Photo by o5com
Last week, Willow Creek Church and its association held its Global Leadership Summit; a worldwide leadership conference for Christians. Every year, this conference invites a cross section of our population to speak and share leadership principles to help improve our world. Past speakers have included Jim Collins (“Good to Great” book author), Daniel Pink, Seth Godin, Jack Welch, and others. Willow Creek invites leaders to share their not-exclusively-Christian message to A LOT of Christians worldwide. This year, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, was invited to come, and he accepted. I have no doubt he would have shared some pearls of wisdom from his book “Onward” that sells in Starbucks stores worldwide. However, when homosexual activists protested his presence at the conference, he caved and withdrew from the speaking engagement.
So, the question this week is: Should Howard Schultz have caved to homosexual activist censorship? Other related questions that also come to mind… Was this an appropriate response? Does the homosexual community benefit from this censorship? Does the Christian community benefit from this censorship? Does Starbucks, it’s customers, employees, and stockholders benefit from this censorship? Would you have recommended he speak or stay home?
About R. Brad White
I thought I posted a response to this, but it was on Facebook (and must not carry over here). Anyway, I think Bill Hybels was right to call on conference participants to forgive Schultz for caving to the homosexual agenda. I even agreed with him that we should all patronize Starbucks to show our support. However, I couldn’t help but wonder what Schultz’ caving says about his leadership. I think the old saying is that “actions speak louder than words – and I’m having troubling listening to your words right now because your actions are so loud.”
Your right that he needs to rethink that and next time homosexual activist come after him to stand-up and speak anyway.
Looking at it I can see why he would turn tail and run. While it would have really been best he stayed and spoke many (not all I know there are peaceful too) homosexual activist can be very hostile. He might have felt threatened and scared. I can’t say I blame him for that alone because he is only human as all of us are. My suggestion to Howard Schultz is that he can asked to speak this time and do it. He can’t change the past but he can ask to do it differently this time. If he explains it that way they very well should let him.