I had an experience with my cell phone provider (who happens to be Sprint) a couple of months ago that completely blew me away. I want to make an application to church culture, but first let me give you the basics.
I called customer service with an issue on Tabitha‘s phone. We have a very old plan that did not include many texting minutes. We received a bill that has an egregious amount of charges for texting Tabitha had incurred. We owed like $200 over our normal bill! I called Sprint to see what we could work out.
To begin with, it was a fairly painless process. I was prepared to be on hold and on the phone for about an hour to get this worked out. That was not what happened!
I had a live voice within 45 seconds and she promptly took my information. She asked if she could put me on hold and I agreed while I held my breath and figured this was where the run around would start. After all, we did go WAY over on text messaged and my phone company did nothing that would show they were at fault. They gave us the text messages that were included in our plan and then, rightly, charged us for the messages we went over.
The young lady returned from hold after about 2 minutes and what she did blew me away. I was expecting several possible outcomes, but not the one I got. I thought I had a pretty good idea of the words I would hear her say. I was not prepared to hear her say:
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lewis!”
“You’re what?”, I asked.
“I am so sorry we have not called you before now.”
“Uh…ok. Why?”
“You sir, are one of our most valued customers. As a token of our appreciation for your loyalty, we would like to give you free unlimited texting on all three of your lines!”
I said, “You would?”
She said, “Absolutely! And please excuse us for not proactively calling you and offering this to you sooner.”
“Well…just don’t let it happen again.” – Nah! I really didn’t say that!
I was blown away by this. I was ready and expecting all sorts of things that she could have said, but I was not prepared for her to go out of her way to accomodate me. It was not something she had to do. I was not going to leave Sprint if I didn’t get it handled. But because of what they did, I may be with them forever! I can tell you this…
It will be very difficult for someone else to convince me to leave by telling me how much they care about me when these guys have demonstrated how much they care about me.
This is the application for the church:
People are not interested in what we say we believe about the gospel. They only (care/feel/absorb) that part of the gospel that we demonstrate. Telling the world Jesus loves them is good. Showing the world Jesus loves them is imperative!
Most people expect hypocrisy in the church. Most people expect our actions to betray our words.
When our acions positively confound expectations, it opens the door for the Holy Spirit of God to do things that are beyond comprehension and in defiance of expectations.
