Free Concert Marks 20th Anniversary of Jacob's Well

Editor’s note: We published this story earlier in the week, but here it is again in case you missed it.

Jacob’s Well Christian Coffeehouse will celebrate its 20th anniversary on Friday, Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. in the gorgeous 600-seat circa 1890 sanctuary at Union Church, 3 Elm Street in the Rockville section of Vernon.

Admission is free and dress is casual. The facility is handicapped-accessible.

The anniversary celebration will feature a high-energy concert by John Sines, Jr., a talented country gospel singer from Lynchburg, Virginia. Sines performs at many NASCAR races across the United States, so the celebration will also include the Racing With Jesus Ministries pace car driven by Rockville native and Tolland resident Don Rivers.

The evening will also include a PowerPoint presentation on the history of Jacob’s Well, which held its first coffeehouse featuring singer Lori O’Brien in October of 1995. The coffeehouse was held at Ellington Wesleyan Church for 12 years. During a six-month transition period, it relocated to temporary venues at The Colony Banquet Center in Vernon and the Baymont Motel in Manchester. In April of 2008, it moved to Bev’s Corner Drop-in Center in Rockville, where it has been held for 7-1/2 years. This year, Jacob’s Well launched a second quarterly coffeehouse at MCC on Main in downtown Manchester.

Reminiscing about the past twenty years of coffeehouse ministry, founder and director Drew Crandall said, “If you held a coffeehouse seven nights a week, it would take eight months to have the number of coffeehouses (240) that we’ve had since the beginning. If you added up the attendance for all of these events, the cumulative total would be about 16,000 people which would fill the XL Center in Hartford. I thank God for making this coffeehouse so fruitful for so many years.”

This year, Jacob’s Well launched a second, quarterly coffeehouse at MCC on Main in downtown Manchester. Over the past twenty years, the coffeehouse has helped about 30 new coffeehouses to sprout up in the United States and Canada.

For details and directions, please call 860.871.6500 or visit www.JacobsWellCoffeehouse.com.