I gave my life to Christ at the end of 2023, a little more than a year after opening the coffee shop. I believed in God for years and, in my own way, was living to serve God, but when I finally went back to church and committed to serving, not some nameless, faceless "God" but Jesus...there's no other way to describe what happened other than to say that He started working miracles in every area of my life. He redeemed my relationship with my (now) wife. He gave me a new heart, as promised in Ezekiel 36:26-27, allowing me to experience empathy, compassion, and forgiveness where I previously harbored nothing but judgement, disgust, and resentment. He changed me, and He changed my life. He made me a better man - a real man - a better husband, friend, brother, leader, and person. As you can imagine, I want to share this newfound freedom with everyone. I want to shout it from the rooftops! I seriously considered just selling the coffee company and becoming a full-time missionary for Christ but God, in all his wisdom, said to me: "hang on now - look at all the ministry work to be done here in your community, and what better place to start than in this coffee shop?"From that day forward, I started thinking of and operating the coffee shop as a ministry rather than a traditional for-profit business. Our ministry work aims to capture the young adult community here in St. Louis and has 3 primary areas of focus:

1. Fostering young adult relationships that honor & glorify God through education, mentorship, and the presence of role models
2. Honoring God through self-care - eating healthy, exercising regularly, etc 
3. Embodying a spirit of service

In short, we're working really hard to make living as a God-fearing Christian - the way that Jesus calls us to - cool. We started hosting a bi-weekly bible study a few months ago and in our most recent one we had just over 200 young adults show up to learn about how the Bible calls us to live. We have a run club that gets together every week. We host events called "Omen Socials" that are Christian social events with the intention of reshaping the way our young adult community thinks about socializing. We've organized neighborhood trash pick-ups, volunteered to spend time with some of the local disenfranchised youth, hosted "coffee with a cop" in the heart of the city that started the "defund the police" movement, and truly this is only just the beginning of our mission to save the whole city of St. Louis.One of my everyday prayers is "Lord, whatever you're doing, I just want to be a part of it." And, although I may not fully understand what He's doing, He's made it abundantly clear that He's doing something incredible here in St. Louis, through this coffee shop, and if you feel a yearning to be a part of what He's doing the same way that I do, I want to invite you to be a part of it. 

- Mark Joe Owner, Omen Coffee Company President, Save St. Louis (Non-profit)