
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?