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The Gospel According To Starbucks

Reviewed by Howard Jones.

Leonard Sweet is a preacher, writer and academic with a passion for God, the Church - and coffee at Starbucks. Writing with enthusiasm and humour, no punches are pulled in his observations. He makes an acute comparison between what Starbucks promise and deliver, “an experience that touches all the senses”, with what is encountered in Church, a “conventional, unsatisfying arms-length spiritual life”. It is no surprise to him that there has been phenomenal growth in the Starbucks brand world-wide while the Church is in general decline. A consumerist post-modern culture knows what it wants and knows where to find it.

Sweet challenges and encourages the Church to live life (zwé) as Jesus intended (John 10.10), “flamboyantly and passionately”. He proposes a lifestyle of Christian spirituality that is EPIC - Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich, Connecting - an engagement with God summed up in the subtitle, Living Life with a Grande Passion. Using the ‘Starbucksexperience’, their business philosophy and coffee, he argues a case for a deeper experience of and involvement with God to both celebrate that relationship and provide an authentic spiritual connection and communication for an a post-modern generation. For individual or group reflection and discussion, a Discussion Guide has been included.

Although Sweet has in mind the American culture and church, The Gospel According To Starbucks® is nevertheless relevant to readers in the UK or in any western style society where post-modern emerging culture is evident. Whether we’re baby-boomer believers or contented disciples, Sweet is engaging, stimulating, hopeful and zealous in his challenge for today's Church to “wake up and smell God’s coffee”, review our spiritual condition and move from mundane mediocrity to zwé life that is conspicuously vibrant.