If you know me, you know I drink coffee. In truth, even if you don’t know me, you know I drink coffee. I offer it on twitter. I have a mug in my hand most of the time. I bought a domain just to have a made up place to go about coffee mug values: coffeemugvalue.info.
Over at smallbizsurvival.com today, there’s a post I wrote about customer service at a coffee place that advertised the world’s best coffee. I still don’t know how good the coffee at Biggby‘s is. I know that their process for helping me have the best possible opportunity to have a good experience is great.
You can read the post over there to find out how they served me. Over here I have just this obervation.
How we treat people matters.
From a business sense, certainly, it is helpful. But there are examples of people who provide lousy customer service and still have a lot of business. (A Seinfield character comes to mind.) And at times, in a business sense, there is a financial benefit from niceness. I mean, Biggby is getting some traffic which may lead to some sales from this (unsponsored) post.
But it’s more than business.
If I say that I am about life-transforming love, if I shout from the (digital) mountaintops that God is great and God is good and we should thank him for our food…and I do not have a life that is shaped and showing, at some level, love, then I might as well be a pair of marching band symbols. Getting attention, yes, but in no way conversational or compassionate or relational.
Not a perfect life, mind you. Our opportunity is to grow, to be shaped. But our lives are shaped by our relationships. Who we hang out with, who we drink coffee with, what we talk about while we are drinking coffee will shape us.
I understand that more people would be interested in church if we spent more time over coffee. It is valuable to sit side by side and sing and listen. (It really is.) But somehow, I think I need to spend more time sitting face to face talking and listening.
Biggby Coffee had two people sending me emails and coupons and asking for clear information about how they can help me have an accurate experience.
Of one short cup of decaf.
What could we do to spend that kind of attention on what is important to us?
Thanks for stopping by. I used to write here. But I don't anymore. 
Levite Chronicles 
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People make a difference. Things don’t 🙂
“…our lives are shaped by our relationships. …I understand that more people would be interested in church if we spent more time over coffee.”
Amen! There’s something about sitting down together that instantly highlights our common needs and weaknesses (for coffee, and our other weaknesses, too).
Facades are easy to build and maintain in a worship service, but not so easy over a cup of coffee.
apart from the idea of coffee being a weakness, thanks Kristen. You are
right about the sitting together.
I have not been saying my prayers lately at dinner. You’ve reawakened that part of me. God bless ya.