The Christian Study Center (CSC) with Pascal’s Coffeehouse has been a staple of community, craft and hospitality in downtown Gainesville for 25 years and will host a weekend of events from Oct. 9-11 to celebrate the occasion.
Often referred to as “the living room of Gainesville,” the study center located at 112 NW 16th St. has provided years of free studies, lectures and resources for students and regular residents, Christian or not, to explore and grow in the Christian faith tradition.
Anabel White, CSC’s Director of Advancement, said the anniversary events aim to give a weekend of connection, refreshment and Christ-centered thoughtfulness to attendees by reflecting on the past 25 years and engaging with its mission for more.
One $25 ticket includes four different lectures, five meals, excursions around Gainesville, such as to the Harn Museum of Art, and a concert featuring singer-songwriter Jess Ray, at Christ Community Church (1603 SW 122nd St).
CSC leaders will deliver lecture topics touching on the medical profession, challenges of an Augustinian vision, study centers and the renewal of Christian learning and the wisdom of paradoxical thinking.
Childcare will be provided for the lectures, concert and closing banquet and registration for the event closes on Saturday, Sept. 20.
“We really wanted to mark this milestone in a big way to express our gratitude for the many people who have made this place possible, and we really want to show honor to God as he’s who we’re ultimately seeking in all of this,” said White. “We want everyone to register, whether you’ve been involved for 25 years or just 25 days.”
When CSC’s founder, Jay Lynch, and his wife, Laura, moved from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Gainesville for UF’s medical school, they carried with them a vision they’d seen and been formed by at the University of Virginia’s Center for Christian Study.
The Charlottesville location pioneered the CSC movement 50 years ago, modeling how a place could use hospitality, conversation and authentic relationships to integrate the Christian faith with a university’s academic life.
It has since inspired a wave of nearly 40 others to open in academic communities across the country, including at Yale University, Cornell University and as far west as Arizona State University. In 2000, the Lynchs teamed up with a few other Christian academics to open Gainesville’s CSC as a non-profit out of the former Chaucer’s Restaurant building.
“They realized that UF could be really well served by having a place where there could be an ongoing conversation about how the Christian tradition can shape the life of the university in ways that would be enriching and also potentially challenging,” White said.
As independent organizations, White said each CSC can tend to the unique needs and styles of the college campuses they’re on.
For Gainesville, the emphasize falls on seven areas of inquiry for educational initiatives, including Technology & the Human, Faith & Vocation, Arts & Creativity, Higher Education & the University, Moral & Spiritual Formation, Self & Society and Creation Care & Sustainability.
White said the CSC leans into guest lecturers, intensive study cohorts, like the Walker Percy Fellows program, and classes rotating through theological and cultural topics. No matter how the programming shifts each semester, she said there’s one constant the CSC emphasizes providing through them all: food.
“We think that we are whole people with minds, bodies, souls and hearts,” White said. “So, we want to care for people in body by providing amazing, remarkable food, as well as offering really intellectually stimulating teaching.”
Out of all the other CSC locations, White said Gainesville’s CSC is the only one also serving up lattes and espressos with a coffee shop.
Named for the French Catholic writer and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, the CSC opened Pascal’s Coffeehouse in 2004 to further its mission of hospitality. Pascal’s partners with local Resident Coffee Roasters to supply the coffee beans for its menu and trains college students who work at the shop with moral and spiritual skills through its Barista Fellows program.
White, a 2023 UF and Barista Fellows alumni, said the hospitality of loving diverse neighbors is the heartbeat of what CSC and Pascal’s has been and aims to continue doing.
“We love engaging people who aren’t following Christ and want to provide a space that is really intellectually hospitable,” she said. “For the students, faculty and community members that are already walking with Christ, we hope that this would be a place where they’re formed in the virtues, in the likeness of Christ, that they would be building their character and their imagination.”
Tickets to the Gainesville CSC’s 25th anniversary weekend can be purchased on the organization’s website.
More information about the ongoing programs can be also be found online, on the center’s Instagram page or on flyers posted at the building.
