How To Eat In A Restaurant (or: The Problem of Evangelism Without Discipleship)

Jun 7

Any parent knows that children need help learning how to eat in a restaurant.

It's understandable, even good if everyone laughs loudly at home. But in a restaurant, you try to avoid disturbing the other diners. In your kitchen, you might eat with your fingers or even lick a plate (I'm not judging). Hopefully, we don’t do that when we’re in public.

Yet some churches and Christian organizations have trained their members to demonstrate shockingly worse behavior than any of these faux pas.

The reason? We've built a church culture that prioritizes evangelism without discipleship. Let me show you what it looks like - and the damage that it causes.

A Viral Tweet

This week, one viral tweet - with thousands of retweets and millions of views - shows a server holding a fake fifty-dollar bill that's a gospel tract.

They caption their photo, "customer just handed me a folded up "fifty" as a tip. I hate this place and I hate everyone and I hate myself."

Consider the implications:

One moment of mean-spirited, stingy 'evangelism.'

Millions of people understandably turned away from God.

r/TalesFromYourServer

This viral tweet wouldn't be worth commenting on, except that it symbolizes a bigger problem. For instance, here are some stories from the /TalesFromYourServer community on Reddit (I've added some bolded text):

I'm a server at a casual dining place. This lady from the bar came up to me while I was serving. She was in her 20s probably. She grabbed my hand and told me that I was loved. She said she saw a vision of me when I was a child being abused physically. She told me that Jesus loves me and that I'm so so loved. She almost started crying. She held my hand the whole time. She said "it's OK if you don't believe." And I said....yeah I'm Def an atheist.

Another server shared this story:

Easter Sunday. Large group of people from some southern Baptist Church. They came in fairly regularly but the Easter in question was freaking terrible. They all came in, party of 20 or so, dressed in their Sunday best, wearing their big hats and everything else that screams "i believe in JEEEESUS" (I'm from southern California, so this kind of person sticks out) they all start with their orders. They are notorious for being arrogant and demanding but you learn to deal with it. Anyway, literally as their food is coming out of the kitchen, one lady says to me "Oh, we're gonna need all of this to-go because we have to be back at church in 20 minutes" so now we are ALL scrambling to get these dishes in to-go boxes along with all the bread/salads/dressings/drinks (you get the idea) i hear a few snide comments about how they are having to wait for us to put their meals together (after all, they have to be back at their church soon!) and treat us like we're just a bunch of lazy ass godless heathens. And of course, since the whole order was taken to-go, "they didn't have to tip."
I've served a lot of awful church people but that was by far the worst.

Another wrote:

I worked at the old time country restaurant with a store off of every interstate. I had a group of 16 come in and take up all my tables after church. 12 adults and 4 kids, two in high chairs. They ran me ragged for 3 hours, let the babies dump milk and juice all over the floor and table, food EVERYWHERE. Then told me that I was going to Hell because I worked on Sunday. The restaurant didn't do mandatory gratuity- and I was left with a whopping $1.25 in quarters and nickels for a $300 tab. I then refused to work Sundays. They were always the busiest and the worst on tips.

It'd be easy to share hundreds of these stories. I'd go so far as to say that if a server starts to share a story of Christians or church groups coming into their restaurants, it's far more likely to be a trainwreck than a positive representation of Jesus.

It's a familiar message: tell people about Jesus so they don't go to hell.

But here's a Biblical message that's rarely taught: Christians must be generous towards workers.

How We Treat Workers Matters To God

Consider James 5:4, "Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Armies."

That's blunt. To make the application clear: the Lord of Armies is upset with Christians who don't pay the servers who care for them. James is only summarizing the ethical demands of the Old Testament.

For instance, we read in Deuteronomy 24,

Do not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether one of your Israelite brothers or one of the resident aliens in a town in your land. You are to pay him his wages each day before the sun sets, because he is poor and depends on them. Otherwise he will cry out to the LORD against you, and you will be held guilty.

When Christians fail to pay the expected wage to a restaurant server by withholding a tip, God holds us guilty. Withholding wages is a kind of oppression.

It's audacious that we would present the gospel as an act of injustice. We offer someone a cheap, deceptive tract instead of giving the tip they earned through their hard labor.

But as I write, I can hear the objection: 'Oh, you're just dunking on "those Christians."'

A Better Way

One of my Christian friends owns a business that employs manual laborers.

As he read the Scriptures, God convinced him that he needed to treat his employees better. He realized their labor had enabled him to buy his family home. So he established a fund that helps his team members get a matching grant towards a down payment on their homes.

In Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller relates a story about a woman exploring Christianity. He asked her why she was coming to church. Here's her story:

She worked for a company in Manhattan, and not long after starting there she made a big mistake that she thought would cost her the job, but her boss went in to his superior and took complete responsibility for what she had done. As a result, he lost some of his reputation and ability to maneuver within the organization. She was amazed at what he had done and went in to thank him. She told him that she had often seen supervisors take credit for what she had accomplished, but she had never seen a supervisor take the blame for something she had done wrong.
She wanted to know what made him different.
He was very modest and deflected her questions, but she was insistent. Finally he told her, "I am a Christian. That means among other things that God accepts me because Jesus Christ took the blame for things that I have done wrong. He did that on the cross. That is why I have the desire and sometimes the ability to take the blame for others."
She stared at him for a long moment and asked, "Where do you go to church?" He suggested she go to Redeemer, and so she did.
His character had been shaped by his experience of grace in the gospel, and it made his behavior as a manager attractive and strikingly different from that of others. This lack of self-interest and ruthlessness on the part of her supervisor was eventually life-transforming to her (219).

Transformative Discipleship

Here's my question: What if the best form of evangelism is transformative discipleship?

What if instead of half-baked "gospel presentations," we offered whole-hearted gospel love? What if instead of badgering people to come to church, we loved them outside the walls of the church? What if we spent less time defending our rights and became known for challenging the injustices affecting our neighbors?

Here's my guess. If Jesus transformed our lives and communities to be loving and holy, kind and just, truthful and gracious, then our friends would be surprised. And some of them would ask us to explain the reason for our hope (1 Peter 3:15).

Until then, let's throw our tracts into the trash can.

Thanks for your time. Agree? Disagree? Have some thoughts?

Let’s discuss: https://up.uncommonpursuit.net/t/how-to-eat-in-a-restaurant-or-the-problem-of-evangelism-without-discipleship/1953

Photo by Jessie McCall on Unsplash