Starbucks and Churches...

Ok, so what can we learn as church leaders from a place like Starbucks? They have a site called, My Starbucks Idea On this site you can submit ideas for ways Starbucks could improve their service, or a new product they could offer, or another way to improve their company. You can vote on other people's ideas, discuss those ideas with other customers. So Starbucks, through this site now knows, what their customers like, what they don't like and what they want that Starbucks doesn't currently offer! Now, as a church, we aren't going to change the Gospel of Jesus Christ to fit people's taste. But, what if the suggestions are simple? It broadens the idea of a creativity team to the entire church, entire community... People might tell you that the very creative (so you thought) spotlight that you just installed for the choir is really blinding the first three rows to the left of the platform. (Pulled that example out of thin air, my church doesn't even have a choir, but you get the point.) People often see things in a church that the Senior pastor and the pastoral staff of a church don't see. Sometimes we become so comfortable in "the way things are" that we forget what it is like to be a new person trying to find the nursery, or trying to find offering envelopes, or how communion cups are to be handled after communion... Having a forum on your church's website, or an old fashioned comment box, might be a way to help out the pastoral staff without adding cost to your staff budget. One other lesson to learn from the Starbucks site is the "see" part of the site where you can look at the most popular ideas and what is being done about implementing them. People want to see that comments are taken seriously. Does that mean that every suggestion is immediately or ever put into practice? Of course not, but it does mean that people will see that suggestions are not just thrown away. The good ones are looked at seriously and the great ones are put into practice. Anyway, just my thoughts...I think I need a Chai Tea.