New coffee shop in Archdiocese of Denver aims to be ‘outpost of evangelization’
- Catholic News Agency
- 4 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Step into More Coffee and you’re immediately greeted by the smell of fresh ground coffee, vintage images of the London skyline on the walls, quotes from Catholic saints on the chalkboard, and a crucifix hanging by the pickup counter.
The new coffee shop, owned and run by St. Thomas More Catholic Parish (STM) in Centennial, Colorado, hopes to become a gathering place of evangelization for those within the parish boundaries.
Tyler Duffy, director of evangelization at the parish, told CNA that the pastor of STM, Father Randy Dollins, “had this vision for an outpost of evangelization for our parish.”
According to canon law, a pastor is responsible for the spiritual care of all those within the boundaries of his parish — Catholic and non-Catholic alike. This, Duffy explained, is a responsibility Dollins takes “very seriously.”
“So he was thinking, ‘OK, what are we doing to evangelize within our territory? What are we doing to spread the faith?’ And one of the big things was people may not feel comfortable or may not want to step into a Catholic church, but maybe there’s a place that we could find within our territory that people would be comfortable stepping into,” Duffy explained.
From there they decided to find “an outpost … a place where we can naturally encounter people where their guard isn’t up, where they’d be happy to have a conversation, a natural place to build community.”
After hearing that the Augustine Institute — a private Catholic graduate school in theology — was moving to Missouri and had no plans for the space, STM decided to jump on the opportunity. Since the space had previously been a coffee shop, they were able to keep some of the furniture and equipment. However, they did redecorate, rebrand, and rename the shop. Additionally, STM also became the owners of the chapel in the building and a conference room that is attached to the coffee shop that they plan to allow anyone in the community to use for free.
Duffy explained that through the coffee shop they are aiming to focus on “the transcendentals — truth, beauty, goodness.”
“We want to make the space beautiful and inviting. We want to speak the truth through our books and the conversations here and goodness — we just want to show what it is to live an upright moral life as a business, but also as individuals working the coffee shop,” he said.
However, Duffy added that he believes “one of the best uses of the coffee shop is if we could get our parishioners to utilize the space for their own evangelization.”
He explained that while an individual might not feel comfortable asking someone to go to Mass with them, it is most likely very easy to ask someone to go grab a coffee together.
“So then you come into the space and you’re like, ‘Oh, let me tell you about this coffee shop. It’s actually owned by my church. And this is why I love my church so much.’ And that itself is like an easy way to be able to equip you to go out and evangelize.”
Duffy hopes that in time More Coffee “really becomes like a Catholic hub … [that] this place becomes known in the archdiocese as, ‘Oh, this is the Catholic coffee shop.’ And … that it becomes this meeting space and this gathering space just for Catholic conversation and ideation.”
Not only does Duffy want to establish a “robust Catholic atmosphere” but he also hopes that it will become the hub for good coffee in the area for everybody. The coffee shop is currently located in what is known as “The Denver Tech Center,” or DTC, a business and economic trading center located in Colorado in the southeastern portion of the Denver metropolitan area.
“So, I would love to attract businesspeople to the area, work-from-home people to the area, people who are just looking for good coffee,” he shared. “And then if you combine the two — a robust Catholic community and atmosphere with this really beloved coffee shop in the community — then I think that naturally what you’ll find is these people who are coming just for the coffee, or just for the space, are just going to run into the beauty and the joy of the faith because they’re going to encounter a Catholic community here.”
