BREWING FOR JESUS

Ebenezers, a new coffee house opened on Capitol Hill. (So what, there are a million Starbucks in DC?) Well this one serves lattes and espressos with a Jesus kick. A creme of holy trinity. What's going on is that the National Community Church has opened a coffee shop by Union Station at 201 F Street NE.


The building originally housed a dinner that was opened in 1908 by a German immigrant. By the 1950's, the dinner went out of business and, by the 1970's, the property was abandoned. After nearly "a quarter century of neglect," the building was restored and turned into "one of the largest and nicest coffeehouses in the nation's capital," says Mark Batterson, lead pastor of the church. The decor features postcard tabletops and train tracks in the slate floor.

This is not the first unusual effort by the NCC to spread the word in a new fangled way. In addition to services held in movie theaters in Ballston and at Union Station, the church has a blog, a website and offers podcasts. Generally, the church uses clever and high-tech sounding language to express their belief that the Christian bible should be taken literally. They offer "eye and ear candy" and talk of the their core beliefs in terms of DNA. No idea on where they stand on evolution.

DC Bubble believes that diversity is a great thing. In fact, it's the best part of city living. While we get a little hot under the collar with the part of their message that says one must share their religious views or go to hell, we say live and let live.

In fact, we're going go get cup of Joe. Scratch that a cup of Jesus.

WN-WIN-WIN RESTAURANT SWITCH. Ann Cashion's Johnny on the Half Shell moving to Capitol Hill to fill the La Coline space at 400 North Capitol St. NW, and Montmartre is opening a second location at Johnny's space at 2002 P St. NW, says the WaBizJour. We lose a stodgy French restaurant, a better one expands and Capitol Hill gets a stylish place for fun fare.