Two months ago, Vintage Faith Church opened up "The Abbey" which is a coffeehouse, art and music lounge. We rebuilt what was a fairly hideous looking room (what was known as the "fellowship hall") in the church building we are in. We are still working on an outdoor courtyard seating area and not done with everything yet, but we opened it part-time during the week. Sara and the team has been doing a wonderful job in getting it all going. Hopefully it will be a place for students from the campus to use for studying and wi-fi and we will be having movie nights and there are bands playing and different local artists displaying art. We hope to see it open full time as soon as we are able to.
The main local County daily newspaper about a month ago had the front cover feature story about The Abbey right with a very positive article. Mainly about church breaking down stereotypes in the community. So that was a very cool thing to see happen.
Yesterday, the local weekly alternative entertainment newspaper had a "Back To School" edition for all the college students coming back. We didn't know they were doing it, but they had the cartoonist draw out local coffeehouse recommendations and The Abbey was in it. Quite humorous as it shows the barista as a nun and a student kneeling and praying for their finals. I was so relieved and glad to see that because The Abbey is known as part of a church. So my fear would have been it being portrayed with a screaming preacher or the usual type of evangelist caricatures with signs about hell or whatever it might have been. The artist is well known in this area and a very good artist, but he is known for not holding back punches in what he draws about. This cartoon was his normal weekly one in the paper which covers local political and local news. One of his cartoons is in the They Like Jesus But Not The Church book.
