and data-pointed the ways that political organizations, clubs, voluntary associations, houses of worship, and yes: bowling leagues, had waned and shed participants.  Writes Putnam with alarm: “Place-based social capital is being supplanted by function-based social capital.  We are withdrawing from those networks of reciprocity that once constituted our communities” (184).

This withdrawal from networks of reciprocity plays out in a unique way in rural communities.  On the one hand, rural places are bastions of connection.  We often know our neighbors, volunteer, and show up for one another when disaster strikes.  We wave when we pass each other in the street.

Nevertheless, rural places can also suffer from the same lack of networks and connections that Putnam observed.  Tight knit rural communities can be hard to break into.  Loneliness spares no place.

Tara Stucky founded Cause Coffee in small-town De Soto, Kansas partly to be able to raise funds for mission-oriented projects.  In their nearly nine years of operation, Stucky has been able to channel $92,000 to causes both global and local.  

Yet Cause Coffee’s success has been in fomenting community connections.  Stucky’s Christian faith drives her work, but she didn’t want Cause Coffee to become a Christian hangout.  No calligraphied Bible verses grace the walls.  A variety of music plays on the radio.  Cause Coffee is a place visited by people from all walks of life, of many faiths and none.  

Sometimes, this openness has played out in surprising ways.  Once, when Tara arrived to open the shop in the morning, she discovered a note wedged in the door.  The anonymous person had written that he had arrived at Cause Coffee at a particularly low moment.  He was planning to take his own life, the note read, but “he experienced so much love from the staff and genuine people [who] cared about him” that he decided to postpone his plan, instead coming back every day for weeks on end, sitting in the shop for hours.  Cause Coffee helped him get through a dark time.

Rural coffee shops open space for gospel conversations.

I talked to Joe Epley, an Assemblies of God pastor who helped launch The Coffeehouse at Lawler’s in the rural community of Baker, Montana.  The Coffeehouse poured out of the abundance of his church’s vision for serving and reaching their rural community.  Joe and his congregation bought a cafe that was going out of business and invested heavily in making it a place that the community would value—what Joe calls a “treasured space.”  This treasured space would be welcoming to everyone, focusing on excellence and service.  They aim to serve a “compassionate cup of coffee” to everyone, regardless of background or beliefs. 

On this footing, the Coffeehouse at Lawler’s has become a vital third place in Baker, hosting business start-ups, chamber of commerce meetings, and school fundraisers.  They have live music nights.  The neighborhood plant shop sold fresh flowers.  

The cafe has also become a place where the church can meet its neighbors.  Even though their team takes a service-first approach, Joe says they are always ready to have a conversation—about faith, when the right door opens—and pray with those in need.  A number of the baristas are pastors.  Central to their ministry is seeing those who might pass unseen, focusing first on relationships and giving dignity to people as people, not as a potential church members.  While there have been some folks who connected in the coffeehouse and then found their way into the church, outcomes are usually less immediate and tangible.  The Coffeehouse team’s guiding question is: “How do we just love people?”

Takeaways

As I learned about rural, faith-aligned coffee shops, I noticed how our conversations seemed to mirror tensions in the Christian walk.  Do we need to be overt about our faith in order to be faithful?  Each of the individuals I interviewed noted the importance of doing good work.  The space should be attractive, the coffee superb.  In their view, excellence attests to the gospel and lifts up the whole community.

It struck me that coffee and the coffee shop space don’t need to be overly instrumentalized to work their magic.  The craft of coffee, the beauty of latte art, the caffeinated jab it offers our weary morning neurons—it all offers joy.  A gathering space in the community is itself a gift.

Sometimes the most Christian thing we can do for each other is show up as human beings.  Offer hospitality. Practice listening.  Extend the grace of a hot cup of joe.

This post originally appeared on the Town Square Collaborative Substack.

Learn more about the work of the Town Square Collaborative.