A call to ministry along with a desire to make friends and fight off loneliness led Cristin Cooper to launch Coop’s Soups, an innovative business and ministry. She shares how loving God and loving neighbor led her to reach people in new and creative ways.
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A call to ministry along with a desire to make friends and fight off loneliness led Cristin Cooper to launch Coop’s Soups, an innovative business and ministry. In this episode she shares how loving God and loving neighbor led her to reach people in new and creative ways.
Douglas Powe: Welcome to Leading Ideas Talks, a podcast featuring thought leaders and innovative practitioners. I am Douglas Powe, the director of the Lewis Center and your host for this talk. Joining me is Cristin Cooper, a licensed local pastor who is the creator and owner of “Coop’s Soups,” a creative faith expression. Our focus for this podcast is innovation. Cristin, I’m so excited that you’re with us today. Of course, I have been a small part of your journey, but I’m excited for others to hear about the great work that you’re doing.
Cristin Cooper: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here, and, yeah. I was really sketching out so much of the ministry I’m doing now in my last year of seminary, which was when I took your evangelism course, and it provided me with even more of a framework and a lot of guiding principles, and also a sense of feeling home. A sense of feeling like, “oh, I’m not just, this isn’t just coming out of nowhere. There’s some history here for why I feel called in this direction.”
Doug Powe: Thank you. I want to begin just to help others become familiar with a little bit of who you are with you sharing a little bit about your background.
Cristin Cooper: Yeah. So, I grew up Assembly of God. My parents are retired now, but they were both professors at a small Assembly of God Christian University in Lakeland, Florida. And so, we went to a charismatic, evangelical church, zero to fifth grade. And in that space, I had a really positive Sunday school experience. So, I was, yeah, that just really set a foundation for me, and again, it was a really positive experience. And my sister, who’s two years older than me, was in youth group when I was in fifth grade, and she was starting to have a less than positive experience in that space. And so, my parents decided to take us out of that church to kind of create a different narrative when we were starting—when our theology was starting to naturally expand. And they had already been on a journey of their own spiritual discernment. And so, we landed at an Episcopal church; so, like the opposite of Assembly of God, by the end of the summer. So, I graduated fifth grade, and by the end of the summer, we were starting to go to an Episcopal church, and I got involved as an acolyte. And that, really, created for me a lot of understanding of kind of the more intellectual side of doctrine and church history, and I felt really a part of this story of communion and the Lord’s Supper week after week, helping serve on the altar. And so, from sixth grade to college, we went to this Episcopal church.
And then shortly after college, I went to Australia for a year. And I worked at a Baptist church in that space. But Baptist probably looks more Methodist in Australia, both in terms of theology, but also in terms of—it had a liturgy to it, which is not necessarily true here in America. So, in that space, by the end of the year, I felt called into ministry, and I went to the two pastors, and I said, “I feel called to do this.” And they said, “we know,” and I was like “what!?” And they just really affirmed that, and they said, “yeah, we see a lot of gifting, and you seem to really love this.” And so, I said “well, what do I do? I’m going back to America.” This would have been the end of 2013. And they said, “you go to seminary.”
So, I came back, and I started to look for a job at a church. And I was still Episcopal, so I was looking at churches here in the D.C. Metro area, and a lot of them weren’t hiring full time. So, I was looking for like youth and young adult pastors, and they weren’t hiring full time, and I needed full time. And so, there was a local Methodist church, that I also then was looking at, and they offered me full time, and they also contributed to my seminary degree. So, that all kind of got settled in my interview process. And so, then I came to Wesley, and they said, “we’ll give you even more scholarship money if you become Methodist.”
And so, I was like: “Well, now I’m Methodist!” And I would say that, I think, with all of that upbringing and those church experiences, the reason why that shift was easy for me was because I’ve had this real sense inside of me that so many of these denominations are meaningful expressions of how to live out your love for God and neighbor. But I believe not necessarily, “are they all getting it right?” No. No perfect place, no perfect people. So, it really is, “where are you finding a sense of home?”
So, that’s kind of the religious foundation piece, and then while I was at Wesley Seminary discerning this call to be a pastor, I never quite felt called to be the pastor in the robe at the front of the church. That never quite felt right. I always had questions; that feels sometimes removed for me. Like that works for this pastor; but for me, that feels a little removed. I want to be kind of more with the people. I want to feel more connected to the congregation. Not necessarily robed, not necessarily at the front of the church. And then certainly, looking at mission and outreach, and having just a lot of questions about so many of the programs being in the church walls when the preaching is encouraging us to get out. And so, kind of towards the end of seminary, I started to ask questions a lot that has turned into the ministry I’m doing now.
Douglas Powe: And that’s helpful, and it sets us up for the work you’re doing now. Particularly, as you think about your sort of emphasis on bringing people together and the creativity that you brought to this is Coop’s Soup. So, can you share with everyone first, what is Coop’s Soups? And then how did Coop’s Soups come about getting started?
Cristin Cooper: Yes. Coop’s Soups is a soup business and ministry. It is soup to share as an awesome way to make friends and fight off loneliness. It came about, so if you like go to our website, it says like, “we started with a ladle and a dream,” but that’s not actually true. It really started with our own loneliness. I started to gravitate towards more of those divergent church examples; those kind of marginal or alternative spaces that were doing ministry and kind of these creative outside the box ways. And I, there was one particular church at the time called “Simple Church” in Massachusetts. And so, a friend of mine, the two of us, went and visited Simple Church for the weekend. We went to their dinner church, and we then the next day, joined them in the kitchen while they baked bread. And then, later that afternoon, they sold that bread at their farmer’s market as an alternative funding stream for the dinner church. So kind of took some of the pressure off from the congregation, fully supporting the pastor, and also provided them with another creative outreach opportunity to meet their neighbors who weren’t coming to the dinner church. And so, how do we be in the public space? And so, this—I found this model really meaningful.
And so, fall of 2018, I did feel called to explore a dinner church type model in my apartment. And I just, I was discerning ordination, discerning what does it look like post seminary. I was going to graduate in a year, but I really felt like God was saying: “you just, you, Cristin, have to just start experimenting with this now. Don’t wait for a DS to appoint you to your creative idea fresh out of seminary when they don’t know you and nobody knows what you’re, like calling, what’s possible. You don’t even know.” So, I really felt like God was like, “you just need to explore this now for your own faith journey or own kind of experiment.”
So, I invited neighbors and friends over to my house once a week for soup and bread, and we talked about topics that of course really mattered to us at the time. But we’re talking about: “what is the relationship of church and state,” and abortion, and LGBTQ+, and like just really looking at some of these things that in so many of our church experiences, those topics were like off the table. So, you just don’t talk about them and you certainly … I had been told at one point, “those are social issues, those are not spiritual issues.” While it felt really good to be talking about these topics that felt “off limits,” we also, there was some vulnerability in talking from our hearts about these things that we really care about. And I just started to really see what happens when we gather at a table and slow down and there’s nothing after, so that nobody’s looking at the clock to be like, “I can only be here for so long.” What does it look like when we gather? We create this safe space. We had some rules of belonging. One of them was you belong because you’re human. So, there’s really something to slowing down and becoming present and wanting to get to know more of who God is by getting to know our neighbor that we’re breaking bread with.
Douglas Powe: I want to get to a two-part question. the first part of question is: how did you move beyond this initial group to expand that community? Making disciples is critical for you. So, how do you—because oftentimes in these sort of creative faith expressions (I’m going to be careful of what I want to say) that’s not always a priority. But for you that is central. So, how do you, one, how do you expand, but at the same time, help people to really make it a priority about discipleship?
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Cristin Cooper: Yeah, that’s so good. So, in terms of how we got to the soup, so, in the spring, the people that were gathering at my house started to say, “the soup is really good. You should think about selling it.” And I had then remembered the simple church model. So, I looked into it.
We start in spring of 2019, and what I had … what had become a surprise, what I had not counted on was that the farmer’s market was really a place where we were starting to have really meaningful connections with our neighbors. I really thought this is going to help support the ministry financially. We’re going to tell people that we eat this soup at a dinner church, and that people might want to come to the dinner church. But what ended up happening is that they weren’t so much interested in going into a dinner church model, but they were interested in talking to us for like 20 minutes at the farmer’s market, and really, wanting to get to know us in the farmer’s market and then also, feel known and valued as well. And so, over time, what has now happened (because we’ve been doing this for a little while), is it really is two different communities in a lot of ways. We have the dinner church community, and then we have this farmer’s market community. And even this past Sunday, somebody was saying, “the line to get soup is so long, but the actual getting the soup is really … could be like a two-minute, three-minute transaction.” But we are really building community. And so, we really know our neighbors. We want to know: “how did your son’s soccer game go last week? We know that he was nervous about that.” “How’s your dad in the nursing home? How’s that going?” “How was your mom’s surgery?” And yeah, so these relationships have really grown, and they’re really in our life. A lot of our farmer’s market customers are like part of our village now, and we’re part of their village as well. And that has happened for a lot of people.
We really know these customers and what’s going on in their life. And then something that started to happen is they asked, how do we, for people that have alternative jobs and some flexibility in their day to day—they wanted to get more connected. And so, I started to open up opportunities for people to join me in the kitchen to come and make soup. And all of these people, none of them really have church, going to church now, practice. And so they’re entering into a church kitchen when they would otherwise not really be entering into a church. And there’s some prayer books, and some, like, the Upper Room is available. So, what I’ve seen with a lot of the people that come to make soup with me is they’re taking home the Upper Room and then they’re coming back talking about it, and so, it’s also just really confirmed for me: these are folks that would otherwise probably not walk through a church door right now, but they are walking through a church door into the kitchen. They’re finding a sense of belonging, and they’re encountering God’s grace in that space.
And then, there’s also an opportunity, where we make soup, and we donate it to Manna Food Center. And so, we do this once a month where a set of volunteers—anybody can come; just, there’s only 10 spaces because of safety in the kitchen. And we make soup. And what’s really important in that space is we also eat the soup that we make because we really want to counter the charity mindset of like: “oh, I couldn’t possibly. I’m here to serve. I couldn’t possibly like, take from this pot.” And we really want to say, “this soup is good enough for our neighbors. This soup is good enough for us.” The way that we pray before we eat really invites this idea that there is, like, a communion of saints, and that includes not just those that have come before us, but also our neighbors in spirit that will be eating with us at the table. So, that’s a lot of what it looks like now, and that’s also how it’s come out of that, “how did we go from the dinner church to what it looks like now?”
And then in terms of that disciple piece, I am so passionate about this. What I am really passionate about is: “What does it look like to take soup as a tool to get to know our neighbors who are made in the image of God. Get to know more of who God is in that encounter and be present to how God is calling you to live in that moment. And so, it is missional. It is outreach. It is also—there is, like, an undercurrent of kind of a Sabbath practice that’s a part of that. That’s kind of saying: there’s a practice of slowing down, which is so counter cultural, but I think in slowing down, that’s where the authenticity and depth of relationship is made manifest. And so, it’s kind of both of those things. It’s this practice of loving God and loving our neighbor. It’s also a practice of slowing down and putting into your schedule the priority of relationship with others, which includes with God. And I think those two things together are so important. I think, we can’t build relationships from a place of efficiency and productivity, and anything that kind of looks like capitalism. And so, I think that’s slowing down and peace. They go hand in hand.
Douglas Powe: So, as you have described it, and the intentionality, then many of these individuals, as you said, would not walk through the doors of a church. So, as you’re sort of helping them to sort of have these God encounters and to love their neighbor, how then do you get them to become more comfortable with some of the traditional practices? Or do you not worry about that piece?
Cristin Cooper: I don’t really worry about discipleship as much as maybe you could say I worry about being faithful to God’s call to be in community with my neighbors in this way. And then in being faithful to this call, I trust that my neighbors are encountering God’s grace. And I have these examples, in these stories, where in that encounter with God’s grace, there’s a follow up question of: where do your values come from? Why do you live your life the way you do? And then there’s this opportunity to proclaim the kingdom of God in my life. And then just see what happens next and keep an open palm in that process.
And I’ll just give this like one example at the farmer’s market. We have a customer that’s been with us since we launched in 2019. And in fall 2021 He came up to our booth and he said, “I’ve just visited your website for the first time, and I saw that you’re a church, and I have nothing good to say about the church, and I have everything good to say about you all.” And he only knows us in the context of the farmer’s market, and how we interact and hold space and treat our neighbors. I just felt so grateful to be able to point to what it looks like to be faithful in God in the context of discipleship and to have this story of him being able to say, maybe not worded like this, but, “I see the light of Christ.” And then, just fast forward, he donated 20 hams to our ministry to then feed our neighbors experiencing food insecurity. And again, he wants nothing to do with the religious part, but he’s participating in the space that we’re creating for everyone to participate in the kingdom of God. And that’s so much of how I think about discipleship. So, I don’t so much worry about it, but I care a lot about it, and creating those spaces for people to encounter God’s grace and then have follow up opportunities to participate in God’s grace or ask more questions and have further conversation.
Douglas Powe: You are reaching people that many congregations are not able to reach. What do you think are the barriers that more established congregations have in reaching these individuals that you’re connecting with? It’s obvious from listening to you that these individuals are seeking a relationship, and seeking community, and even faith community. But for whatever reason, established congregations aren’t able to make that connection. So, what do you think the barriers are for why congregations aren’t able to do that? And I think you’ve talked about a little bit—why do you think you have had more success in doing so?
Cristin Cooper: Yeah. I would say one obvious one to me is that we are literally in the community every single week. We are outside the church walls so there’s a consistency there in terms of building trust and credibility. And, you know, like the sense of, like, “my soup maker will always be there.” I think also, the setup. We’re out in public space and we’re not promoting our church. We are, there’s the tool we’re using to meet our neighbor is nourishment: like a literal jar of nourishment. It provides the opportunity to have a conversation about our church and about our ministry, but it’s not that first. So, I think that’s really helpful. So, I think in terms of like, “where are people’s comfort level?” They … there’s just like a … they’re pretty comfortable coming up and talking about soup. And that is a really neutral starting place. And I’ll also say this but because our soup is dairy free and gluten free, and we did that on purpose, so that, because we want it to be shared in community, we wanted to think about as many dietary restrictions. We hear a lot of people’s health stories, which is really vulnerable.
So, I have a CRV, and my ministry can fit in my car. And that is an intentional thing that we did at the very beginning, because I said, “I want my hands free. I want to be 100% available to talk to my neighbor and not be having to wrestle with a lot of supplies.” Or again, my experience on Sunday morning, somebody shows up to church and I’m like, “actually, I got to put these programs by the door. I need to refill the baptism thing, or I need to like … I mean, important things, but things that definitely, in my experience, had kept those in … you know, you’re like barely hearing about people’s week because you have to do the thing with the things with all the supplies. Also, part of the whole thing fitting in my car, is my costs are really low. And so, there’s a real privilege in that. I have a lot of respect for my colleagues that have churches they have to keep up and buildings are important. They do meaningful things, and also, they’re a weight and a burden, and I think that my colleagues would say that too. Both things are true.
I feel like our ministry really is with the people outside the church walls week after week. We’re not in a committee meeting guessing what our neighbors want. We are actually with our neighbors. We’re hearing them, week after week, tell us: how did they spend their weekend? What did their week look like? What’s coming up for them? And so, when I think about what creative thing can we do that would make a big impact, I don’t have a big leap. I feel like we really know intimately what the creative solution is to make an impact on their life.
Doug Powe: As you think about the journey you’ve taken, where do you see this going over the next sort of three to five years? Do you see yourself continuing as you are? Do you see yourself wanting to move towards more of an established brick and mortar? So, where do you see yourself going?
Cristin Cooper: I can’t imagine my ministry without the farmer’s market. I mean, five years is a long time from now, but I’ll just say, like, in terms of like, that is really where I and my team really get to practice loving God and loving our neighbors. So, I see us, in some component, in some way, always being at the farmer’s market and having that be relatively central. I’ve been going back to, like, I don’t want too many things to become a distraction, so that then that becomes something that feels, like, rushed. So, that’s one piece.
I would say one thing that has started to come up, starting to get revealed in time, is we do seem to be gaining some real credibility with the food equity space in Montgomery County. We were asked a couple months ago to join a food security call and to lead a meditation at the beginning. And that felt … like that was a surprise. I guess what I should also say when I say that is I don’t have a vision for what that looks like quite yet, but I’m paying attention that we are getting more invited into the food equity space. And I have always paid attention to hungry people are Jesus’s people. And so, I’m going to keep going through those doors as they open, and I don’t quite have a vision, but I’m just going to keep saying yes.
And then the final piece would be, I’m in this community of food entrepreneurs. Particularly, women food entrepreneurs. And so, an idea that kind of keeps coming up again and again is how do we work together and create accessible space for women food entrepreneurs to have commercial kitchen access that is reasonable and creates dignity for their business, so that then they can also use that money to support their families.
And so, I’m a part of a group that just every once in a while, a couple times, like four times a year, we get back together and just dream of a brick and mortar. I like the, I like the idea of calling it “Sophia’s kitchen.” Sophia going back to the feminine, Spirit of God out of Proverbs. And so, that is an exciting space for me, and the women in that, in this group, if we really wanted to make that happen, we really could. So, I would say in terms of a brick and mortar, that’s the kind of brick and mortar I want to be a part of. Cafés are super fun, and I go to them, and I’m like: “this is cute,” and I mean it. And it’s so cute, but I just … it feels a whole lot like a church in not the ways that I care about. It feels like that’s a mortgage. That’s a, like, attractional model. I now have to attract you to come to my building. I just don’t want to spend the time and energy attracting you, I’d rather just hang out with you. I want to go where you are. I don’t want to … I don’t want to do all that work. So yeah, so that’s … I would rather be in a co-working like space. That would be really cool.
Douglas Powe: Well, Cristin, thank you so much. This has been wonderful, and just love the work you’re doing, and love the way that you are truly using your term neighboring. Thank you for being with us.
Cristin Cooper: Thank you. Thank you.
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