The Gospel According to Starbucks
Colorado Springs
BV4501.3.S93 2007
ISBN #978-1-57856-649-5
Leonard Sweet is professor of evangelism at Drew Theological School Madison , New Jersey
Normally I tend to outline a book and make notes on it chapter by chapter. I simply can’t do it with this book. Now I know why I got it off the discount bin for $4.95. Leonard Sweet is obviously a brilliant man and a passionate and creative writer. His knowledge of such a wide variety of history, art, and pop culture shows not only his intelligence, but also his wealth of graduate assistants to do research for him. Sweet is one of those rare souls who can take almost any two isolated ideas or objects and draw a connection between them. It is right brained thinking to the extreme.
I’m not sure what Sweet’s main purpose in writing this book is. Perhaps he found Starbucks to be the perfect vehicle to describe the EPIC acronym. More likely, he spends an inordinate amount of time at Starbucks, saw the connection between the two and simply couldn’t resist putting it on paper. Such is the curse of creativity. It just has to come out.
Sweet’s idea of EPIC is well known. It stands for Experiential, Participatory, Image-Rich, and Connective. This has become a mantra for the emergent, emerging, postmodern, and all related categories churches. I must admit that while the EPIC acronym does make some sense to me, I find it difficult to delineate the differences between Experiential, Participatory, and Connective, particularly between the last two. Yes, I can see some differences, but even in Sweet’s discourse in the book, some of the same ideas seemed to pop up over and over again.
Indeed, Starbucks did help me see and somewhat understand the EPIC idea better. Sweet devotes two chapters to each element. The first chapter is each duo deals with how Starbucks illustrates or uses the element. The second chapter relates more to how the church (or more accurately, Christianity) can learn from and appropriate the element.
Is it useful? Hard to say. It could be the starting point for some helpful discussions among church staff and leaders. Sweet even provides two sets of discussion starters. Some are imbedded in the chapters. The others are in an appendix written by Edward Hammet from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Both sets tend toward a “touchy-feely” examination of the group navel. (Ok, maybe that’s just my take on it). In any case, the discussions will have to drive through (or around) Sweet’s many, many interesting and distracting illustrations.
Should you buy it? If you can find it on the bargain rack for $4.95 or less…definitely.
Introduction: The Brew of the Soul
Your
Spiritual Life on Drip
1. Reading a Starbuck’s Cup
Why
Spirituality Is Going to Pot
2. Life on an EPIC Scale
Choose
the Spiritual Life You Can Taste
3. Drinking In the Starbucks Experience
Epic:
Starbucks Is Experiential
4. The Gospel in an Experiential Cup
Living at
the Intersection of Faith and Irresistible Experience
5. Life Is Empty Until You Join In
ePic: Starbucks Is Participatory
6. The Gospel in a Participatory Cup
Get Fully Immersed in What God Is Doing
7. Brands as Image Statements
epIc: «bux Is Image Rich
8. The Gospel in an Image Rich Cup
God
Speaks in More than Just Words
9. Your Undeniable Thirst for Connection
epiC: Starbucks is
Connective
10. The Gospel in a Connective Cup
Connecting Like St
11. Epilogue: Jehovah Java
The epilogue is a somewhat contrived and truncated history of coffee. Like the rest of the book, it doesn’t seem to really make much of a point other than that of being an interesting bit of right-brained connection to coffee.
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