by Jason Byassee
Dear Friends,
Jason Byassee
I was struck by a story Will Willimon shared with us while he was here and so want to share it with you who weren’t there that Sunday afternoon. He had a meeting with Cal Turner, founder of Dollar General, a fabulously successful businessman and loyal Methodist. Turner asked the Methodist bishops what they thought Dollar General sells. Consumer products? No. They sell hospitality. ‘We imagine a single mother of two. She’s been treated like dirt all day as she works two jobs to try and make ends meet. When she comes in here we want her to feel treated like a queen. We want to get her whatever she wants and we want to remember her when she comes back.’
Sounds not a little like what the church is trying to do, doesn’t it? Among public speakers like me they say an audience will remember you best not for what you said, but for how you made them feel while you were speaking. So it is with church. Those who honor us with their time by visiting us will not first remember what I or anyone else said or did, but how we made them feel while they were with us. Would that they would feel like angels, like Jesus himself, because biblically speaking, that’s what our guests are (see Genesis 18, Matthew 25, Hebrews 13).
My family and I ran into this difference on a recent trip. We stopped to eat at a national chain and were told it would be a 20 minute wait. We noticed the place was unclean, that waiters were bickering at one another openly, the server wasn’t at her station, and when we found her she said it would be another 30 minutes. “The wait staff is just overwhelmed,” she explained. I don’t blame the wait staff for this–clearly someone in management hadn’t hired enough of them, trained or treated them well enough. It was clear we weren’t wanted, so we left.
At another national chain we found ourselves attended to, joked with, welcomed. “What do you want, baby?” the waitress asked. As she left Jaylynn said hearing herself called “baby,” after our last experience made her feel like a star! We not only stayed, tipped more than was reasonable, and enjoyed, we’ll go back.
I’m hesitant to draw on consumer experiences for talking about church. We’re not a chain competing with rivals, we’re the church of Jesus Christ, cooperating with other churches in preparing for a Kingdom that God is bringing. But such analogies can be useful. It is hard to greet unfamiliar people. I’ve done it before and been embarrassed to learn the person had been at our church 20 years! Yet greet we must, and not only that, we must befriend, notice, get to know, pray for and with people. One church consultant wisely says “People are not looking for friendliness. They’re looking for friends.” And we have that to give–for God has made us his friend in Jesus Christ (John 15).