Category: Uncategorized

Human Dignity in the Service Sector

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Last year, Pastor Alois Bell of Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries in St. Louis, MO famously stiffed her server at Applebee’s of her tip.  This event made headlines as Chelsea, the server in question, was later fired for publicizing the event with a photo of the receipt:

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The icing on the proverbial cake was the arrogant note Pastor Bell scrawled on the paper before signing it with her name and title: “I give God 10% why do you get 18”.

Why?  I tell you why.  First of all, because it’s company policy for parties that large.  If you don’t like it, don’t eat there.  Second, and far more important, is because your server is a fellow human being, made in the image of God, worthy of respect and dignity for that fact alone. 

The role of server is one that Jesus blessed and took upon himself when he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.  Jesus, of all people, had the right to lord his status over others, but he didn’t.  He came to give and serve.  After voluntarily completing this act of degrading service, he commanded his followers to do the same, saying, “Just as I have loved you, so you also must love one another.”  Who are we to then treat our servers as anything less than the very presence of Christ in our midst?  Jesus also said, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Finally, professional clergy who act in this way absolutely ruin our collective witness to the power of the gospel.  Like it or not, people see us as representatives of the tradition we follow.  If we want to encourage others to love and follow Jesus, we must demonstrate that same love in our words and deeds.

Pastors, priests, ministers, and other clergy, hear me loud and clear: The way we conduct ourselves in public and the tips we leave our servers preach more than a thousand sermons ever could.  And don’t stop with your dollars either.  Make an effort to remember their names, especially if you are a frequent customer.  These people are treated like machines all day long, imagine the effect it will have on them when you make an effort to build community, nurture relationships, and love like Jesus!

As an act of collective repentance for what Alois Bell did in the name of pastors, I would like to share the following photo from a recent visit to Applebee’s in Rome, NY, where many of the staff members, including Alison, Lester, Matt, Amanda, Heather, Michelle, Natalie, Liz, Destiny, and Tristan, have become precious friends to our family, even though we only see each other in this one context.

Many thanks to our beloved server, Alison, for posting this photo and helping us redeem the world a little from the stain of hypocrisy left by Pastor Bell.

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Alison posted the photo to Facebook with this comment:

J. Barrett Lee I put it up finally!!!!!! Thank you for being an amazing customer and more importantly an amazing person and friend! To everyone else: I didn’t know Barrett before I worked at Applebee’s. He came in one night (a particularly rough one) with his daughter and sat in my section. He treated me like a person( a concept that we have talked about many times since) an they made my night 1000 x better. They have now become friends of mine and I love seeing them. It doesn’t hurt that Barrett and his wife Sarah produce amazingly beautiful children

Anyway, my point is that servers are people too, along with the cashier who rang up your groceries wrong or who couldn’t let you use your coupon. Everyone has a story and sometimes they just need someone to listen to it! Spread the love!!!!!!

(Reblog) Tales of a Male ‘Preacher’s Wife’

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

As a man who began his career as a “preacher’s wife” in a small, rural congregation in upstate NY, I can so related to this article.  While my wife and I were in seminary and engaged to be married, but before I realized I was called to pastoral ministry, I went to the seminary library to look up books on being a clergy spouse.  I found those books on the shelf, right between “Sexual Abuse” and “Burnout”, and they were all geared toward clergy wives.  There was NOTHING about being the husband of a pastor.  And, as far as I could tell, my job was just to be Donna Reed.

The low point came when one person learned that I was starting a street chaplaincy program in inner-city Utica.  That person’s comment: “Oh!  I thought you were just a house husband!“

Yup… nope.

Reblogged from Sojourners

By Christian Piatt

I get my share of “preacher’s wife” jokes, to which I have a handful of rote responses. No, I don’t knit or make casseroles. No, I don’t play in the bell choir. Generally, the jokes are pretty gentle, but they all point to the reality that few of us will actually talk about: We see the traditional roles of women as less important than those of their male counterparts. And so, to see a man who works from home most of the time and takes the kids to school while his wife has the “high power” job brings everything from the man’s masculinity to his ambition into question.

Click here to read the full article

Prayer and Action

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Image by Fabian Bolliger. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

“Prayer is our nearest approach to absolute action; it means the closest association of which any soul is at any time capable with the living and everywhere present God who is the true initiator of all that we really do.  Progress in it is really a surrender of the conditioned creature to that unconditioned yet richly personal Reality, who is the only source, teacher, and object of prayer.  Its whole wonder and mystery abide in this: that here, our tiny souls are being invited and incited to communion with God, the Eternal Spirit of the Universe.”

–Evelyn Underhill, Man and the Supernatural, p.196

(Reblog) Cornel West: ‘They say I’m un-American’

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Image by Esther. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Reblogged from The Guardian (UK):

Dr. West on President Obama:

“He talked about Martin Luther King over and over again as he ran. King died fighting not just against poverty but against carpet-bombing in Vietnam; the war crimes under Nixon and Kissinger. You can’t just invoke Martin Luther King like that and not follow through on his priorities in some way. I knew he would have rightwing opposition, but he hasn’t tried. When he came in, he brought in Wall Street-friendly people – Tim Geithner, Larry Summers – and made it clear he had no intention of bailing out homeowners, supporting trade unions. And he hasn’t said a mumbling word about the institutions that have destroyed two generations of young black and brown youth, the new Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex. It’s not about race. It is about commitment to justice. He should be able to say that in the last few years, with the shift from 300,000 inmates to 2.5 million today, there have been unjust polices and I intend to do all I can. Maybe he couldn’t do that much. But at least tell the truth. I would rather have a white president fundamentally dedicated to eradicating poverty and enhancing the plight of working people than a black president tied to Wall Street and drones.”

Click here to read the full article

(Reblog) South Korean Christians Increasingly Disillusioned with Church

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
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Myungsung Presbyterian Church (Seoul, South Korea) is the largest Presbyterian Church in the world. Image by Kang Byeong Kee. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Reblogged from KoreaBANG:

The Center for the Study of Ministry and Society recently published a report based on extensive interviews with Congregants, finding that while the reasons vary widely, the primary issue was disappointment with the behavior of the pastor and the congregation. ‘I didn’t like the way the congregation just did the same thing over and over again, getting swept up in emotion and sobbing out loud,’ said one thirty-year-old office-worker. Another respondent said, ‘it was hard to endure the sermons filled with allegories that didn’t make any sense in our lives.’ Other interview subjects criticised the naked pursuit of material benefits within the church. ‘If you talk about how it is better for the church to make more money, to have a bigger building and fancy facilities, then what is the difference between a church and a business?’

Click here to read the full article

(Reblog) Plague on both their houses: The real story of growth and decline in liberal and conservative churches

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
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Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Eastbound, WA. Image by Joe Mabel. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Reblogged from ABC News (the Australian one):

As it becomes clear that the fates of liberal and conservative Christianities may not be as distinct as is commonly assumed, the time has arrived for a re-evaluation of liberal Christianity. For conservatives, the task is to stop interpreting the demise of liberal congregations as a victory for evangelical Christianity, and to explore what might be learned from the fact that liberal Christianity’s roots lie in the attempt to adapt and respond to cultural diversity and modern individualism. For liberals, the challenge involves far more than finding the courage to address the significant decline in church membership. Their task begins only after acknowledging that liberal Christianity has a real problem transmitting itself to subsequent generations. As Steve Bruce has observed, liberal churches generally appeal more to disaffected conservatives than they do to people with no previous background in Christianity. This fact suggests that liberals need to give greater attention to why the doctrines and traditions of Christianity should matter to someone not already familiar with them.

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Housing Crisis for Sex Offenders

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

I am a guest columnist in today’s Utica Observer-Dispatch!

Many thanks to Dave Dudajek for doing me a favor and allowing me this slot.

Here is an excerpt:

When we as a society compare our sex offenders to garbage, we do the same thing to them that they did to us. In doing so, we stoop to their level and perpetuate the cycle of violence.

American society at large endorses such violence because no one is said to be more despicable than a sex offender. We seem to have made it OK to dehumanize and hate these people because of what they have done to others. We use them as scapegoats and a “dumping ground” for our own rage, frustration, and self-hatred. Again, we do to them what they did to us. We become what we judge.

With this housing crisis, I believe God is presenting us with an opportunity to rise above revenge and break the cycle of dehumanizing violence. We have a chance to stand in solidarity with Jesus, who ate with tax collectors and sinners, the scapegoats and “sex offenders” of his day and age.

Click here to read the full article

(Reblog) Autopsy of a Deceased Church

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
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Carnock Church Ruin – North Side. Image by Nigel J C Turnbull. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Reblogged from Thom S. Rainer.

A truly frightening and sobering analysis.  Here is a summary of Rainer’s report:

  1. The church refused to look like the community. 
  2. The church had no community-focused ministries.  
  3. Members became more focused on memorials. 
  4. The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing.
  5. There were no evangelistic emphases.
  6. The members had more and more arguments about what they wanted.
  7. With few exceptions, pastoral tenure grew shorter and shorter.
  8. The church rarely prayed together.
  9. The church had no clarity as to why it existed.
  10. The members idolized another era.
  11. The facilities continued to deteriorate.

Click here to read the full article

(Reblog) Religion Beyond the Right

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Reblogged from the NY Times:

“From my faith perspective, singling people out for exclusion from the life of the church or the life of the community cannot possibly be part of God’s plan…  If you look at the people Jesus tended to be most suspicious of, they were people who sat in positions of authority to say that they had the unique ability to judge others.”

Click here to read the full article