The Gospel According to Starbucks: Living with a Grande Passion

by Leonard Sweet

Leonard Sweet shows you how the passion that Starbucks(R) has for creating an irresistible experience can connect you with God's stirring introduction to the experience of faith in The Gospel According to Starbucks.

You don't stand in line at Starbucks (R) just to buy a cup of coffee. You stop for the experience surrounding the cup of coffee.

Too many of us line up for God out of duty or guilt. We completely miss the warmth and richness of the experience of living with God. If we'd learn to see what God is doing on earth, we could participate fully in the irresistible life that he offers.

You can learn to pay attention like never before, to identify where God is already in business right in your neighborhood. The doors are open and the coffee is brewing. God is serving the refreshing antidote to the unsatisfying, arms-length spiritual life-and he won't even make you stand in line.

Genres: Christian, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology, Leadership, Spirituality, Christian Living

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 2007

About the author

Leonard I. Sweet is an author, preacher, scholar, and ordained United Methodist clergyman currently serving as the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School, in Madison, New Jersey; and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University in Portland, Oregon.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those books that has a few great passages, but the vast majority of the text can otherwise be skimmed. The main thrust of the book is that the Christian life must be experienced through tactile senses, expressions of hospitality and an EPIC passion. These ideas are thought-provoking, but the book lacks concrete application to the individual life. I got tired of all the talk about Starbucks and why that company is so great.

Here's one of the best passages in the book:

“Authentic Christian experience is not playing praise music on your car radio or placing your body in a pew to listen to a sermon. Authentic Christian experience is the process of establishing provenance, of growing into Christ. The world is not impressed that people attend church on Sunday morning. If anything, such a habit is viewed as a quaint waste of time. But imagine if every Christian in the world were living as a little Christ. Such provenance is not just a passionate transforming experience for the Christian; it’s also a tantalizing expression of the gospel to the outside world. Starbucks opens stores on the opposite street corners because of the draw of passion and authentic experience. But what is the draw of Christian faith if that faith is not practiced and experienced?”—Leonard Sweet, The Gospel According to Starbucks, 2007

[Brenda Register · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rocked my narrow mind and set me free. Read it, you won't want to put it down. It kicks out any idea of being religious so you can have the liberty Jesus came to give us. We were born to be creative. The ability to be creative, not get stuck in man's traditions and the non-thinking status-quo, links us to others in revealing the important puzzle piece we are. The book was in the Borders bargain bin for $4. It was no accident that I picked it up. Like picking up a Geode in the desert, and cracking it open to find colorful treasure inside. I went back for more copies when I realized what I had, and they were all gone. I love the church, but the religious mindsets of man have to go, to make way for a higher life of liberty, getting rid of the idea that man can qualify man. On the contrary, God qualifies those He calls, and man or women was never given dominion over another man or women. I am a lover and devourer of the Word of God, and this man of God, Leonard Sweet, has blessed us with a tool to remember it was for freedom, that Christ came, setting the captives free. Churches don't create captives, people have forgotten who they are. They have forgotten to be creative, and lead, instead of follow. This book helps pave a way to the possibilities, using a modern day analogy of the Starbucks cafe's. It is very creative, and a way to give a word picture you will remember. Sweet brought me right into the cafe, with my hands around a hot grande vanilla latte, smelling the robust coffee grounds in the air and sitting on the edge of my seat, listening with my whole person. I totally enjoyed it. I would read it again and I highly recommend it. Great Christmas gift of small price, and a priceless result.

[Courtney Mosier Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall this is a decent book. I honestly got more out of it as a book about starting my own coffee shop than I did for spiritual growth. I think there were a lot of great one-liners but it needed more fleshing out. Good book to read if you want to develop community spaces around coffee...but not as great for Christian thought.

[DT · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the other reviewers that there were certain chunks in this book that are quite powerful, but the rest is kind of fluffy. The Starbucks analogy is kind of weak, and it’s like he tried to fill up pages just by going on random rants about coffee.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

SWEET USES THE STARBUCKS COMPANY TO ILLUSTRATE A PATH FOR THE CHURCH

Leonard Sweet is an ordained Methodist minister, and is Professor Emeritus at Drew Theological School. He has taught at various other institutions.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2007 book, “In this book we will examine the Starbucks experience … so we can learn what Starbucks has come close to perfecting---that life is meant to be lived with passion, and that passion is found and practiced through experiences, connection, symbols and images, and the full participation of every part of your being. Not only do these simple truths explain the phenomenal growth of Starbucks Coffee Company, they also point out the blind spots, weaknesses, and failures of the church to serve people at the level of life’s bottom line: passion and meaning.” (Pg. 4)

He continues, “With almost every study… we are discovering that fewer USAmericans than was previously thought attend church. Organized religion has been assuming that because it has a better product---namely, God---that it simply needs to open the doors and customers will line up. That assumption no longer holds. Christians have much to learn about faith as a lived experience, not a thought experiment. Rational faith… has failed miserably in meeting people where they live. Intellectual arguments over doctrine and theology are fine for divinity school, but they lose impact at the level of daily life experience. Starbucks knows that people live for engagement, connection, symbols, and meaningful experiences… The church has not always been so disconnected… And it’s entirely possible for people of faith to get back to the elementary, elemental aspects of their faith, their spirituality, and the gospel they proclaim. The question is, How?” (Pg. 5-6)

He states, “The spiritual life is grande passion---life on an EPIC scale… The EPIC life is built on four essential elements: Experience, Participation, Images that throb with meaning, and Connection.” (Pg. 20) He continues, “Starbucks took … hot, dark liquid in a cup---and made it an EPIC beverage that millions of people feel they can’t live without… In the Starbucks world, coffee sits at the center of an EPIC experience that attracts more and more people because it resonates with how people are now living in the world… the EPIC elements define the life that every person is seeking.” (Pg. 22) Later, he adds, “A faith that is characterized by grande passion starts with meaningful experience… The EPIC life delivers the refreshing solution to theoretical Christianity. EPIC faith offers you a taste of life with God as you’ve never known it.” (Pg. 29)

He asks, “When was the last time you saw people lined up on Sunday morning to get into a church?... what can individual Christians and the church at large learn about authentic experience from Starbucks? With the middle dropping out and the extremes growing, what does that tell us about faith and its connection to life for those seeking the ultimate authentic experience?” (Pg. 43)

He suggests, “Authentic participation is a fusion of two components, best captured in words you don’t often hear in casual conversation: ‘spizzerinctum’ and ‘sprezzatura.’ … Nothing gets accomplished without spizzerinctum, a word that combines initiative, industry, independence, and spontaneity… Jesus operates with spizzerinctum. His love is daring, imaginative, bold, and in the moment. It catches you off guard and sometimes comes off looking unfair and unpredictable. But life is unfair and unpredictable.” (Pg. 85) Later, he adds, “If spizzerinctum is important for initiating and sustaining high levels of participation, sprezzatura is key for creative and innovative participation… that can become inspiration… Sprezzatura is an inherently contradictory, even ironic, word… Authentic participation requires a diversity of participants: a swap meet of ideas, with people contributing their unique gifts, thoughts, and feelings.. [It] also involves the freedom to fail, a theology of risk that is seldom found in establishment religion’s risk-free mentality. In fact, it could be argued that the church’s greatest failing is its failure to fail.” (Pg. 90-91)

He observes, “The Bible ‘thinks,’ not in propositions and bullet points, but in images, metaphors, narratives, symbols and song… The church’s failure of imagination is directly attributable to its failure to take up the poet’s tools: image and imagination, metaphor and story, and metaphor stories known as parables.” (Pg. 113)

He argues, “The two places in the church that denounce celebrity culture the most are seminaries and emerging church/Emergent circles. Yet the role of big personalities looms as large if not larger in emerging/Emergent churches as in more traditional ones. In spite of all the talk of ‘teamwork,’ can you name me one Emergent ‘team’? Can you name one emerging church that is not pastored by a strong image or striking personality? In spite of all the egalitarian, communal ideals, when the rubber hits the road, Acts 4:32 crashes head-on with the power of celebrity dynamism.” (Pg. 119)

He points out, “The community we hunger for… needs as many proponents as it can get. In the past… Churches doubled as community centers, town meeting halls, centers for disseminating news, places of community celebration, and bases of operation during times of emergency. Churches saw themselves as much more than simply a place for members to gather on Sunday morning… But for the most part, the church has lost its reputation for supporting and building community. I’m not against finding community wherever I can, in a coffee shop or elsewhere, but I look forward to the day that Christians and the church reclaim the identify of community builder.” (Pg. 142)

He laments, “In this culture of bad connections, Starbucks invited customers to ‘come here and connect.’ And that is how Starbucks built up a following of devout patrons. If the church had known what business it was really in (the connection business), it would have said to this culture, ‘Let us be your front porch.’ But the church has divested itself of the connection business in order to master the principle business, the proposition business, and the being-right business. Its school of thought is now a school of ought. The church is by and large no longer in the relationship business.” (Pg. 144)

He concludes, “We can’t help but seek life on an EPIC scale, because God designed us that way. The life God desires for us is experiential, participatory, image-rich, and connective. The life of faith, to fully qualify as a LIFE of faith, is characterized by experiences that are meaningful; full participation in those experiences of meaning: a richness of imagery wrapped around those experiences; and deep connection with God, others, self, and creation. All four EPIC elements, enlivened and intertwined, deliver grande passion, the life we’re all thirsty for… The main thing is this: don’t delay. Why put off grande passion when it’s right there within your reach?” (Pg. 155)

Sweet’s fascination with Starbucks (including many details about its history, etc.) may turn off some readers, but Christians seeking creative approaches to the Christian message may find this book very interesting.

[Nathan]

Most books have both good and bad points in them. But every so often, I run across a book that has practically no redeeming value. This was one of those books.

Bluntly, it was one of the worst books I've read in a long time.

The essence of the book's message: Church should be E.P.I.C. (Experiential, Participatory, Image-Rich, Connecting). Starbucks does EPIC really well. The church could learn a lot from Starbucks.

The format takes each letter (E.P.I.C.) and covers a chapter on how Starbucks enacts that letter, followed by a chapter on how the church could follow sync.

It is ridiculous and offensive (not to mention just plain wrong) to imagine God saying, "Wow, Starbucks has a great thing going there. Let's try that." (By the way, the Epilogue is entitled "Jehovah Java.")

The content is way off base. But the style is also lacking. Sweet extends his metaphors far beyond bounds of sense and interest. Boxes within the pages (with themed titles like "Brewed for Thought" and "Grounds for Truth") attempt to stir thinking, but are usually rhetorical questions with minimal substance. The ideas aren't even fresh, as I've heard this basic message many times before.

Sweet is clearly a coffee aficionado and he knows something of marketing strategy. This book would've been fine (not great, but OK) if it were just on that subject. But when he drags in the GOSPEL according to Starbucks, it's a whole different story.

Don't waste your time on this book.

[Brad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't bring myself to read past the first three chapters. This book is bad. The writer is clearly obsessed with Starbucks and seems to use this book as an extended advertisement for the franchise. As a religious book, it contributes nothing useful to the Christian reader. There are a few cute analogies and good-sounding quotes, but you have to skim through mountains of praise for Starbucks and random facts about coffee. Theologically questionable and the few Biblical references are poorly quoted and usually taken out of context.

[Erin Goettsch · Rating 1 out of 5]

This should have been one quirky makes-you-ponder blog post, not a whole book. The premise here is kiiiiind of okay, it was enough to interest me. But his church/Starbucks analogy is fleshed out so far that it becomes too irritating to find anything helpful it might offer. And it is stretched beyond where it even makes sense anymore, which is insulting to both church and Starbucks. (I like both of them. I did not like this book.)

[Sean Higgins · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love and live for the gospel. I like Starbucks a lot. But this book was bad, totally man-centered, encouraging emergents to create and market church "experiences" like someone would buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Really?

[Sheri-lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

meh.

[Deborah-Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a coffee drinker by any stretch of the imagination, but we all have to admit that there is something extra special about Starbucks coffee. There is a reason why Starbucks serves more overpriced coffee than any other chain, why having two Starbucks across the street from each other actually increases sales rather than decreases it, and why Starbucks is growing at an exponentially faster rather than its competitors. The secret lies in their business marketing strategy. Using Starbucks as a prime example for "evangelism" and even stating that Starbucks itself has adopted a lot of church language as business language, Leonard Sweet makes the cases that churches likewise need to be invested into personal relationships with their congregants, provide a positive "third place" for people to meet (outside of their homes or work), and ultimately need to produce an EPIC (Experiential, Participatory, Image-Rich, Connective) life. Although I found the backdrop and the idea behind the book highly creative, I can't say that I actually got much out of reading Sweet's book. I appreciate his sense of passion, but I think the allegory was a bit too over stated and too tightly knit together and thus became more about coffee than about Christ. Still, an interesting read if we want to think about church growth or the intricate dynamics behind the life of a church.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

My experience of this book aligned with many of the reviews. It’s a excellent book that helps you see Christianity less as an idea to accept and more as a relationship to be lived. And putting that concept next to our experience of Starbucks helps make everything more approachable. But there is a lot of depth (and practical how-tos) that are left out. It’s a really great book, but you can tell there’s something missing.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I grew weary of this and had to abandon ship. I see I'm not alone. I am unlikely to read any more of Sweet's works. He began to annoy me after a few chapters, and this did not improve. (Especially the bit about preaching while someone was surfing the internet for images to accompany the sermon. Okee dokee.)

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used this to teach a class about religious experience and alternate ways of understanding religion. The students could relate because they have been to Starbucks, but they haven't thought about the importance of the experience--the lifestyle that Starbucks promotes.

[Carol K · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned more about coffee/starbucks than I care. It’s a quick read and some facts were interesting(like starbucks being a third place). I enjoyed how he was careful with his language (USAmerica) and how he stated some probably unpopular opinions for conservatives.

[Gilberto Del Vecchio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why is the "Starbucks" brand so appealing? Why there's always people at most Starbucks facilities? What is so appealing about their coffee, their brand, their business model? Can the church/gospel learn anything from them, their business model? Awesome and engaging read!

[Michael Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t drink coffee. I’ve never been to a Starbucks, though I pass about 10 each day walking to work. So, in some ways, I don’t easily connect with the main premise of the book since I don’t understand the appeal and allure of Starbucks. However, I understand that people are passionate about their coffee, so I found Sweet’s rhapsodizing on the glories of coffee to be very helpful in understanding the Starbucks experience. He masterfully used that experience to explain and illustrate his “Life on an EPIC Scale.”

The diagnosis of the problem that needs an EPIC solution really connected with me and made the rest of the book easier to connect to real issues the church faces today. Many churches really do seem to think that simply existing and having open doors will bring people in. Since few Christians life out the radical life that Jesus calls them to, there’s nothing for them to see to draw them in. Evangelism as spiritual sales pitch (p.14) is off putting to a society well-versed in the machinations of advertisers. This model of church is not working. I appreciate the EPIC prescription that Dr. Sweet provides because I think it can easily be put into practice and will have lasting impact for Christ.

Each chapter on the faith that should be Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich, and Connective (hence EPIC) was insightful and brought many vital points the church needs to hear today, but I was most struck by how interrelated they are. To experience the Christian life in its fulness requires participating in it, which requires being connected to others. An unconnected believer cannot participate fully in the life that Christ gives and therefore cannot experience it in its fullness either. The image-rich part was harder for me to integrate into this understanding, though I do admit that in this age reliance on imagery is required to conned with others.

Quotations

“But your body is meant to do more than carry your head around.” Because for many people their Christianity is all in their heads, they do seem to see their bodies as more of a nuisance than a gift from God to be used for his glory and enjoyed as the gift it is. I need to remember this too.

“Truth is when a body holds together its various parts in conversation and harmony. Truth is when opposites become not a battleground but a playground. That’s why people of faith have such sharp noses for incongruities, ironies, and oxymoron.” Propositional faith requires that everything fit nicely into a system of though, logically rigorous and perfectly segmented. The older I get the more I see the beauty in incongruities – or even what some people call contradictions. Systems become Procrustean beds that lop off any parts that don’t fit neatly into the system. But facts are sacred things, they should not be sacrificed on the alter of generalities. “The will to a system is a lack of integrity,” said Nietzsche, thus he like to “philosophize with a hammer.”

[Robbie Pruitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonard Sweet, in The Gospel According to Starbuck’s, says that the Church should be like Starbuck's in that it should be E.P.I.C., like Starbuck's is E.P.I.C. Sweet says that Starbuck's, “our cultures church,” is Experiential, Participatory, Image Rich, and Communal. Sweet makes the point that the church is supposed to be E.P.I.C. and was E.P.I.C. way before Starbuck’s was.

The E.P.I.C. model of the church is very much Biblical. Jesus taught experientially, called His followers to participate in His kingdom work, and used parables and other imagery in His teaching. Jesus also called the church to deep community as we see throughout the gospels and the book of Acts.

Many denominations are not offering the E.P.I.C. experience of worship and church in their church services. However, some denominations are, and this is what our North American culture is hungry for. The E.P.I.C., or liturgical way of community, is poised to grow and is offering what people in a post-modern generation and culture are looking for: the good news of Jesus Christ and His salvation, and the E.P.I.C. experience of following, worshiping, and living for Jesus.

Jesus and His disciples were E.P.I.C. like this in how they worshiped experientially through service and participation, with rich imagery, and in deep community.

Sweet is right, we should enter into worship as participators, not as spectators. We are called by God into great community, see Acts 2:41-47. Our worship should be filled with experiential opportunities to participate as we sit, stand, kneel, dance, raise our hands, pray together, sing together, confess our faith together, confess our sins together, participate in communion, hear the word of God, serve God together, offer our offerings, share God’s peace with one another and so on. Everything we do in our worship should be full of imagery with deep meaning.

The Gospel of Christ bids us come and die, to give of ourselves fully, as Christ gave himself for us and died for our sins. We are to offer ourselves up as living sacrifices and to fully participate in worship (Romans 12:1-2). This book and this idea of E.P.I.C. has very real implications for our lives and worship and for our communities. We cannot follow and teach the gospel and live the gospel without E.P.I.C. outcomes.

This review was first published on my blog: http://robbiepruitt.blogspot.com

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Has your walk with God has become rather commonplace? Are you living your life with “grande” passion? If not, brew yourself a strong cup of coffee and settle in to experience The Gospel According to Starbucks. Leonard Sweet masterfully draws analogies between Starbucks and the Church, his main premise being that people don’t stand in line at Starbucks just to buy a cup of coffee—they come for the experience. It is the same with the Church—too many Christians line up to follow God out of a sense of obligation or even guilt, and consequently miss out on the warmth, richness and depth of an abiding relationship with God.

Sweet asserts that spiritual life should be characterized by and lived with grande passion—what he calls “life on an EPIC scale”—EPIC being an acronym for Experience, Participation, Images and Connection. It’s not about being strong or being first. It’s about being emptied of oneself so the power of the Holy Spirit can touch others through you. It’s about being willing to be unorthodox if the situation demands it, like when Jesus used His own saliva and made mud to heal a blind man. The Cross itself was considered a curse, yet Jesus transformed it into what Oswald Chambers aptly calls “the stupendous Atonement.”

Just as Starbucks cups warn you that the beverage you are about to imbibe is “extremely hot,” Sweet suggests spiritual seekers should be warned in advance—that following Jesus is not for the faint of heart. Jesus does not invite lukewarm faith, and His gospel is not intended to be either comfortable or “safe.” We do seekers an injustice if we imply otherwise.

If Christians hope to live with grande passion, according to Sweet, we need to incorporate three passions of the life of faith: provenance, beauty and rarity. Non-believers are not impressed that we attend church, but they will sit up and take notice if every Christian were actually living like a “little Christ.” Jesus calls us to get out of our comfortable pews and become preoccupied with participating in the resurrection life of Jesus!

I regret that limited space does not permit me to fully expound on the ways this book has stretched me and challenged me. For a full cup, I recommend buying your own copy.

[Robert Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can Starbucks teach Christians about presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world? Plenty, as Leonard Sweet demonstrates in his book The Gospel According to Starbucks.

Dr. Sweet, founder and president of SpiritVenture Ministries, and a coffee addict (okay, let's be clear: a STARBUCKS addict) compared the way that Starbucks presents the coffee experience to the way most churches present "the Christian message", and he finds the church lacking. First, presenting the message without an experiential context will fail with most people under age 30, Sweet argues. Second, the experience that is presented, to the extent that a Christian experience is presented at all, fails to compel, fails to motivate, fails to change lives, minds, or hearts. Sweet then carefully shows how Starbucks presents the coffee experience, and he draws careful lessons on how the Christian church could (and, he argues, should) retool its presentation to make it accessible for modern sensibilities.

One misunderstanding here needs to be cleared up. Sweet is not arguing that the Christian message needs to be changed. His point is that the Christian experience, the packaging of the message, needs to be changed to make it appealing to a modern audience with a frame of reference that is foreign to most traditional Christians.

Verdict: I really liked it.

[Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet takes this Starbucks idea, which would have made a great sermon or short series, and stretches it into a book. In my opinion, he takes the analogy too far. At points in the book it seems like he strays from the focus of the book in order to talk more about Starbucks.

At times Sweet comes across as someone who wants you to know that he is smarter than you are. It's as if he has all of the answers to the problems of the church, if only the church would listen to him.

However, with that said, there are some good points made in the book about the current state of the church and society. I did wonder, however, how the current struggle Starbucks is having fending off one-dollar cups of coffee at McDonalds would change Sweet's analogy.. It is a quick read and worth the evening invested.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book proposes a revolutionary idea: that the church become more like Starbucks. According to the author, Starbucks is a success because it is EPIC (Experiential, Participatory, Image Rich, and Communal). The church, on the other hand, is doctrine-based and not relationship-based.

The example that resonated with me was the freedom that came in being allowed to take coffee and donuts into the sanctuary, even at the risk of staining the carpet. "Here was the first church I had been in where the carpet was involved in ministry. In every other church, the ministry existed for the carpet. Whatever else happened, the carpet had to be kept clean. Here was a church where the most important thing was relationships."

The ideas were good, but I found the Starbucks analogy grating after awhile (even being a Starbucks fan).

[Alaina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picking this up in the airport, it seemed like a really awesome book to read. And in the first chapter, Sweet convinced me it would be. But what started out as extremely thought provoking ended up being stretched a little too far for me. I thought he had some really awesome points (my favorite was the E and C of EPIC [experiential and connected:]), but otherwise, I think he takes what could be a riveting series of Bible classes or sermon series and tries to make it into something it's not quite cut out to be--a book. I will definitely keep this in my library for future reference (there were some wonderful quotes from great Christians of the past), but overall, I wouldn't reccomend it to someone.

Really interesting idea, not executed well.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. I was, at first, a bit irritated by the constant references to Starbucks, a coffee shop which I find over-rated, and vastly over-priced. It seems to me to bear little relationship to the Gospel message. However, the author argues persuasively that the aims of Starbucks, and its purpose, do reflect some of what the Christian life should be, although sadly the 'modernist' church of today has veered far from the friendly, active, participatory community of the first century. But the writing is good, there are some thought-provoking questions and comments, and the later chapters are well worth reading. Useful notes in the back, too. Recommended.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Christian Spiritual Living) I got this book for free back when I worked at Willow Creek. I read it this past summer after I read two Starbucks themed books the year before. This turned out being the weakest one. It took me a long time to get through; even though the research was good and the connections were there, the writing just wasn't interesting enough for me. I would recommend this book to anyone who hasn't already read a book about Starbucks and who is beginning to seek Christianity.

[Julyan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Am not sure if I ever would want to even spend the time to finish up this book. The references and analogies offered by Sweet is witty and entertaining.

Might be considered a pretty decent read for someone who isn't religious.

From a religious perspective, the book lacks solid content to render a serious read. Amusing but doesn't give you enough to really wanna think any deeper or further. The comparisons get too much and frequent, the result, not really something I'd spend the time on. :p

[Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet makes the point that as a church, denomination, or even follower of Christ we have missed the mark when it comes to understanding the Gospel. Ultimately, the Gospel is not about separation but rather connection with all. This basic premise although the not new I think is one of the most misunderstood roles as a Christian. Jesus lived a life for all. We must get back to that and allow it to transform our spiritual lives with a grande passion.

[Elyse Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The underlying theme of this book was great. It present a model for creating an active, engaging environment in church. However, it did a better job of convincing me that Starbucks has a great business model than it did convincing me of a better way of doing church. As someone who loves the idea of coffee Churches I had high hopes for this book. Sadly, it was boring and presented little applicable information or action points.

[Deb · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author examines some of the reasons Starbucks has grown to become such a successful corporation--and tries to draw out some lessons for Christians seeking to spread the gospel. He makes some good points, though this may be a bit too faddish for some. And non-Starbucks drinkers may not appreciate all of the references.

[Rodger · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his picturesque way, Sweet likens the Christian life with a visit to starbucks. Of course the only way to do that is to uplift starbucks and simplify the Christian life. The EPIC principles he uses for comparison are good to remember. You will discover more about coffee than you ever thought was possible.