Kingdom for a Spoon

by Eddie Pipkin

In this week’s edition, I will share with you a story of a wonderful night gone awry on account of a spoon – or rather, the lack of a spoon. It is a tale of a delightful dinner which ended on a sour note because of one missing utensil. Oh, the meal could have progressed without the aforementioned tool. It wasn’t a technical food consumption problem. It was a human relations problem. The all-important spoon was denied! By someone who might easily have provided it, but who chose not to do so in fidelity to the letter of the law over the spirit of hospitality. Does this promised yarn have you hooked? And are you also curious as to how the lessons it imparts apply to ministry leadership? Click for more, dear reader. We shall not leave your appetite unquenched.

The Story

We went out to dinner with another couple. Our town does a summer restaurant promotion with a fixed price menu option at an assortment of excellent, higher end establishments. The offer includes three courses: appetizer, main course, and dessert. It’s a great deal and an affordable entry point for trying some new venues.

Three members of our party ordered the fixed price three-course menu, and the fourth said he wasn’t that hungry, so he just got the fish tacos main entrée. All four of us added drinks. When the food came, we passed around our apps, sampling one another’s selections (having intentionally ordered different options), and then we all sampled each other’s main courses. The food was delicious. We were having quite the time, laughing, engrossed in conversation, and thoroughly enjoying the meal.

Our three desserts arrived, and since we were planning on sampling one another’s selections as we had been doing the entire meal, we asked for an extra spoon.

And that’s when the wheels came off the evening.

The server looked at us and, completely deadpan, said, “No. You cannot have another spoon.”

I started laughing, thinking she was just having us on. I am sure we looked completely confused, so she explained further, “There’s no sharing when you order from the fixed price menu.” What? We protested. We had been sharing throughout, and we weren’t trying to rip off the concept, but she was crystal clear. “I’m just telling you the official policy.” Okay, we laughed. We shared the three spoons we had and dug in (illegally sharing bites of our desserts). Except that one of our party, our fish tacos friend, was slowly steaming. The whole thing really got off with him. He started mumbling his displeasure between bites, and when the server returned and asked, “Is everything okay?” he replied, “No, it is not. I am really irritated about the spoon thing.”

Eventually, the manager visited, and a less than pleasant back and forth ensued. Nobody raised their voice, nobody was rude, but the policy disagreement was not resolved. And the good spirits of the evening were dashed. There was a new sense of unease and awkwardness in the air as we finished and paid the tab.

I understand the reasoning for the policy. I am sure there are couples who come in and try to feed two people off one discounted three-course order. But that is not what we were doing at all. And this blanket policy, designed to enforce a particular kind of etiquette, had been applied brusquely and had ruined our experience. That can’t possibly be the goal of the business (or the policy). It will undoubtedly be a long time before my friend and his wife visit that dining establishment again, and he won’t be recommending it to anyone else either. In fact, the likelihood is that he has shared the ridiculousness of that story in numerous conversations and, unlike in this space, I’m sure he’s naming names.

If Richard the Third had been my dinner mate, he would have been shouting, “A spoon! A spoon! My kingdom for a spoon!” And just as King Richard died on the battlefield at Bosworth Field, so died this restaurant’s reputation, tragically and vainly. What an unfortunate and unnecessary demise. A self-inflicted wound.

The Lesson

Local churches experience self-inflicted wounds, too.

They create vibrant, welcoming environments, inviting people into their spaces with enthusiasm, and then they manage to get one critical thing wrong in a way that leaves people rethinking their initial eagerness to become part of the community. It turns out to be much easier to turn people off with one bumbled moment that it is to build goodwill (which is a longer, more difficult process).

There are some key points, however, where local churches drop the ball, and these are easy to check for – although notoriously harder to solve and keep solved.

Lack of follow-up. Bad follow-up.

One of the moments of disconnection and discontent that we most often hear related from people who are exploring churches is that they are encouraged to get connected, but when they fill out the form or click the link or speak to the designated representative . . . nothing happens. Or someone responds, but the response is tepid or ineffectual or obviously perfunctory.

There is nothing more discouraging for a potential participant than working up the courage to put themselves out there and get involved, and then . . . crickets.

Showing up for something and then the something doesn’t happen (or happens incompletely or doesn’t happen as advertised).

This is related to the first bullet point. A participant reaches out, a response is received, and the participant shows up to the ‘mission day,’ only for there not to be any real work to be done. People value their time, and if they sense it is being wasted, they feel that the organization does not value it. Everyone wants to feel valued by any organization in which they choose to invest themselves.

Similarly, we have seen examples of people who show up for a class or an event, only to learn that the class or event has been cancelled (sometimes due to “lack of participation”). Sometimes the participant shows up to a class or event that turns out to be completely different in purpose and tone than the advertising suggests.

Obviously, there will be occasional unforeseen circumstances that dictate such adjustments and cancellations, but in those moments, participants who are caught unawares should be treated with extra consideration and bonus follow-up.

Out-of-date info and incorrect listings.

This topic was treated at length in my last blog post. People become quickly frustrated with attempting to navigate your app, website, or social media only to be sidelined by bogus or irrelevant or just plain wrong information. This is another example of feeling like their time and attention is being shown a lack of respect. Also, they question the professionalism and seriousness of an organization that doesn’t get basic details right.

One of the keys to keeping posted information up to date and accurate is to encourage as many eyeballs as possible to be attentive to its veracity and to provide a streamlined path for pointing out things that need to be corrected. This is different than “send a note to the office manager” as an answer to anything and everything.

Issues of safety and maintenance.

This can be something as simple as a badly lit parking lot, but it shows up more frequently as a thing that parents think about, such as a badly supervised playground. If you have lapses in kids ministry supervision or quality, parents are going to have little to no patience with your program.

If the entry garden is overgrown, or the water fountains never work, or the Sunday School room fluorescent lights are always flickering, people are not going to feel like your campus is well-loved or well-managed. They will feel unease in ways they may not even be able to clearly articulate.

Personnel problems.

If you have a continually featured soloist who is a poor singer (who keeps getting those assignments because of history, connections, or lack of others willing to serve), it will distract people from the excellent preaching that follows. In general, if someone is in a position who is not competent to fill that position, people will notice and people will be turned off. This happens too often because of our need to “put a warm body” in a role. If anybody is using that phrase in your local context, it’s an obvious warning sign.

A parallel problem is the staff member or volunteer who has one specific issue with which they struggle, although they may be above average in all other categories. A relational youth director with terrible organizational skills. A super-talented music leader who is not good at coaching others. These are teachable opportunities, and often excellent candidates for working with mentors (as opposed to the usual model of the lead pastor trying to take on each and every challenge to manage personally). Church leadership too often ignores the problem area in deference to the other-brilliance of the person. This discounts the power of the turn-off factor, sometimes tragically so, since people can learn new skills and habits given sufficient support.

I am also reminded of the greeter at a local church who was too effusive in his hugs, to the point of becoming the source of many “creepy hug” stories by insiders who invoked elaborate routines to avoid this person. Everybody knew about the problem, but no one was willing to deal with it. That’s not good. They will never know the people who visited and never returned because they were made uncomfortable by this rogue hugger.

All of the examples in the preceding paragraphs are moments of missed opportunities. Missed opportunities are one of the hardest things for any organization to measure. It is only be due diligence and disciplined strategies that we sense our weak points and deal with them.

As you read this week’s blog, can you think of examples from your own experience in which you gave up on a place or a person because of a botched moment? Was there an incident that turned you off? Can you think of times when you have been the cause of such moments or watched them happen in real time? How can we do better at anticipating them (and making them right when they inevitably occur)? Share your thoughts in the comments section, and you just might win the Inaugural Golden Spoon Award.