A Starbucks Conversation

When was the last time you got inside the mind of an unbeliever? Pastor John Burke of Gateway Community Church in Austin, Texas, gathers six unchurched adults who you might find in any local coffeehouse. Pull up a chair and listen in to this rich blend of candid thoughts about God, heaven, Jesus and you.

Edited by Andrea Bailey

Ideally, pastors would be cultural anthropologists or experts on the unchurched. Instead, non-Christians often complain that pastors can’t relate to them or their culture. As a pastor,
do you interact with non-Christians on a daily basis? Do you know what the average unchurched person thinks about Jesus, heaven and hell, and Christians in general? What would make him or her willing to explore Christianity? Maybe even at your church?     

If you haven’t asked these questions lately, much less gotten answers, you may unknowingly have lost touch with the culture and the very people you’re trying to reach. Get reacquainted with your “target audience,” as you listen in on this casual conversation with Jennifer, 29, Lalit, 33, Sree, 35, Geno, 28, James, 40, and Lars, 34, who share with Gateway Community Church’s Pastor John Burke the insights you need to know to reach them.

John Burke: Today, we want to hear your honest thoughts and beliefs. Don’t hold anything back. The goal of this conversation is to help pastors and church leaders, who may not be in touch with diverse beliefs, thoughts and ideas, to understand what today’s culture is really like. We’re not here to change anybody; we’re just here to listen.

So let’s go around the table—introduce yourself and let us hear a little bit about your faith background.

Jennifer: Hi, I’m Jennifer. I was actually raised Protestant. Growing up, I loved church and was in choir my whole life. But there were always things that didn’t add up for me, and I converted to paganism while in college at the University of Texas. I’m American Eclectic Wicca. We build our own faith based on some really basic principles, including a dualistic God, divided male and female, and reincarnation. 

John: Thanks! Who wants to go next?

Lalit: My wife Sree and I grew up in India. I was born into Hinduism and raised in a typical middle-class family. In India, everything is religious, so although you may not believe in a particular god, you are steeped in religion. I was raised in a town that happens to be a center place of the Hindu religion.

While I was at school, I hated any idea of religion. But something happened after I came to the U.S. after college. My father passed away, and there was this [void] inside me. I started thinking about going back to Indian philosophy and religion. India has 30 million gods, and you can even create a god for yourself. I don’t believe in a particular god, but I do believe in a power that’s outside you and even within you.

Sree: Hi, my name is Sree, and I’m married to Lalit. Just like him, I was born into a religious Hindu family. I learned a lot by rote, but then I started questioning, What do the rituals mean? I began asking, What is life? Who am I? What do I want to do?

In India, the easiest way to assimilate religion is to find an interpreter, a guru, to connect you with the philosophy. So I started experimenting with gurus. I found one who helped me learn how to go deep within myself to find out who I was. Each day, I do breathing and meditation.

What I’m looking for in spirituality is how to not really be attached to anything that gets me stuck, whether it’s money, anger or relationships. At the end of the day, we are all one.

Lars: I’ll break in. I’m Lars, and I grew up in Denmark. I guess my wife and I are Lutheran, and we’re very laid-back. We don’t really go to church. For me, religion is more a set of rules that you keep in mind as you live. I try to be good all the time and respect people and things. The rules of community pretty much seem to fit with Christianity, so it’s easy for me to say, “I’m doing OK, I’m a good guy, a Christian guy,” and I just go on doing what I’m doing.

But I can see that there’s more when I meet people who attend church and who think about Christianity and study the Bible. So, there’s probably an empty part of me that needs to be filled up with something more.

Geno: I’m Geno. Growing up, I went to Catholic churches and Christian churches, but not on a steady basis. I didn’t know too much about church. It wasn’t part of my lifestyle back then.

But all that changed in the past year. I always believed there was something out there, a higher power, and I tried to read the Bible, but I couldn’t relate my life to what it says. It wasn’t for me. But in October of last year, I got back together with my baby’s mama, and I guess I really started opening up when I got in some trouble. I caught a felony case, and when I was locked up [chokes up], I knew I needed something in my life, some direction. It’s been a roller coaster, but now I’m open-minded and open to change, and I have all these good people in my life. I see this light in people.

John: That’s awesome.

James: I’m James. I have difficulty going to organized church functions because I have a lot of questions, and I never approach anything without having some basis of understanding.

I am a product of the ’60s—my mother was Pentecostal, my father Baptist, but they believed faith is something you have to find for yourself. I grew up a military brat, and we spent a lot of time in San Antonio, where there’s a large Catholic population. So I became Catholic. As I started to mature in my faith and tried to understand my own questions, I found the answers lacking from my spiritual leaders in the Catholic Church. The questions I asked either couldn’t be answered, or their answers were so sophomoric that I couldn’t accept them.

So I went looking, visiting the Church of Christ and many others, and I’m still on that journey. I go to service fairly regularly, but I go to different places because I don’t have a church home.

John: OK, here’s my next question for all of you. When you think about God, what’s your concept of Him? Who’s God to you?

James: For me, God is infallible. You can’t think about God because when you get an idea of God, that’s not it. It’s ever-expanding so far beyond what we can comprehend. A lot of people are looking for this big burning bush, a pillar of fire. But God is in the simple and everyday. That’s how I look at it.

Sree: Like James said, I don’t think we can really define God. We can’t confine him in our consciousness. I don’t believe in a black-and-white God. We can experience God in anything—when we watch a lovely sunset, see a fascinating tornado or stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Or sometimes, you feel that you are God, when you’re deep inside yourself and feel that still calmness, and you say, This is it. There’s nothing more to it.

Jennifer: I look at God as the power and intelligence behind existence. I’m a Pantheist, so I believe that God is within and uses everything, and when we die, we return to the universe. It’s what we came from before we were born.

Geno: For me, God is loving and caring. He’s not this punishing God that I’ve heard of. I believe that I punish myself; it’s not God punishing me. It’s my choices. I believe He wants a relationship with me, and I have to open up and be willing.

Lars: My God doesn’t look like anything. I can’t put my hands on him or point him out to you. If anything, he’s a mental buddy. When I’m going in a certain direction, he says, “Are you sure about that?” and maybe I think twice and change my route a little bit. God is a good day. When I’m doing the right thing, the sun is shining, the kids are playing—that’s God to me, a little bit.

John: Now tell me your thoughts on Jesus. What do you think about Him?

Sree: Lalit and I both studied in the Catholic convent, which is pretty common in India. So, Jesus is not a very different concept to us. In many households in India, you’ll find Jesus is part of the collec-tion of gods. To me, Jesus represented a lot of folks who did good.

Jennifer: A lot of my friends are surprised when I tell them I pray to Jesus. I’ve read the Bible several times, and I don’t believe it’s the literal word of God, but there’s stuff in it about this man who was so forward-thinking. He was willing to work with anyone. He believed what he believed, not what the standard Church said he had to believe. He helped people; he was good to women. I wish I could read more about who he was, but not through the eyes of people who wrote stories about Him hundreds of years after he existed. He sounds fantastic.

I’m an educator, and I pray to him regularly as a teacher, saying, “How can you help me work with my students the way you worked with people?”

John: So Jennifer, when you pray to Jesus, are you praying to Him as a man, or as God or Son of God?

Jennifer: A part of God. I don’t look at him as a unique manifestation of God. He is a part of that life force I referred to earlier, and so, just like all of us are children of God, he is a child of God who did phenomenal things, and is worthy of being prayed to because of what he represents.

Lars: He set a good example, right? He was positive and persistent and friendly in the eyes of all kinds of brutality and questions and negativity. I think He was a real trooper—he just kept going and going and going, and he never demanded much.

John: It seems like most of us believe there’s an afterlife, or a good place, heaven, whatever you call it. Do you agree?

Lars: I’m not sure there’s anything more than this. And I’m perfectly fine with that, too.

Geno: I believe in heaven. … I’m not sure it’s the white clouds, but I believe that we can still be with our loved ones, and that there’s this energy. … I’d rather believe that than not believe anything at all.

Sree: I just believe in the eternity of the soul. I believe that we are souls, and I don’t know if we go to heaven or not, but I do believe in the existence of the soul beyond the body.

Jennifer: I like to think that something happens afterward, but like you said, Lars, right now it doesn’t matter. What I have is right now. And so I need to do the best that I can with that. Also, being a good person isn’t contingent upon whether or not there is a heaven or hell. It’s about the fact that humanity will be here after I am, and so I have something to contribute.

James: One of my favorite musicians sings a song that says, “Would you walk a righteous path without the promise of heaven, paradise streets paved in gold?” I listen to that song all the time and ask myself, Would you walk that righteous path? Why are you doing the things you do?

For me, it’s like Jennifer said, I have the right now, and all I know is right now. I don’t know what’s out there beyond this point of existence. But I still believe that I must walk a path that’s right and just in this life. It does matter.

Lars: If I can have my children understand some of the things I believe, think and do, and if they can behave just a little bit like that, maybe that’s my personal afterlife.

John: So here is the controversial part. If there is an afterlife, is there a hell? What do you think about that?

Lalit: I don’t think there is anything. Heaven and hell are mental creations of whatever we believe in. It’s very possible to have a hellish existence on earth, and people do. It’s also very possible to have a heavenly existence at the same time. You don’t need material comforts; you just have to be at peace with yourself. Bad things happened to Gandhi and Christ, but they were at peace with themselves all the time.

I think that is the highest point of evolution, when it doesn’t matter what happens to your material body—right here, right now, you are at peace with yourself.

John: But is there justice? Maybe just because I’m a pastor, I see all kinds of nasty, ugly abuse, and lots of people get away with it.

Lars: If God forgives everything and everyone, then at some point everyone should be all right. But I think hell is right here. If you don’t live a decent life where you can look yourself in the eye and say to yourself, “I’m a decent guy,” you’re in hell. There’s a hell right now, for those who haven’t understood how to live in balance with themselves.

James: I agree with Lars to some extent. In some ways, we are living in hell on earth because we are separated from the Creator, and our goal or desire is to return to Him. Maybe that’s not just within the Christian faith, but also within Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism. Not being a part of what makes you complete is hellish.

Sree: I was going to talk about karma, because my interpretation of karma is that we are all divine, and we define what happens to us whether we know it or not. Whatever activity or process we do leaves an impression on the mind, and that has an equal and opposite reaction. For example, the people who mistreated Gandhi and Christ must have had an earlier negative impression that they then acted upon. We may not be able to see their outward punishment, but just like anyone who is negative, can’t connect with people, is in jail, or never is happy, they are in hell.

John: OK. Now, what is your impression of Christians and the Church in America?

Geno: I’m not sure about all the people who go to church. But the people I have in my life help me get in touch with God. In my recovery program, they help me with my spirituality. The pastors at my church have also put me on that path. But before this year, my impression was, “These people are crazy. These people are just in a cult. Holy rollers.”

James: The American Church is the most divisive system in our country. Even in Austin, you have a white Church of Christ, a black Church of Christ, a First Baptist this and that. To me, we’re all professing the same faith, but people label you a Lutheran, a Catholic …

John: Sree and Lalit, what are your impressions of Christians and the Church after moving here from India?

Lalit: I don’t have many perceptions about Christians. What little I have is through watching television. Televangelist stuff. But I often take for granted the service work that churches do, especially in Third World countries. The amount of support they provide to the underprivileged is mind-boggling. The concept of service in Hinduism doesn’t exist really. Everything is because of karma.

On the other hand, you hear a pastor saying, “This is the way to God,” and that doesn’t make sense to me. I have my own concept about the same thing. Overall, though, my impression of the Church has been very, very positive.

Sree: Like I said earlier, we were raised in a convent. And we were fascinated by the concept of service. But one thing that irritated me was the church forcing conversions, especially with the poor masses.

When I came here, I didn’t have a blanket impression of the Church, because some people are very open-minded, want to hear more, want to understand, and there are some folks who don’t want that. Lalit and I watch a lot of pastors on TV. We love Joel Osteen, by the way; he’s pretty good. But we don’t like some of the other ones.

Lars: When you come from Denmark, it’s a real experience to see how people embrace their religion here. It’s easy to think, Man, these people are brainwashed. They can’t see or hear or feel anything outside that.

I’ve met some extremely friendly Christians. What I’ve experienced recently is that once you get to know them and pay attention to them, they’re not as brain-washed as you initially might have thought [laughter]. And they’re not really trying to force you to do anything; they’re very happy and want to share it with you.

John: One last question, and we’ll wrap up. Fill in the blank: I would be more interested in exploring Christian faith or in checking out a church if...

Sree: If the church didn’t say, “This is the only way.” And if they accepted you and listened to you as much as they told you about what Christianity is. If there were that openness, I would just love to explore it.

Lars: If it starts to smell like a product, I’m out of there. Advertising, marketing, radio promotions—I understand you have to get the word out somehow, but if it starts to look like Starbucks, I’m gone [laughter].

Geno: I want to check out a church when I see people being changed. For instance, my friend Gina has been sober six years now, and she’s an amazing woman. When church people are God-conscious, they speak to a lot of sick people who are going through trouble in their lives.

James: For me to be willing to explore a church, there has to be openness, and I have to feel that openness when I walk in. I find that a lot of churches want a particular subset of people to come to their church. Churches just need to have the right attitude and offer an inviting welcome to anyone. Then, a homeless person or a CEO can come and feel like they are going to get some fulfillment.

Andrea Bailey is Associate Editor/Online Editor of Outreach magazine.

Read extended coverage of this Starbucks conversation.

-EXCERPTED from Outreach magazine, "Features," March/April 2007

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