Narrow Gate Artisans is throwing a free family night on Friday, July 31, from 7 to 10 p.m. at 1500 Herbert Lewis Drive in Columbia. Popcorn, cotton candy, balloon art, a food truck, coffee, and a movie on the big screen, all free, no tickets required. Bring a blanket or a lawn chair.
What most people pulling in for the evening may not realize is what stands behind the name. Narrow Gate is a working title straight out of Scripture. "Enter through the narrow gate," Jesus said in Matthew 7. "For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." That verse is where the name comes from, and it says a great deal about what this business is actually trying to do.
Narrow Gate Coffee is a specialty coffee roaster, not a café. What they sell is the beans and grounds themselves, roasted on site and shipped out or sold in bag form, not a cup poured across a counter. Roasting is the trade. But the coffee is only one piece of a larger mission. Narrow Gate Coffee, along with sister businesses Narrow Gate Leather and Narrow Gate Woodworks, is the working arm of Narrow Gate Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded sixteen years ago by Bill and Stacy Spencer. As the foundation puts it, Narrow Gate holds to a single core purpose: to invest its resources for the Glory of God by making disciples of Jesus. As a nonprofit dedicated to educating, inspiring, and empowering Christian discipleship, it equips and trains young men, develops business discipleship platforms, and serves the Church locally and globally.
That mission plays out through Narrow Gate Lodge, a tuition-free, eight-month residential discipleship program on 122 acres of Tennessee countryside for young men ages 18 to 25 who are looking for direction. More than 435 young men have been through the program, built on wilderness living, hard work, biblical study, and hands-on trade apprenticeship in leathercraft, woodworking, and coffee roasting. Every bag of coffee roasted, every piece of leather stitched, every board planed is part of that discipleship, young men learning a trade and growing in their faith at the same time.
Friday night's event does not ask anyone to know any of that going in. It is simply a free night out for families, under the stars. But for a business built on the conviction that ordinary work can carry eternal purpose, that may be exactly the point.
Sources: Narrow Gate Artisans, Facebook. Narrow Gate Coffee, "Our Story." Narrow Gate Foundation. Belmont University News & Media. Matthew 7:13-14.