On the first Friday of every month, café owner Jamie Sanchez is met with accusations of Nazism from radical protestors outside of his coffee shop, The Drip Café, which he opened to show God’s love to the homeless community of Denver, Colorado.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The Drip Café, located in the Art District on Santa Fe Drive, was birthed out of Sanchez’s vision to support and provide a community for the homeless population in Denver. But because of Sanchez’s Christian beliefs, specifically on marriage, a group of LGBTQ activists has made it their mission to close his café’s doors.
Back in 2012, Sanchez, his late wife Carolyn, and his sister started a ministry called Recycle God’s Love, which began with the three of them passing out sandwiches to the needy in downtown Denver.
“The ministry, Recycle God’s Love, started literally out of the love that we felt from God, through sending Christ to be our Savior,” Sanchez said.
Recycle God’s Love has since grown into an amazing community sharing the love of Christ with up to 400 people at its outreach events.
While the ministry has seen much success, Sanchez said it has also seen its fair share of hardships. In 2018, Sanchez lost his late wife and mother of their two daughters to cancer.
“That was a very trying time, figuring out what God is trying to do in my life essentially,” Sanchez said. “Going through that kind of loss, I could totally understand how I could become homeless, because I went down a pretty dark spiral.”
During that difficult time, Sanchez found himself being ministered to by the very people he had dedicated his life to ministering. The love and support that he received from the homeless community confirmed that God did not want him to forsake the calling on his life.
From there, Sanchez opened The Drip Café as a project of Recycle God’s Love to provide job opportunities, interview skills, resume building, and discipleship to the homeless.
Yet somehow, the idea of a Christian coffeeshop helping the needy did not sit right with some people in the community.
Realizing that The Drip was owned by Recycle God’s Love, an Antifa group started a Reddit forum to formulize a plan to destroy it before it even opened.
“On Recycle God’s Love’s website we have clear statements of our beliefs, and there are Scriptures that we found our ministry on,” Sanchez said. “The fact that we mention homosexuality in there, they kind of used that as their bait to use to get anyone to be against us.”
The Antifa group began creating flyers, posters, banners, pamphlets with rhetoric insinuating that the Drip Café hates the gay community. Then eventually they started organizing regular protests outside of the café, accusing Sanchez of organizing “Nazi Bible studies.”
“Before they would even show up, you would just feel the tension change spiritually,” Sanchez said. “I felt them before they even got here, and that’s how I knew it was spiritual.”
Along with protests, Sanchez has dealt with spray paint on his café’s doors, broken windows, hateful messages, threats, and even accusations that Sanchez is using his late wife’s death as a tool to make people feel sorry for him.
While at first looking at the situation with defeat, the persecution soon turned into an additional way for Sanchez to minister to a new crowd with a different type of need.
“I came to realize that we are called to be fishers of men, and the fact that God would just bring the fish right up to the side of the boat is an opportunity to glorify Him and show people who they really are and who He really is,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez began responding to protests with organized worship and prayer as an opportunity to minister to the very people threatening him and his business.
After learning about this story from a Concerned Women for America Prayer/Action Chapter in Denver, CWA of Colorado State Director Karen Pennington knew that she had to build a partnership with Sanchez and help tell his story.
“This story just really grabbed me on several levels,” Pennington said. “The work I do at CWA follows right along with this because we are all about exercising our rights or we are going to lose them.”
Women from the same Prayer/Action Chapter in Denver have been frequenting the cafe to show their support to Sanchez and his team.
“We bear one another’s burdens by connecting the dots for other people,” Pennington said. “This isn’t just a little story; this story has great depth, great purpose. It has the stamp of God all over it. We connect the dots for others and help them see, this is telling truth to the culture in which we live.”
Want to join CWA in supporting the Recycle God’s Love and The Drip Café?
- Encourage Recycle God’s Love – Send a note of support through their website.
- Support Their Mission – Purchase their coffee to help fund jobs for the homeless through the Café.
- Join in Worship – If you live in the area or can take some time out to make the trip, attend the Praise and Worship gathering on the first Friday of each month at the Café at 869 Santa Fe Dr., Denver, CO 80204.
