As Campus Kitchens and other thought-leaders in the poverty community gear up for Hungry for Justice: Social, Economic, Environmental – a collaboration between Baylor University’s Poverty Summit and The Campus Kitchens Project – one café quietly continues to feed the Waco, Texas residents and build community, one plate of food at a time.

Gospel Café builds on the idea of pay-what-you-can restaurants as a means for feeding everyone, regardless of his or her financial status. Those who can afford more can give more money for their meal to make up for those who can afford less.

Café’s like Gospel – which sprung out of CrossTies Church and is housed in a blue and white Victorian on 10th and Cleveland in Waco – are heating up ovens across the nation to ease the growing hunger need. Just take the Panera store in St. Louis made into a non-profit café or a pioneer of the movement: SAME (So All May Eat) in Denver.

At Café Gospel, they’re working to feed a population with a 28 percent poverty rate. But it doesn’t seem to deter staff and students from neighboring Baylor University from joining in on the family-style lunch. An article published in The Lariat Online in 1999 highlighted several staff who made weekly visits to the café.

One faculty member explained: “It is very good home-cooked food, usually with three or four entrees to choose from.”

A post on the Bread for the World blog highlighted some of the community interaction that goes on inside Gospel café, which is open from 11:30 to 1:30 p.m. daily for lunch.

Sherry Castello, one of the café founders, wrote: “We marvel about the people God has called to minister with us in unexpected capacities: a nurse practitioner who felt drawn to begin the free medical clinic, a psychologist who wanted to begin working at the café one afternoon a week, a woman eager to help us begin Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous groups…”

The welcoming eatery has clearly impacted many since it opened in 1995, and is helping to start the ebb to the flow of poverty in Waco with a simple plate of nutritious food. Hopefully, the minds (young and old) behind Hungry for Justice will continue that ebb, in Waco and across the nation.

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