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Ramsay’s Customer Rule #4: You are your customer’s champion. Always keep them in mind. If a restaurant is going to succeed, it must be centered on the customer’s authentic experience of good food, atmosphere, and service. You can’t serve haute cuisine on chipped plates.
This is my second look at this rule. At first, I thought Ramsey was getting at a restaurant being customer-centric, and related this to the church in terms of context, demographics, and asset mapping…blah blah boring. I now know that’s not what he’s getting at, nor what we need to get at.
Rule #4 is about being honest with your customers. You can’t say it’s fresh if it’s really frozen. You can’t say it’s vegetarian when it’s really loaded with chicken broth. Your food and your service have to be honest and genuine. Sadly, too many of us have been buying and eating counterfeits for so long we can’t tell what’s authentic and what’s not. For example, if you think a guy building a volcano out of an onion slice and setting it alight is authentically Japanese, you’re in for a surprise.
What does it mean to be a congregation’s champion? It means being honest, open, and authentic…even at the risk of offending, or hurting feelings, or causing a scandal. Scripture tells us to speak the truth in love, but it’s still speaking the truth.
For example, I can’t name a mainline church that claims to be unwelcoming. That would be madness! Imagine going to a church that says, ‘Go away and don’t come back.’ Yet we all know that what we say (everyone is welcome) is not always true. Imagine being a person of color visiting a lily-white congregation. Or being a person in wheel chair in a multilevel church with no elevator. Or being a person for whom English is a second language trying to follow a service. Or being a married same-sex couple with a child coming to the Christmas pageant. Yes, everyone is welcome…but people stare. Don’t they?
The trick isn’t to change the welcome (e.g. everyone welcome except the following…), but to actually be what we say we are. If we say we are open and affirming, then we must embrace people of all gender expressions. If we say we are the body of Christ in the world, then we should be using our collective gifts to do the work of the kingdom in our communities…there is more to the body than sedentary Sundays. If we say we practice open table fellowship as Jesus would, then we cannot put a rail around it…even if that rail is baptism. And so on.
It goes even deeper. Take for example our preaching. Too many sermons are too safe. Jesus didn’t play it safe—he spoke the truth, he challenged, he picked fights, he puzzled, and he even went crazy in the temple courtyard with a whip of cords (talk about a sermon illustration!). Preachers know that if they offend, people vote with their feet. And if people walk away, people whose financial support we depend on for running our ministries and paying our salaries, we can be in big trouble. But we called to speak the truth…not water-down the message so as to not offend. We must be honest about history, mythology, tradition, and expectations. If we aren’t honest and authentic, then we aren’t doing our job. And we are failing our people.
Sadly, too many of our people have been buying and believing counterfeit Christianity for so long they can’t tell what’s authentic and what’s not. No more prefab taco shells!
If a congregation is going to succeed, it must be centered on the peoples’ authentic experience of and participation in the way of Jesus. You can’t spin the message or the meaning. You are your peoples’ champion. Always keep them in mind.