Home for the holidays.  That’s where many of us will be, when the turkey is carved this coming Thursday.

It’s a wonderful place to be, at least until family closeness gets just a little too close.  After a few days of togetherness -- by, say, next Sunday, a week from today -- most of us are going to realize that we need to spend some time at a place besides home.

After all, there is only so much turkey you can take.  And I’m not talking about your Uncle Ralph.

Maybe, at the end of the holiday weekend, we’ll be ready to return to the workplace.  If home is our first place, then work is a second place – a place where we spend a great deal of time, a place to practice our vocation and participate in a community of colleagues.

But home and workplace are really not enough.  What most of us need is a “third place” – a place to congregate with neighbors for relaxation and conversation and community support.  This third place can be a country club, a corner pub, a community center, a congregation … or a coffee shop.

You know, a place like Starbucks.     

A coffee executive named Howard Schultz founded Starbucks on the belief that Americans are missing a third place in their lives – a place that his coffeehouses can fill.  While on a business trip to Italy, Schultz discovered that Italians were living a remarkably balanced life.  He was impressed by the passion they brought to their work, their rest, and their enjoyment, and he noticed that a great deal of pleasure was being found in the camaraderie and community of Italy's 200,000 coffee bars.  Because there was nothing similar in the United States, Schultz began to dream of establishing Italian-influenced third places where people could congregate.  He hoped that after the first place of home and the second place of work, Americans would come to consider his coffeehouses to be their third place, a place to experience camaraderie and genuine community.

That’s the Starbucks Principle.  And for many, it seems to be working.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: Why isn’t the church serving as an effective third place for many of our neighbors today?  Why aren’t we creating a community marked by the qualities lifted up by Paul in his letter to the Colossians?  After all, it’s hard to resist “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12).  It’s difficult for people to turn away from “love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (v. 14).  And if we did “everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (v. 17), we’d have a long line outside our door.  It would be like free frappacino day at the Fairfax Starbucks!

Maybe we need to take a look at the Starbucks Principle, and see if a coffeehouse can teach our congregation a lesson or two.  Billy Coburn, writing in the Strategic Adult Ministries Journal, offers some insights into how churches can learn from coffeehouses.

First, we need to take seriously the deep human hunger for a third place.  Howard Schultz has given people an inviting, stimulating, soulful environment; he has offered them a place to enjoy community and camaraderie within the attractively-decorated walls of Starbucks.  Are you we doing the same within the walls of our church?  Are we being inviting, open, and inclusive of all people … or are we behaving in ways that are exclusive and isolationist?

Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  These qualities are irresistible, and they should fill the air of our congregation, like the intoxicating aroma of freshly-ground coffee beans.  Our mission statement, which appears at the top of every Sunday bulletin, reminds us that we have been chosen by God to be a “Community of Faith” – not a business or a building or a social club.  Community is what attracts people to us, people like the 12 new members joining us today, and the quality of our community should continue to be a focus for us.

Second, we are challenged to remember that “everything matters.”  Everything … matters. Starbucks pays attention to detail, and it desperately wants to meet people's needs for enjoyment.  It’s hard to have a bad experience at Starbucks, given the quality coffee, tasty snacks, lovely décor, and comfortable chairs.  About the only people that don’t enjoy the experience are the owners of other coffee shops – Starbucks is driving them right out of business!

Fortunately, for us, we don’t have to worry about competition.  There is an almost unlimited supply of people who are in the market for an experience of quality community.  We don’t have to be in competition with the Baptists or Episcopalians down the street, since the majority of Americans today don’t attend ANY church in a given week.  The challenge for us is to remember that “everything matters,” and to draw new people in by caring about their needs and focusing on a broad spectrum of Christian concerns.

“ Bear with one another,” advises Paul, but also “forgive each other” (v. 13).  Both are important, not just one or the other.  “Clothe yourselves with love,” he recommends, and also “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (vv. 14-15).  Everything matters in a quality Christian community, not just one issue or concern.  Forbearance, forgiveness, love, peace – all are going to be noticed by people looking for a third place, and all are worthy of our attention.  The good news is that we don’t have to go looking for these qualities, because we have already been given them by Jesus Christ.  “Forgive each other just as the Lord has forgiven you,” says Paul.  Love your neighbors just as Christ has loved you; share peace in the same way that Jesus has given you peace.  We have these qualities in abundance because we have been given them by Jesus – this challenge is simply to share them with others.  

Third, we need to extend the church into the marketplace.  Notice that Starbucks cafes aren't located in isolated areas, but instead they are always placed in the middle of the marketplace in high volume areas.  Drive through a congested area, and you are going to run into a Starbucks, guaranteed – sometimes two or three.  Like it or not, they are taking over.

Now it’s true that we can’t easily lift our Sanctuary off its foundation and move it down the block to a more visible location.  But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be more conspicuous and involved in the world.  One effort that we are making this Christmas season is to send out several thousand postcards to our neighbors, inviting them to Christmas Eve worship.  And in these cards we are focusing on our glorious Christmas music, remembering that the apostle Paul advises us to “sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God” (v. 16).

Paul encourages us to sing to God, and this is something that the marketplace is anxious for us to do.  Now it’s certainly true that our neighbors are looking for guidance about difficult and thorny issues, everything from raising teenagers to responding to terrorism, so we need to continue to offer quality educational programs.  But at the same time, our neighbors crave music.  Our chaotic modern lifestyle often smothers all the signs of grace and beauty in the world, so it’s important for us to sing, offer concerts, put together instrumental ensembles, and host music camps for children.  In all these ways, we inject some beauty into an often dark and dismal world.

Fourth, and finally, we are challenged to care deeply about community.  We shouldn’t simply care about church attendance figures and the maintenance of this institution.  Our calling is to care about the creation of community, and about the filling of needs that people may not even be aware they have.  Our mission statement says that we are sent to “experience the Christ who connects us to God and one another.”  That’s a deep-seated need -- a need that I have, and that each of us has -- the need to be connected to God, and connected to one another.  Until these connections are made, made in a place such as this community of faith, we are going to feel disconnected and adrift. 

At the very center of these connections is Jesus Christ, the one who links us to God and one another.  “Whatever you do,” writes Paul to the Colossians, “in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (v. 17).  If we do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, we will surely meet the needs of our neighbors, because our neighbors are desperately in need of Jesus Christ.  Whether they can articulate it or not, they have a hunger for Jesus in their lives – they long for Immanuel, God with us, the One Eternal God in human form.  They need a Savior to bring them forgiveness and new life, and a Lord to lead them through the twists and turns of daily existence.  What they require, whether they realize it or not, is a community of Christ-followers that can function as their third place, because only a community centered on Christ can help them to make sense of their first two places, their homes and their workplaces.

What a mission we have before us.  In the holiday season to come, we’re challenged to give our neighbors an adventure of hope and discovery – an adventure centered not on coffee, but on Jesus Christ.  We can do this through respecting the human hunger for a third place, remembering that everything matters, extending the church into the marketplace, and always caring about community.  (Billy Coburn, "Cafes of community: the Starbucks principle," Strategic Adult Ministries Journal [Vol 18, No 5, Issue 145], 8-9)

We won’t need coffee grounds.  Instead, we’ll require only a grounding in Christ, a reliance on the One who came to Earth at Christmas to meet our deepest human needs.
That will provide a level of customer satisfaction that no Starbucks can ever reach.  Amen.

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