Oh boy! This is a big post!

So stick with me here, I apologize for long-windedness, I really do.

First and foremost, here's a nice little bazinga from my quiet-time this morning:

"Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines [...] yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord YHWH is my strength." (Zechariah 3:17-19)

Friends, even if we fall flat on our faces... Glory be to God.

Thing two: my visit to the Red Rock Cafe!

The Red Rock Cafe is the coffee shop that Mike's church owns/runs in Mountain View, and when Mike (O'Brien) and I went down to visit today, we got to go there!

It was actually really cool - I mean, yeah, I expected it to be - but still, REALLY cool! He said it actually used to be an independently owned business that was going under and then his church took it over. Their church offices are on the third floor of the building (and have been since before they ownedthe cafe), but once the shop started going under, they decided they should buy it out, and now here they are!

The downstairs is were the register/espresso bar is, along with a decent amount of seating, and then upstairs is even more seating, with a nice little view of the downtown area. Mike said they sometimes rent out the upstairs area if people want to use it for social functions and stuff like that - cool idea!

We sat upstairs for the LONGEST time just

talking, and Mike (O'Brien) and I got into some really good talking about just business stuff in general. I hope we didn't bore Mike (Corsetto) too much, although I think maybe we did. But he had some really good points and some really good concerns that I hadn't thought of before. And now, of course, as I sit here thinking I can't remember nearly as much of it as I'd like too, but I'm going to try my best.

(1) Multiple branches? I had never really thought of the idea before, and to be honest I don't really like the idea, but Mike brought up the good point that maybe one branch can't support all three of us. Or maybe it can; I really don't know. The point is, it's something to think about.

(2) Along the lines of multiple branches and just making ends meet, another point was something we kind of touched on in the "business meeting", and that's how much each of us work. We had talked about maybe having just one of us working full time at the shop to start while the other two hold outside jobs. But then, I mean, say you two have full time jobs elsewhere, then we just need to hire more people to work with me, so it's kind of really a trade off. Anyway, that's going to be a hard balance to find.

(3) LOCATION. Eric, we talked a lot about Yellow Wood and about why it went under, and we decided that probably a lot of it is due to location. I think we all already know that location's important, but I'm just kind of regurgitating everything I can think of here.

(4) We were talking about the "tour" and at looking at other succes

sful businesses, and Mike was suggesting that we look at other "genres" of business as well. AKA We could look at In-n-Out for example, as a business that provides a very different service, but does a lot of the things we want to do: fast service, quality product, vaguely faith-based (bear with me on that one). And when it comes to big companies like that, I'm sure there's literature where we can actually read up on what their business plan looked like when they got started and how they got their kick-start.

Whew. So that's all for Red Rock. It was really fun, to say the least. Also, as a side note, we went to Erik's Deli Cafe, but NONE of us got Sea Dogs after we realized they're tuna salad, and we didn't really want tuna at all. I thought that was hilarious.

And now for two things that I've told both of you individually, but I want to put here just for the record:

Thing one is that Shmann works at a faith-based coffee shop at Purdue. I am definitley giving her a call soon.

Thing two is that Berkeley could definitely be a good location for us. Still a college town, still an area we're relatively familiar with (I know that's a stretch, but it's not like we're moving to Utah), still could support about a million coffee shops, still has a good down-town type area. But here's my thing: it's urban, and I really like that. And I have to say that the city isn't exactly my "thing", and I think you both know that, but I feel increasingly called to an urban environment, and I think it's more than young-adult idealism.

The main reason is from a talk that Stanford Gibson gave at College Life last year that I'm sure Alyssa remembers about how the church should be more present in urban environments. Rather than talk about it, I'm just going to post a few quotes from him, along with the link to the full transcript and let that speak for itself. (The text, by the way, is Acts 11 & 13)

One of the most obvious but least frequently observed features of the early church is that it was primarily an urban movement. Early Christianity thrived on the density, desperation, depravity and diversity of the great urban centers of the Roman empire.

Isn’t essentially a historical curiosity. It is important to recognize because the urban nature of the early church was fundamental to its growth and effectiveness. The early church grew because it was a fundamentally urban movement. It grew because it came to love people and found them easiest to love in their densest, most diverse and most desperate state.

But somehow, contemporary evangelical Christianity has become one of the most anti-urban demographics of the American population. With the notable exceptions of the Black Church and the Catholic Church, modern American Christianity has gravitated to the suburbs. And, modern missiologists argue, this is sidelining us culturally. We are underrepresented in the city. And this is problematic in two ways. First, Christians should be wherever there are people and should be particularly attracted to the social ills that cities generate. But it is also a problem because culturally, Cities are upstream. As the city goes, so goes the culture.

Cities are not more important but they are more strategic. If we were going to be underrepresented somewhere, it should be anywhere but our nation and world’s urban centers.

OK! That's finally all I've got. I hope you waded through all that and managed to find something interesting/relevant/worthwhile. Let me know what you think.