What I Learned from Starbucks-Prt 1
Grande coffee in a venti cup with 2 pumps hazelnut, 2 pumps vanilla, 2 pumps caramel, 2 equals and 4 sweet and lows filled to the top with cream, with extra cream on the side, double cupped with no sleeve, a stir stick, and a stopper put in the top
1. I loved the fact the Howard Schultz identified writing as a way to connect with the other people at Starbucks. He writes, ”Writing helped me stay in touch with myself as well as our people, and I resurrected one of my favorite modes of communication: composing frequent memos to Starbuck’s partners.” I hope you know that this is what I do every week via WorshipNotes. It helps me stay in touch with myself and with you.
2. He identifies a coffee house as a “3rd place” and I think the same applies for churches. A 3rd place is not your home and it’s not where you work. It’s a “social yet personal environment between one’s house and job, where people can connect with others and reconnect with themselves” (13) and I would add that in the church we also are able to reconnect with God, our maker, redeemer and restorer.
3. When he talks about merchants he has a great perspective on how the ordinary can point us to the extraordinary. Again he writes, ”We take the ordinary – a shoe, a knife – and give it new life, believing that what we create has the potential to touch others’ lives because it touched ours.” Later he says something similar except he points out that we take the ordinary and “infuse it with emotion and meaning” and then we tell the same story over and over and over again…This is the goal of believer artists. I am not extraordinary. And no offense, but you aren’t extraordinary either! We work with soundboards, instruments, mics, music, props, costumes, projectors, computers…this things are just ordinary things. Most of what we use isn’t even cutting edge technology. But we give them a new life, emotion and meaning that points to the creator. We believe that this story that we tell over and over and over again has the power to touch others’ lives because it touched ours. Not through anything we do. We are ordinary. But because of who he is…he is an extraordinary God.
4. ”We are genuinely interested in educating our customers.” (11) That’s a big part of why ECC exists. We are a teaching church because we believe that you need to have basic knowledge of God to be in a right relationship with him. We also believe that ”…knowledge can breed passion…” (78) It’s not always true, but when you know the truth…it will set you free and that is inspiring.
5. We have talked about the need to work on our talent/craft because it is a God-given gift and something we try to offer back to him in worship. We’ve also talked about how people will know quickly if we are true or false. Shultz identifies these two key ingredients when he writes ”…quality and transparency are prerequisites to participating.” (20) We must work to hone our craft to remove distractions and we must do this with transparency or you might say authenticity.
6. As I was reading Onward, I was struck by this quote because it reminded me of the importance of you, our volunteers. ”Our partners’ attitude and actions have such great potential to make our customers feel something.” (117) We do want to educate people who attend ECC, but a big part of what we do as believer artists is help those people connect their head knowledge with their heart’s emotion. We can’t just sing the truth. We have to sing the truth as if it is life itself and is the most important thing to us. So important that it’s changed our lives and we believe EVERYONE needs to experience that same transformation.
This isn’t scripture. These are just some thoughts from a book that I found inspiring…and I don’t think it was just the caffeine coursing through my veins! It was a chance to re-envision what we do and also realize that we are doing so many things right. The most right thing being that we are working to help people learn HIS WORD so we can apply it to OUR WALK. Next week…we’ll order a
