The Unstarbucks

Starbucks began as a little independent coffee shop across the street from Pike Place Market in Seattle. I don't really know its history that well, but somewhere along the line of its growth, it hit a tipping point and became a nationwide phenomena, as ubiquitous as McDonalds.

I'm not really a coffee drinker, so I have no anecdotal taste memory to back up this suspicion, but I imagine somewhere during their rapid expansion, they also became the McDonald's of fine coffee. What I mean by that is: McDonald's is reliable mediocrity. It's not the best food you've ever had, but it's certainly not the worst either, and if you're on a long cross-country trip, you can be reasonably certain that any McDonald's you stop at will provide a clean bathroom and food that won't make you sick, food that tastes exactly like the food at the McDonald's in your hometown.

I have a feeling something similar happened to Starbucks, at least in perception if not reality. From my coffee drinking friends, I've discerned that Starbucks is many steps above diner or church basement coffee, but compared to what is available at the local independent coffee shop, it has become reliable mediocrity. Like I say, I wouldn't know if this is really true in terms of taste, but it certainly seems to be true in terms of perception - walk into any Starbucks across the country and it looks essentially the same, and will probably taste essentially the same - it's just one more symbol of corporate America trying to get us to brand ourselves.

But now the trend is against being branded. Now consumers (or at least, the hipsters who are the head lemmings we all follow over the next tipping point) are trending more toward the local, the independent, the microbrew. So, according to a report on Nightline last night, the wolf is putting on sheep's clothing - Starbucks opened a new coffee shop in Seattle that's not really a Starbucks - it's "inspired by Starbucks," and it's owned by Starbucks, but it's meant to imitate the little independently owned coffee shop on the corner.

There's a lot that could be said about this - observations on the way that what goes around comes around and how eventually everything and everyone revisits their beginnings (a sign of growth, according to T.S. Eliot, if when we get there, we see it again as if for the first time).

I guess I'm kind of more interested in the way that a similar cycle is happening in churches. Christian communities began as house churches, and after living through several decades of explosive growth in the "McChurch"/megachurch model, many emergent churches are going back to the house church format - small communities of accountability, support, and service that don't necessarily meet in buildings dedicated exclusively for the purposes of the congregation. They are going back to the local, back to the independent, back to the microchurch. And in many ways, they are the "unchurch," relative to most people's working definition of what the church is. Yet in many ways they are more truly the church than most "traditional" congregations, relative to the Bible's working definition of what the church is.

I don't really know where I'm going with all of this yet, just wanted to get it out there while I was thinking of it. . .crazy where a simple little Nightline report can lead one. . .