Students Driven By Faith: A Reflection on CFB’s First Coffee Talk

By Derek Braun, October 8th

As we were preparing for our first-ever Coffee Talk, I had no idea what to expect. The Center for Faithful Business was responsible for promoting it, so were people going to come? If students came, how engaged would they be? Would they be there for the free coffee, and simply breeze through the conversation? As a third-year student in college, I thought that people my age and younger might find the topics that Center for Faithful Business (CFB) tackles to be tedious, considering the gradual decline in attention spans.

However, I was pleasantly surprised with how the event ended up unfolding. Students showed up, grabbed their free drink from Two Kick Coffee. They arrived intrigued about what CFB was going to talk about. A variety of people came, including people working on their PhD’s, undergraduates, and more. With these people came a fruitful conversation about how they connected faith and work, and what CFB represents–promoting a Christian understanding of business. We tackled questions about CFB, how each person connected their faith to the workplace, why we are passionate about the message CFB brings, and more. Everyone answered these questions with their own thoughts and experiences. The variety of answers we had was incredible and inspiring.

This was exactly what we were hoping to accomplish. We had an intimate conversation with people who cared deeply about the connection of faith and work. The majority of our audience were near the end of their time in college, either fourth year undergraduates or working on their PhD’s. Being in an atmosphere where I was one of the younger attendees really opened my eyes to how passionate students can be about these topics. Even though I work for the Center, I felt as if these people were at least as passionate, if not more, about the connection than I was. This inspired me to delve deeper not just into the topic, but also into my faith as a whole.

Thank you to everyone who came out to Two Kick yesterday (Oct 5th)! It was amazing to have you there, and we hope that you’ll join us on November 2nd at 7pm at Two Kick for free coffee at our second “Coffee Talk”.