A Starbucks episode….wow…

Ξ December 17th, 2008 | → 10 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |

I love working in my local Starbucks, because there really is nothing like living a social experiment each day listening to people and loving people even if it is through just sitting and listening to other people, but I just witnessed and event that I wish I could tell most of the Christian world.

A lady just walked into the Starbucks and got the attention of the barista working the drive-through and handed him a Lee Strobel book, telling him that she bought him the book and wanted him to read it and then after he was done reading it to throw it away or give it to someone else it did not matter. And she reminded him that he told her something in the drive through that made her think of the book and she wanted him to read it.

Well, the immediate answer of the guy was, “I’ve already read it.”
she responded, “Oh well did you like it?”
after a short but awkward pause he said,”Well, he makes an OK argument, but your assuming that I am not already a Christian!”
And with that the lady felling a little embarrassed told him then he could give the book to someone else, and went as fast as she could out the door with out running into a dead sprint, heh.

This is a perfect example how the church has forgotten how to relate with the world that we find ourselves in. This well meaning lady, thought she was doing such a great thing for Christ by expecting a book to do all the work that the example of Christ wanted his followers to do. She did not have a relationship with this guy, she only knew him from the drive-through of a Starbucks, and she had not earned the right for him to listen to anything she said. It was a modified version of handing out a tract that “explains” the gospel and expects a sheet of paper to develop relationship with them and then some how the Holy Spirit will take over for them, and the problem of the Christian ghetto continues, huddled in the corners and seem to be getting smaller and smaller.

I then over heard the guy telling a co-worker that he used to attend a church that ran him out when he started to get serious about his discipleship and asked hard questions about Jesus and the Bible. And when the hard questions started to go past the “tried and true answers” he no longer felt like anyone wanted to join him in his traveling discovery of the Jesus he read about and how the words of that man/God are lived out and misunderstood by the world and his followers.

Please I beg of all of you, do not expect a billboard, tract, or Roman Road to replace what God desires of all of you…. build relationships and develop community!!!! Just do it and sit back and watch God and you start to develop community, relationships, and presence in this new way to be human.