God and Starbucks Part 1

Let me start by telling you two things…I am a manager for Starbucks and I am pastor of a local church. So I have an insiders perspective on both. My last 2+ years working for Starbucks has taught me a lot that has helped shaped some of my views of the church. I want to share a few things I’ve learned about both on this journey.

LEARNING #1- Why Starbucks drinks are expensive and why that’s a good thing.

James told us that our responsibility is to take care of widows and orphans. He considered this “true religion” (James 1:27) Starbucks is doing a better job of taking care of people than many churches are. What do I mean by this? Starbucks offers affordable health care to even it’s part time employees. If you work 20 hours a week, you are allowed to have full health, dental, vision, all that. And they give you stock options, tuition reimbursements and other goodies. Starbucks is the first company in the country to do this. It really is incredible and I can’t say enough good about it. My family of 5 is fully covered and it costs me less than $300 out of pocket a month. Try to find that deal out there anywhere…(you won’t!) And here’s the strange part about the system. Starbucks just uses an HMO to manage our health care plan. The actual costs of our health care (hospital stays, exams, etc) are paid for by Starbucks corporate. Starbucks actually spends more on health care than they do on coffee beans.

Churches should think about this for a while. Historically churches have taken care of the sick, before there was medicare, social programs, HMO’s and all that. Christians used to put their faith in practice by helping the sick and poor. Now we let the government do that. And since the government doesn’t do a great job of this either, Starbucks is jumping in to help out. Now there are exceptions to this in the church world and I have been privileged to know and work in a few of those churches. But by and large, we probably not doing enough to help the widows and orphans out there, (or those without affordable health care).

Think about this the next time you drop $3.75 for a grande mocha at Starbucks. Sure there is about a 700% mark up on that drink. But that mark up paid for my baby’s bilirubin treatments when he was first born. Drink up! My family needs it!

Our small group

Sunday night our small group had a Christmas party. We talked about our hopes and dreams for the coming year. The gang in this group want to be a part of our new church. It's so exciting to dream about the Area 10 Faith Community and bounce the ideas off of these people. I can look around the room and see leaders for our future church. It's just so cool to see the body of Christ doing it's thing. Everyone is unique and has something to offer.

When you dream of a church, you imagine the people but in your dream they don't have faces...they are starting to have faces now and I like them. (thank God)

I'm praising God for being great and surrounding me with great people.

State Capitals

I am purposely going to rarely post about my kids on this particular blog, but this is just too cool. My 4 year old knows all his state capitals. I mean all of them! I asked him what the capital of Missouri is tonight and he said Jefferson City. That's pretty sweet I gotta say. Most adults don't know this...Admit it...you didn't know the capital of Missouri...you're probably looking that up on Wikipedia right now.

This parenting thing is cool. I don't have an xbox 360. I don't need one. I have a 4 year old. They are way more entertaining.

Loving our fair city

I spent a day last week up at Richmond Hill- which is a spiritual retreat center in Church Hill with an unbelievable view overlooking the city. I was able to spend about 3 hours in the Cupula which is a tiny room on top of the building with lots of windows that overlook the city. It was a great place to read and pray. While reading up there I came across one of my favorite sections of Chesterton's Orthodoxy. I have changed the city word here to Richmond. This is how it read to me...Check it out:

“It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Richmond: in that case he will merely cut his throat and move to (Chelsea). Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Richmond, for then it will remain Richmond, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Richmond: to love it with a trascendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Richmond, then Richmond would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Richmond would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved...Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted around some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honor to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

For me, I need to see Richmond this way. I hope all of us love our cities with that kind of transcendental love.

Today was an even better day!

Fairmount Christian Church in Mechanicsville, VA has officially signed up to partner with the area 10 project. I met with their missions team last night and they agreed to be a significant financial supporter of the project. This is extremely exciting news.

Trying to raise funds for this project has thus far been a big faith builder for me. I've never asked for a large sum of money before. I'm excited to see God's hand in all this. I believe God prepared Fairmount for a long time for this.

Thank you so much to the team there at Fairmount for choosing to love our city and support this project!

Today was a great day

I spoke at Journey Christian Church this morning. What a great bunch of people they have there. It really was a lot of fun. Joe Westerman, their worship leader did a fine job of leading the people. I had a blast with the congregation. They even laughed at some of my jokes which is always a plus.

This afternoon, I watched my Tampa Bay Buccaneers, survive a tough game and manage to pull out a win. That always puts me in a good mood.

And tonight I hung out with my small group, who are some of my favorite people in the world. I think that having a community of Christ followers who love God and love each other is about the most beautiful thing on the planet.

Tomorrow night, I am talking to the missions team at a local church here about supporting our project. Please say a prayer for us today! God things are happening!

Love thy neighbor part II

A few nights ago, I came home at about 11 p.m. from my soccer game where our team had gotten smacked down again by a score of about 8-1. My neighbor was sitting on her porch. She is a nice lady who is a single mother of 3. I sat on her porch and talked to her for a while. She was not doing well. She seemed down. I told her that I thought she seemed depressed lately. She told me that she struggles because about 8 months ago, she lost her 10 year old daughter to some sort of illness.

Losing a child has to be the worst pain imaginable. I felt so sorry for her and totally understand her reasons for her depression. We had a great talk on the porch. I asked her at the end if I could pray for her. She said yes, so I put a hand on her shoulder and prayed for her on the spot. I prayed for God to take care of her daughter in heaven and for comfort for them here on Earth.

After the prayer I told my neighbor that I was a minister. She had no idea! (It must be because of all the wild parties we've been throwing at our house!) She was thrilled that I was a minister. I told her I would be planting a church in the city next year. She said “well my family and I are going to come to it!”

So I guess my new church that doesn't exist yet (except in my head and heart!) just grew by 4 people. That's pretty cool. I had no intention of her being a part of our church. I didn't try to love her with any ulterior motives. I was just trying to be neighborly and loving her like God would want me to. I hope that our church one day grows by repeating these kinds of stories over and over. That's the kind of church I want to be a part of.