Citizen Coffee shop opens, along with a new Citizen Church

May 20—Coffee, tea or Ecclesiastes? That's a choice you may face at a new church that had its grand opening on Sunday in Northeast Albuquerque.

Citizen Church's freshly minted building houses a 350-seat auditorium and a coffee shop, Citizen Coffee, at Alameda and Wyoming NE. The new campus also has a preschool, which is set to open in the fall.

Service times Sunday are 8:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.

It's Citizen Church's second Albuquerque location. The church has a central campus on Copper Avenue near Eubank and Interstate 40, which also has a coffee shop. The nondenominational church also has a campus in Maui, Hawaii.

"The coffee shop will be open for people to enjoy coffee on Sundays," said church pastor Chris Cunningham, "so during service times, if someone comes, they can purchase coffee inside."

He said weekdays would differ from Sundays for Citizen Coffee.

"The coffee shop will be ran on Sundays by our serve team," Cunningham said. "So the drive-thru will not be open on Sundays, but Monday through Saturday it will be open 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. for dining in and drive-thru."

The other coffee shop at the church's central campus near Eubank is only open Sundays, Cunningham said.

Albuquerque coffee roasters Garden Company gets the beans ready for brewing. But the coffee isn't just to perk up prayers during service. The proceeds from the sale of cups of Joe are put to good use.

That money, coffee shop manager Matthew Kowalski said, aids church missions in four troubled regions of the world in Thailand, Haiti, Mexico and Kenya.

"Through the church, we take trips to each one of those countries and we have a certain focus," Kowalski said. "Thailand is sexual slavery or sex trafficking, and so we fund a baking school for women who want to get out of sex slavery. Mexico we focus on a couple different things, mainly to the Tarahumara people in the Sierra Madres and Chihuahua. ... Our focus there is to reach the children and teens to really witness to their families...."

Kowalski said in Haiti, the issue is water.

"A gallon of water is usually a few days' wage in Haiti, so it's an extreme, extreme need. We're able to deliver thousands of gallons of water a month into Cite Soleil, which is ran by gangs," Kowalski said.

He said the mission partnered with the group Healing Haiti, which is one of the few to successfully deliver water into that area.

"In Kenya, it's for the Digo people, an almost unreached tribe, and we started a partnership there about 12 or 13 years ago," Kowalski said.

Kowalski said the focus there is developing small groups and home churches. "Right now, I believe there are 12 home churches that we're supporting."

He said the existing coffee shop at the church's central campus was able to give a little bit over $15,000 last year to the missions, even though they're only open on Sundays. He's optimistic the new location will do even better, since it will be open during the week.

"We're projecting to raise almost $100,000 this year (for our missions), hopefully more, but that's a conservative projection," he said.

Cunningham said although the new church has seating for up to 350 people in the auditorium, there are more options.

"There's great seating in the atrium area and there's a huge garage door in the front that opens for seating outside in the morning, which would be beautiful," he said.

The coffee shop, the pre-school and the mission work are parts of a greater goal, Cunningham said, that reflects the family neighborhood surrounding the new campus.

"It's really meant to be like a community-style church," Cunningham said. "We want it to serve the community, to be a benefit to the community."