Associate Pastor Thomas Rusert is not really a coffee drinker.
"I drink coffee only on Thursdays. This is partly because I am a weirdly patterned person. It's also because I feel insecure ordering my preferred tea at a coffee shop; it's like ordering a salad at a steakhouse," he writes on the Faith and Leadership website.
Rusert of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Doylestown, Pennsylvania says the reason he drinks coffee on Thursdays "is because that's the day I take a little sign that says 'Free Prayer' and sit at a local coffee shop for a few hours."
In his first year of ministry, he spent time visiting people's homes, applauding their children's artwork and praying with them at dinner tables.
He says the "administrative demands of parish ministry otherwise keep many of us shackled to our swivel chairs" and come Thursday morning, "I become cantankerous."
"So for everyone's sake, I heed that good advice and break out of my sacred confines, fleeing to a local coffee shop for reading and sermon writing," he says.
Each Thursday, he wears a clergy collar and set up at coffee shops with the sign "Free Prayer" that says "Pray, and let God worry."
"And people stop to pray with me every time," he says.
Rusert also spoke to Fox News, saying, "I'm humbled all the time by the way that the Spirit works. God is working to give people the courage to say, 'All right – I'm going to take this pastor up on this offer.'"
He remembers Amari, a man he met at a local Starbucks. The man asked him "'Free prayer'? What's that?" and he explained it to him.
The man walked outside and Rusert followed him and invited him for a walk.
"As we strolled together over the next hour, I heard all the unuttered prayers and pains he had held inside for two years," said Rusert, citing the man's problems including his wife who left him because of identity crisis, a friend who died from blood clot and an aunt who died from medical malpractice.
"Then I read those words, 'Free Prayer,'" the man said, "and I couldn't keep it in anymore."
"It seemed that God had enacted a little apocalypse, an awakening, in Amari's soul. And all I'd had to do at first was sit there," Rusert said.
He said the bulk of his ministry is still among people in his congregation but he's grateful for the free prayers at coffee shops each week.
"I think of the schizophrenic woman who stopped and asked for prayer because she sees witches. We prayed for courage and strength and protection. An owner of a Dunkin' Donuts asked me to pray for her shop," he said.
For Rusert, "God has been up to a lot in my life through this Free Prayer ministry."
"While it has done admittedly little to expand the ranks of my congregation, it has done much to expand my vocation to include the ranks upon ranks of God's people I have never met who are searching for answers, waiting for comfort and willing to pray," he says.
He adds: "Sometimes, we have to move beyond the shadows of a steeple to take care of our people. And in so doing, we may just find that God takes care of us, too."
