J.R. Briggs

Starbucks Via + the challenge for the Church

October 15, 2009

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Lance Ford is the director of Shapevine, an online missional learning portal. Shapevine partners with Biblical Seminary on a few projects and a few months ago I was invited by Biblical faculty to have dinner with Lance and Alan Hirsch. Those guys do fantastic work -and they’re hilarious. Lance wrote a reflection in Shapevine’s most recent e-newsletter this week. It’s a  challenging reflection worth sharing:

I just tried the new Starbucks Via. It’s the Java King’s foray into the instant coffee market. I was surprised by how good it actually was, though I doubt I will ever buy any. I was given a free sample a few days ago. Several years ago I read the book by Starbucks (re-founder) Howard Schultz—Pour Your Heart Into It. It was a passionate read that took the reader into the genesis of his vision for Starbucks. There was tons of sincere meaning and depth to his ideas for community and gathering space. At the time (10 years ago) Starbucks had about 1,000 stores. Over the last year or so Starbucks has closed almost that many stores in the U.S. alone. According to Wikipedia there are something like 16,000 Starbucks stores today. Looking back at Schultz’s book it’s kind of sad to see that his passion as a coffee purest was absorbed by the unbridled pursuit for growth and expansion.

Schultz was the first person I had heard speak of Third Places and it turned me onto Ray Oldenburg and several other pundits for community. The Third Place concept is lost at Starbucks, though the coffee is still good. And instant coffee? Read Schultz’s book and tell me what he thought about instant coffee back then.

I can’t help but see parallels here with our contemporary church scene. Pastors and church planters must be constantly recalibrating back to the roots of the original Jesus movement lest we become consumed by the pursuit of expansion, leaving true missional community in the wake of instant churchanity.

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