Starbucks failed while it still continues to be successful. I wanted to share an excerpt from Creature of the Word that hits today's society right on the money. We need to make sure this does not happen in our churches.
“Since the day Adam searched for a suitable helper, people have always longed for community. So it would seem our era is a great one in which to live, seeing as how connectivity is so much easier now than it’s ever been. Facebook currently claims more than 900 million active users who visit their social networking site at least once a month. Thanks to Twitter, we can constantly bombard each other with even the most boring details of our everyday lives. You can take a picture of the sampler you ordered at Applebee’s, and then tweet it to all your friends so they can be jealous of your potato skins. Technology has enabled humanity to be more connected, more informed, and more social than at any other time in history.
But connectivity does not equate to community. Being able to make quick connections with people doesn’t automatically require any depth to the relationship.
All you have to do is take a look inside your local Starbucks to see something strange going on in the midst of all these “connections.” Starbucks was founded to be a gathering place for relationships. Sure, they serve a million combinations of coffee and pastries “but it was also intended as a place where people could get their coffee not “to go” but to stay. And stay together. Starbucks was built to capitalize on the intrinsic human desire to relate.
But as you look into your local Starbucks, notice that many people are in there—together in one place—but they’re also alone. They’re sitting at tables with their headphones on, working on their computers or fiddling with their phones. Not that” “it’s the fault of Starbucks. This “all alone, all together” phenomenon is merely symptomatic of what’s at play in human relationships throughout our culture.
So although we are more connected than we’ve ever been, we also feel more alone and unknown than at any other time in human history. We relate without relationships, all together but all alone. Thus, without the gospel forming community, we are doomed to connectivity and aloneness in the midst of crowds. Only the gospel forms deep community.”
Excerpt From: Matt Chandler, Eric Geiger & Josh Patterson. “Creature of the Word.” B&H Publishing Group, 2012. iBooks.
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Check out this book on the iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/creature-of-the-word/id560382548?mt=11
