WHY NOT STARBUCKS

Most Sundays now I am doing supply ministry at St. Stephen’s in East Liverpool, Ohio. It’s a leisurely forty-five minute derive along the Ohio River. Arlena and I leave in time to get to the 10:00 Eucharist. We have to pass through Beaver, PA on the way. As it usually happens, we get stopped by a red light at the intersection of Third Street and College Avenue: right in front of the local Starbucks. 

When the weather is warm, dozens of people are congregating around the outside tables drinking their lattes or espressos or whatever it is they ordered. Invariably I am tempted to stop the car, go over to the assembled congregation and tell them they should be in church and not at Starbucks. I don’t, of course. Even with my collar on they would think I had lost my mind or was some sort of crazy preacher – neither of which is true, if I must say so myself.

Yet I would not be wrong in asserting that they should not be congregating at Starbucks but, rather, at a local congregation of their choice, even one of those mega churches that serve their own Starbucks coffee which you’re allowed to bring with you to the service. What Starbucks lacks and what each and every one of us needs is a community of people who will be there with us when we need them most and they need us most, for being part of a worshipping community is being part of a support group.

That is becoming even more and more important these days when people gather together and yet are not in community or communication, at least not with the people around them. When we are stopped for that light and I look over at those gathered around the tables, half of them are on their phones not even conversing with the people sitting at the same table.

The sad part is that when they truly need a support group, people who will walk with them and hold their hands and get them through the rough times, the Starbucks crowd only have their cups of coffee and cell phones. I say this not from a clerical point of view but from a human point of view. When those rough days came along in Arlena’s and my lives, we knew where to turn. At times others turned to us even before we turned to them because they were part of our lives and still are.

The even sadder part of all this is that all too often people do not know what they are missing until it is too late, when they do not know where to turn for help or to whom. The Starbucks crowd will not be of any assistance because they don’t know them and they don’t know any of them, at least not well enough to ask for help. That is not the case when people are part of a church community.

Maybe I should stop. Start out earlier and let them know what I have found and tell them why not Starbuck but rather why one of the churches right around the corner.