Campus ministry’s new coffee shop helps students encounter Christ

(OSV News) -- The Catholic Campus Ministry at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, is starting a new kind of student outreach meant for universities nationwide to replicate: a free coffee shop held at the same time and place as Eucharistic adoration.

“If we can allow students the opportunity to build good community and allow students the opportunity to grow in their relationship with Christ — through prayer, through the sacraments — then I think they’re going to be inspired to go and do awesome things for the Lord in our world,” Chris Hitzelberger, director of Catholic Campus Ministry, told Our Sunday Visitor magazine.

The new initiative, called “Pour Into Others,” will feature a weekly coffee shop in the campus ministry’s Newman House while Eucharistic adoration takes place in a chapel upstairs. The shop will welcome all students, with a particular focus on those who are fallen-away Catholics or not involved in campus ministry. As they enjoy coffee and each other’s company, students will be invited to attend adoration and other ministry events.

The project is beginning this fall after Virginia Tech’s campus ministry received a RISE (Renewal through Innovative Student Evangelization) award of $10,500 from the Associates of St. John Bosco. The Northern Virginia-based non-profit dedicated to helping college students live out their Catholic faith handed out its first-ever RISE awards earlier this year to encourage campus ministries’ creative evangelization efforts.

Three of 13 applicants from 11 schools in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia received a total of $25,000 from the ASJB to fund their projects for the 2025-2026 academic year. The plans for each will be posted to the ASJB’s website so that ministries across the country can replicate them.

“We were looking for innovation, we were looking for creativity, outside-the-box-thinking and also the way that they would use the funds the best,” Danielle Zuccaro, ASJB’s executive director, told Our Sunday Visitor magazine.

In addition to Virginia Tech, the campus ministries at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, also received awards. Catholic University received $12,000 for proposing outdoor Eucharistic adoration during key campus weekends; George Mason received $2,500 to build a student-athlete Catholic community.

Zuccaro called Virginia Tech’s campus ministry project unique and highlighted two aspects of it: a coffee shop where staff or student staff will be trained to engage students with the faith and invite them to other ministry events, as well as the opportunity to simultaneously encounter Christ in adoration.

At Virginia Tech, Hitzelberger said multiple factors inspired the coffee shop, which will take place Wednesdays from 9am to 2pm. He first noticed that many of their students sought places to meet one-on-one, often over a meal or a cup of coffee. He also saw the success of a local Protestant ministry that holds a donation-based coffee shop for students in a church basement.

Those factors inspired the Catholic Campus Ministry to organize a free coffee event for students earlier this year, at the end of last semester. During that event, Hitzelberger was surprised by how many students came, including students who had never been to the ministry’s Newman House before.

When he learned about the opportunity to apply for a RISE award aimed at innovative evangelization efforts, everything clicked, he said.

“I was like, ‘Wait a minute, what if we use this coffee shop idea, but as a way to really draw people to the campus ministry house — where they can build community, where they can see Jesus in the Eucharist, where they can have some time for prayer, and they know that this is a place that’s just set a little bit apart?'”

Among other things, the award money helped them purchase a fancy espresso maker and employ a student barista. They held an initial coffee shop event at the end of August. Their process is a little slower than a traditional coffee shop with industrial equipment, he said, but that works in their favor.

“It kind of forces people to linger,” he said. “So great, you put your order in, then you go sit down — and you sit and talk with somebody.”

They also don’t provide to-go cups, which means students must drink their coffee at the house and spend time with one another in community.

“We’re not … like a business where we’re trying to pump out coffee,” Hitzelberger said. “I think we’re really trying to pump out community.”

At the same time, adoration is held. The ministry is planning to place a sign outside the door, Hitzelberger said. The side facing the way in will welcome students to the coffee shop. The side on the way out will remind students that there’s adoration upstairs.

Hitzelberger said he wants to reach more students and help them feel more connected. He estimates that about 800 students attend Mass on Sunday, with 500 who are relatively involved in campus ministry and 300 who are not. He also estimates that while around 6,000-7,000 people at Virginia Tech were baptized Catholic, only 10% come to Mass on Sunday.

At the same time, Hitzelberger also wants to offer active ministry students a place where they feel comfortable having deeper conversations about their faith.

Zuccaro shared ASJB’s hope for the awardees.

“We want to see creativity and … ingenuity on these campuses so that more and more souls are being reached and not falling through the cracks,” she said.

“Our whole mission has been to try to reach people as far and wide as possible to make sure that they remain in the fold, that they’re being formed, and that they’re going out and being evangelists for the mission of the Church,” she added. “This project (of the RISE awards) is really meant to renew campus evangelization.”