Finally, Jesus Gets Some Good PR During Sunday Brunch

FULL DISCLOSURE: I love the Lord with all my heart. As some of you know, I went to Seminary and earned one of those Ph.D. thingies. FULLER DISCLOSURE: I was a city trainer/head server for eight years at a certain restaurant known for having fun on "Fridays." FULLEST DISCLOSURE: The stereotypes are so very true. Many church folk exhibit their great suckage during Sundays at any dining establishment. Now that we have that out of the way, I'd love to introduce Pastor Chad Roberts. He agrees that church folk can suck out loud and the worst shift at any restaurant in the country is Sunday brunch. (Ask any server if you don't believe me and the good pastor.) To wit, he created the above website (and we'll talk about it after the jump): Pastor Roberts of Preaching Christ Church in Kingsport, Tenn. has heard the stories, has experienced the pain and has had it up to here with all that mess. The story went national in the New York Daily News via his hometown newspaper, the Kingsport Times News. “We were sitting in a Buffalo Wild Wings saying, what could we do for the serving community to show them that the church cares about them and that we’re not judgmental? What if there was a website where servers could just sound off, they could just vent, and then the church say, it’s OK, we get it, we understand? The conversation at Buffalo Wild Wings was sparked by a story thanks to another pastor, far less righteous and much more stereotypical. The "minister's" name is Alois Bell of St. Louis. She went to her local Applebee's after working up an appetite during her Sunday sermon and left this gem. That's a receipt with a big goose egg on the tip, with a very godly rationale of "I give God 10 percent. Why do you get 18 percent?" Of course, the server put the receipt on Reddit and the thing went viral. While we are all collectively sending warm thoughts of flat tires her way, I digress. This is all too familiar in server and church circles, and Pastor Chad Roberts is determined to do something about it; hence, the whipping post of his website. However, Roberts is planning to write apologies on behalf of the dolts these servers meet and will send each poster a gift card for groceries or gas. “The two goals we have with this are number one, that Christians would begin to realize that their attitude really matters when they go to eat,” Roberts said. “The second goal is that particularly unchurched servers would understand that not all Christians are rude, impatient, lousy tippers. That’s what we want to communicate." The campaign lasts until Easter when his entire church will hit local restaurants and double their tips. By the way, in case you're wondering if people like Alois Bell find any solace in scripture for terrible actions like that, let me leave you with this: Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3:1-3 NIV) God don't write crap. And the "letters" servers read on Sunday smell just like it. So "no" is your answer. I pray that better answer come as a result of Roberts' website.

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Finally, Jesus Gets Some Good PR During Sunday Brunch

Shawn Paul Wood

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Shawn Paul Wood