Do You Remember the Yellow Deli?

The early ‘70s would not have been such a special time in the Chattanooga area without The Yellow Deli. Remember those luscious fruit salads, great sandwiches, fresh salads, and homemade desserts? There was something about the warm and rustic atmosphere that drew people like a magnet. It became an important part of the lives of so, so many Chattanoogans back in those days. Fond memories linger on…

And who can forget that catchy little slogan at the bottom of the hand-drawn Yellow Deli menu that proudly announced, “We serve the fruit of the Spirit... Why not ask?” It was not so much a boast as a matter of fact. Somehow God’s love had been communicated to our hearts in such a way that all we wanted to do was pass on that love, joy, and peace spoken of in the New Testament. Though at the time, a good restaurant and spiritual concepts seemed to have little in common, but for “the Yellow Deli people” it was the perfect combination. For us, it was somehow like the “treasure hidden in a field,” and the “pearl of great value”… it was a salvation that had a practical outworking and not just a Sunday-go-to-meeting mentality. Our Savior meant everything to us, so working together to serve the best food in the best atmosphere, with all of our hearts, seemed a normal response. The fruit of the Spirit was produced naturally from the good tree of happy believers working together.

That was the motive in the hearts of Gene and Marsha Spriggs when they opened the first Yellow Deli on Brainerd Road in May of 1973. They wanted to have a place where people from all walks of life could come into the deli and touch a living demonstration of God’s love in those who served them. They created a warm, informal atmosphere in this 24-hours-a-day café where the people of Chattanooga could come anytime and feel welcome and enjoy good food and friendship. Many still carry fond memories of their times at the Yellow Deli, because it was more than just food… it was an experience of the heart that they enjoyed there, and times like that are not easily forgotten.

It all started in East Ridge in a simple little house on Ringgold Road. We hung a sign above the front door saying, “The Light House.” We had the hope that in the darkness of our troubled society, we could reach out with the pure love of God we had found like a beacon of light to lost people in the midst of a storm. We understood little more than this in the early ‘70s when we began. We were young and small and not so powerful, but our love and zeal for our Savior was strong. We wanted to share this love with everyone we saw. We sought out other Christians with whom to fellowship. We visited many local churches, and when we moved our home from East Ridge to a neighborhood near the UTC campus, we ended up going to First Presbyterian Church, which was just down the street. We called our new home the “Vine House.”

We were convinced that the love of Jesus could change the world if people could just see it being lived out in reality on a daily basis. We had a burning desire to see that love even heal the strife and division we were seeing between the Christian churches we grew up in. In our midst at the Vine House, we continued to try to be obedient to the commands of Christ in reality. Sadly, it felt as if our uncompromising stand began to drive a wedge between us and those who preferred a life of compromise. Many people who encountered us at the Yellow Deli commented that they saw us like a breath of fresh air, something new and genuine, and many were being saved.

At that time, we were still attending First Presbyterian Church every Sunday and went to “727” (their potluck fellowship) every Wednesday night. Though we recognized the obvious distinction between our simple zeal and the more elaborate religious structure of the established church, we continued trying to reach out to the sincere in that church and hoped that healing could spread to the Body of Christ throughout Chattanooga. We could sense that God wanted to stir up His people and restore something that had been lost in the first church in Jerusalem long ago.

But as time went on, we sensed that there was something holding people back from having the same “sold-out” zeal we had found. We knew from our Savior’s own words that the greatest hindrance to giving a hundred percent to God comes when we love the world or the things of this world. We groped and struggled to understand whether this was somehow the cause for so many who profess faith to be so very lukewarm. But then, on January 12, 1975, came a turning point for us. When we arrived at the church we had been attending for the evening service, the door was locked and there was a sign saying: “There will be no evening service this Sunday because of the Super Bowl.”

Shocked and confused, we sadly returned home. What could this mean? What could be more important than worshiping our God? We had thought that everyone in the church really loved our heavenly Father, but the Apostle John wrote, “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”1 Additionally, James wrote that friendship with the world is hostility toward God.2 Wasn’t the Super Bowl a thing of the world? Could it be a prime example of what the Apostle John warned about at the end of his letter? “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”3

It wasn’t just a matter of a one-day event. Church being canceled for the Super Bowl revealed to us that the affairs of the world were more important than the fellowship of the saints, than building the church to be the witness of Christ that Paul had in his heart when he wrote Ephesians 4:11-16. At that point, we quit going to church and started being the church. Like a baby eagle set free to fly, we found it liberating to just be “simple believers” who could daily live out our faith, rather than trying to spend our time trying to justify the religious system with its many contradictions. Intellectuals can quickly disqualify the faith proclaimed by the Son of God by merely pointing out the half-hearted lifestyle of those who claim to be His followers. We wanted nothing to do with that kind of belief, and hoped to live a daily life of faith that would prove to the world that God really did send His Son.4

From that point on, our road was not clearly marked for us. We began to feel a bit like pioneers forging a path that had long been overgrown since the early church days. We didn’t want to be just one more division in an already hopelessly divided system of Christianity. We trusted in God’s love and we knew that He would lead us and reveal Himself to us as we walked this way.