St. Stephen's raises money to build a cafe on church grounds
Overlooking the playground, the cafe is envisioned as a community gathering spot for families with children and others
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Robinson Road is holding a fundraiser this Saturday to help fund the creation of a community cafe and commercial kitchen, which will be located on church grounds, next to the playground.
The cafe is the brainchild of the Rev. Christy Laborda Harris, the rector of St. Stephen’s and the mother of two small children. She envisions the cafe as a community gathering place for families and anyone else in the community, who just wants a place to relax with a cup of coffee or a glass of beer or wine. The cafe will also serve food.
For legal reasons involving the sale of beer and wine, the cafe will be organized as a private club, though Laborda Harris said they haven’t nailed down yet what membership will entail.
“We want it to be affordable,” she said, noting that the whole purpose of the cafe was to make it a community space that anyone could afford.
“We are very hopeful that folks of all different faith backgrounds or no faith background will desire to be in this kind of community…whether it's just stopping by to have coffee and read your newspaper or being in a group that meets there or having your kids play here and chatting with other folks, maybe making friends.”
The plan for the cafe has changed a bit since the church first applied to the city for a conditional use permit. LaBorda Harris had originally envisioned a shipping container structure, but the project’s contractor convinced her that building from scratch was more flexible and less expensive. The city agreed that if the new building had roughly the same footprint, the church wouldn’t have to apply for a new permit.
“We are working with a contractor and architect to design the actual interior now,” LaBorda Harris said. “We plan and hope to break ground later this year on the kitchen. Then we'll be looking around for a chef to work with to lease the food portion of this. St. Stephen's will be staffing the beverage sales.”
LaBorda Harris said the church hasn’t faced any opposition to the cafe idea from its neighbors.
“We've been really touched by the support of our neighbors,” she said. “The church’s neighbors showed up on the Zoom meeting for the planning commission and said some beautiful things about St. Stephen's in general and how they've experienced us and their trust in us and their excitement about this vision.”
“I think that Sebastopol is the right kind of place for this,” LaBorda Harris said. “We’re a town that values community. I think a lot of towns realized after the pandemic how much we need community, but I think Sebastopol specifically has always had that value. Plus I think there's a lot of spiritual curiosity and engagement here, and I think that the church engaging with that in a broader or open way is a really exciting opportunity.”
This isn’t the first community-oriented project undertaken by the church, which runs a food pantry, hosts the Sebastopol Seed Bank and garden, and invites the community to walk its meditation labyrinth.
This community-mindedness is one of the things that appealed to parishioner Linda Hall, a new church member who moved to Sebastopol from San Francisco in 2020. Hall is organizing the fundraiser for the cafe.
Hall said she was struck by Laborda Harris’s interest in providing a place for local families.
“Christy really saw this need for ‘Where can families go?’ And to be honest, families don't really come to church anymore. And so we were, like, ‘How do we welcome people like that who still need community’—and, well, God is here for everyone—so how do we welcome them? Christy came up with this whole vision and…I sat down to talk to her for a few hours and was just really sold on her understanding of that generation—I'm much older—and what they need and how to help them and support them. I was just blown away that she is doing this to serve the community, and her intent is not at all that the people who come will start going to church. It's really that we're just supporting them and giving them space and nurturing them, and I think that's very, very powerful.”
Fundraiser is Saturday, August 19, 5 to 8 pm
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church invites the community to its summer fundraiser this Saturday, featuring music from the local folk rock band, the WAJ Trio. Wine, beer, and other drinks will be available for purchase. Dinner tickets are sold out at this point, but Hall said community members are welcome to come, buy a drink, enjoy the music — and donate to the community cafe project.
When: Saturday, August 19, 5 - 8 pm
Where: St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 500 Robinson Road, Sebastopol
If you can’t attend but would like to make a donation to this project, you can make direct donations to support the construction of the cafe here. According to a flyer for the event, “Contributions of any amount are greatly appreciated and will help create a vibrant community space for all to enjoy.”