My Problem with Starbucks Discipleship by John Talley III

I love Starbucks coffee! I normally get a Venti Iced Coffee with eight pumps of sweetener and extra 2% milk. I’ve been there so many times that I know how much it’s going to cost, which is $3.19. I’m still trying to figure if this is a good or bad thing. Nevertheless, Starbucks coffee is a good thing. Praise God for it! 

I also love discipleship! I love interacting with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to learn and grow with them. I love hearing how they have been encouraged in God’s word and their evangelistic opportunities. I’m encouraged that we are able to confess sin and seek the Lord for forgiveness. We know that Christ has paid for all sins past, present, and future for all those who repent and believe in Him. 

So what’s the problem with Starbucks Discipleship? Let’s first define the phrase Starbucks Discipleship. This refers to meeting someone at a coffee shop—oftentimes Starbucks—and talking about things: perhaps great things such as church and theology. However, you guys may never move past the point of meeting at Starbucks.

 There are at least two problems with this: 

1.     It has the potential for inauthenticity.

As Christians, we have the tendency to “fake it, until we make it.” What I mean by that is that we can be around other Christians and throw out a bunch of evangelical terminology, but be completely miserable inwardly. We can go through the motions and lack spiritual community with others. How can two Starbucks meetings a month really build deep relationships? If meaningful relationships aren’t built, people are not going to keep it real with one another, because they don’t feel like they know one another. So it’s easy for one to give the Christian clichéd response to everything and say, “Man…everything is going well. God is good, you know?” But, in their heads, they’re really thinking, “I ain’t telling you what’s really going on in my life. I barely even know you. We talk here and there, and it’s always about systematic theology or your spiritual strengths. What about your spiritual failures? Why can’t it be about family? Work? Sports?  And why do we always have to meet here at this coffee shop?” The whole thing can give the impression that the person is not worth the time to meet at one’s own house or other intimate places, which brings me to the next problem.

2.     It’s not an investment of time.

Simply put, you make time for what you value. I’m convinced that Starbucks discipleship isn’t a sufficient amount of time to build deep and healthy relationships. Think about it. If somebody meets with a dude from his church for one hour every two weeks, that’s two hours a month; this means that there were twenty-four hours of “discipleship” in twelve months. It will take those two guys seven years to spend a week with each other! Now, I know the number seven represents perfection but, without a doubt, this isn’t enough time!

It has to go beyond the coffee stench into each other’s homes, neighborhoods, road trips, business trips, vacations, conferences, birthday parties, and so on. When I look into the Gospel of Matthew, I see life-on-life discipleship. I see Jesus calling His disciples and they followed Him immediately and that’s when discipleship began (Matthew 4:18-22; Matthew 9:9). It seems that this was an ongoing endeavor with His disciples. They heard Him preach, teach, serve, and heal. They spent a significant amount of time with Him. They were there when He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26: 36-45) even though they fell asleep. My point is that throughout this book, and the other books of the Gospels, they were with Him in many different aspects of His life. Likewise, we should spend more time with one another in different areas of our lives. As a man without children, I want to be around you and your family to see how you interact with your kids. I want to see how you treat your wife. I want to see how you handle money. I want to see you preach and teach God’s Word. I want to see and hear your struggles in life and how lust is a thorn in your side. I want to talk sports, food, and everything else. This takes work, a lot of work and time, which Starbucks Discipleship cannot accomplish because it doesn’t have the capacity to do so because it isn’t designed to do so.

In conclusion, I don’t want to discourage you from drinking Starbucks. In fact, after I finish typing this, I might go up there and get my Venti Iced Coffee. I think I’m overdue! My point is to highlight the potential danger if we only stop at the coffee shop. It has to go beyond this. It has to be a genuine friendship that is immersed in the Gospel, which brings us together in the first place. It goes deeper into our failures and our need for God’s grace. We have to realize that we haven’t arrived yet and we both need to have discipleship. We need to learn and grow from one another. One practical bit of advice I can give is to just bring people into what you’re already doing. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. It doesn’t have to be programmed. So let’s look at all areas of our lives and be in community with one another. Let’s fight against inauthenticity.