DECATUR, GA — My name is Dorothy Hines, and I have volunteered at the Calvary Bible Fellowship coffee station every Sunday morning since February of 2013. I arrive at 7:15 a.m. I measure the grounds. I monitor the carafes. I do this without fanfare, without a budget line, and without a single person ever asking how I am doing.

I want to be clear that I am not writing this out of bitterness. I am writing this because thirteen years is a long time to watch a congregation interact with a beverage table, and I have accumulated observations that I believe the pastoral staff deserves to know about.

Gerald Foskett, 61, has taken the last cup of the regular roast and walked away without initiating a new brew on no fewer than forty-seven documented occasions. He knows. I know. The empty carafe knows.

“You develop a theology of service pretty fast when you’re watching someone pour decaf into a regular cup at 8:52 on a Sunday morning and feel genuinely righteous about it.”

“I just want to be seen,” said Dorothy, reaching for a fresh filter. “Not praised. Seen. There is a difference, and most of the congregation has not found it yet.”

The station also serves as a window into the spiritual temperature of the congregation. Pre-sermon: optimistic, orderly. Post-sermon: chaotic, desperate. The people who skip the sermon and come straight for the coffee know who they are. So do I.

I will be here next Sunday at 7:15. The grounds are already measured. Gerald will take the last cup. The Lord will sustain me.

At press time, Dorothy was refilling the sugar caddy while overhearing a deacons’ meeting she was not supposed to hear, as she has been doing since 2017.