I live a few miles west of the city of coffee aka Portland, Oregon. Portlanders take their coffee seriously. It must be one of the only cities in the world where you hear people pursuing “going into coffee” as their career plan instead of the gap year job after college. Experienced baristas opt for the more hipster coffee shops and although there is Starbucks, there is a general disdain for anything that brews cookie-cutter capitalism and coffee together.For the true Portlander nothing beats Stumptown coffee. Stumptown is locally owned, committed to fair-trade, and is known for pursuing the best-quality coffee, roasting method and pouring it out all over Portland.

A couple of nights ago we happened to have one of the Stumptown baristas over to share a meal. I confessed that sometimes I feel a little intimidated coming into Stumptown. You have to know what you want, know it quickly, and select from their very sophisticated coffee blackboard-menu with the options: coffee, cappuccino, Americano, espresso, latte. No white chocolate mochas, no cinnamon- shot vanilla lattes, no Pumpkin Pie Chai. This place is not catering to the sugared/flavored coffee crowd, this is just good coffee. That’s what they do. The barista tells me, “We are the coffee experts. We know good coffee. We don’t try and appeal to all the options and flavors. If people want that, they can go somewhere else.

Stumptown does great coffee and they know they are good so they don’t offer all the other variety of stuff to go in or beside your coffee. Stumptown knows who they are, who their target crowd is, and without apology pour cup after cup of Americanos and dry cappuccinos without a Peppermint Blended Mocha in sight. What if my campus ministry was Stumptowned? What if we were who we are, without apology and were the best at that without trying to add in everyone’s preferences? Now, we aren’t a coffee shop, so it’s not the same as a student heading to the coffee shop across the street, not liking what they brew and going somewhere else. Even though it’s not an exact analogy, there is a beautiful something in that cup that seems significant to me.

My mantra has been, “It’s not about getting it right.” There is a lot of pressure to get it right in campus ministry: to have the right worship services, the right messages, the right student leaders, the right outreach, the right evangelism plan, the right “branding” of programming, the right pattern of ministry sustainability. All year I have been saying, “It’s not about getting it right.” It’s about being faithful and steadfast, gardeners who tend the plot of ground we have been given with care and constancy (or to keep the analogy, baristas who show up every morning to brew cup after cup of good coffee). Knowing who we are and what we are called to do in our ministry is critical in being faithful and steadfast soul-baristas of college students. And like Stumptown, we can be very good at what we do, and resist the consumeristic tendency to try to be all things to all students. We must be content to be who we are and stop trying to be what we are not called and created to be. We believe that God is faithful to meet students’ needs.

As you assess your ministry and leadership this summer, give thought to what your particular ministry is called in essence to be. Are there programs that need to be released because they are taking time away from the real work of your ministry? Are there things that you are investing time and energy into that are not in the brew of your best work? How do you stay away from the temptation to “get ministry right?”

Sit for a long while over coffee and take stock of what your ministry does best and what is simply taking energy and focus away from the area that you are strongest.