Matthew Paul Turner's The Coffeehouse Gospel (Relevant Books, 2004) starts promising enough. The cover has a Starbucks-themed green design motif, metro-skyline, and the ubiquitous ceramic coffee cup. A mood is instantly created. "How thoroughly chic," we think. "Surely this book will live up to the name of its publisher. Surely this hip and compact reference will give us a guide to being a relevant witness within the mass-produced cafe confines it celebrates." Unfortunately, the cover is the highlight.

For a book that purports to be about an authentic sharing of life-impacting faith, it misses the mark badly, relegating itself to nothing more than a basic how-to for the proper branding and marketing of the contemporary Christian faith. If authenticity were the goal, there wouldn't be a basic primer in Apostle's Creed theology, nor the tips to "listen more" and recognize conversation hooks in order to capitalize on opportunities. Doesn't this seem to smack of "know your product" and "know your customers?" Is it too much to ask that faith not be merely a caffeinated version of high-stakes salesmanship?

In essence, this book is a distillation of the pitfall of modern evangelicalism: remove all beauty and mystery from your faith; distill it to some axioms (three or four work best — and use alliteration if possible); and then slap it on a stranger during some small talk about movies or television. An especially telling episode involved the author's "Spirit-led" conversation with a female grad student. With no big payoff at the end, the author struggled. What had been the point? Why had he felt led to reach out to her in kind conversation when it ended before he could lay out the Roman road? This struggle reveals that there is still something very much missing from the heart of his message: people are of tremendous worth and aren't merely accessories to our own journeys. Luckily, at the end of the book, he figured out the point of that episode: she had shown him how to "douse a conversation" with important life details that illustrated a particular worldview. That learned lesson reveals more about his preconceptions ¹ and sensitivities than her attempt at actual indoctrination.

Turner manages to stumble upon a couple of decent nuggets, however. "Sometimes sharing my faith requires me to de-Americanize myself " — a nice thought, especially knowing that sometimes he recognizes the supremacy of Christ over cultural Christianity. Chapter Eight has some especially helpful comments on meaningfully engaging the world, freeing yourself from the comfortable trappings of church life. To embrace the exhorted level of self-less community engagement while maintaining a vital, growing faith is a challenge worth heeding and pursuing.

That said, I have a hard time figuring out who would find this book helpful. Anybody with a mystical, relational faith in Christ would probably find the stories and discussion questions incomplete and patronizing. Anybody involved in a culture war would find some of Turner's methodologies to be too much of a soft-sell. My best guess is that those immersed in the Christian bubble of youth group and Bible colleges might be able to read it as a guide for ways to be less offensive to the rest of humanity, but then I remember the conversation mentioned above (you know, the one with the grad student — the lesbian grad student!), and so I have to settle for "less blatantly offensive." I have to imagine that this was the target audience: at one point Turner gives an example of self-less behavior as not immediately calling for the shotgun seat before riding with friends. With that in mind, I hope the book hits its mark successfully. I do give high marks for the graphic design; the layout greatly aids in dressing up some relatively shoddy material.

¹ Editor's note: after publication, the word "prejudice" was changed to "preconceptions," at the author's request and with the reviewer's consent. May 17, 2006

Jacob Reidt lives in Pullman, WA with his wife Tatsu and their two children. He graduated from Seattle University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and a passion for coffee, jazz, philosophy, and discussing big ideas. He also plays keyboards in the band Ether Hour, which is currently working on its first CD, A Plan Designed At Home. Their music is available for free download at etherhour.com. You can reach Jake at jreidt@gmail.com.