God Outside the Church

I wrote this last summer when I was a waiter and working at transfer admissions. I was reading over some stuff that I had written and thought this warranted a second look. So, this is me a year ago:

I am working two jobs. The first one consists of filing, processing data applications, and organizing. It pays 6.75 an hour for 35 hours a week. My second job pays 3.90 an hour and upon leaving the first job I go to the second job to work nights. It’s not overtly exciting. It’s a pizza restaurant. We have our busy days and our off days. They don’t work around my schedule very well, and the owner’s are very rarely positive people. Weekend tips are decent but I find weekdays to almost be a waste of my time in terms of monetary gain. It’s a stressful atmosphere with a lot of tense people working behind a mask of “pleasing the customer.” To be honest, the job sucks up my time and my energy. I went a week without spending any time with my fiancée. But I thank God for this opportunity.

Last week we had a server meeting. It lasted a drudging three hours. I’m not quite sure how I stayed awake, but it probably had something to do with being terminated. (Servers were fired if they didn’t come to this meeting). At this meeting, we discussed such issues as washing your hands, how to dress, how often to shave, and teamwork. Apparently there are times where servers will fight over who gets the table. It’s not what you think. They will fight not to get the table. This brought about the manager saying that the customers are the ones who give us money. They are the ones who tip us and give us our income. We should want to serve them. The whole time I’m thinking, “Well, yeah that makes sense. Tell me something new.” But Jenny, the manager, went as far as to say that we shouldn’t see them as people or customers but should diminish them to little five and ten dollar bills running around the store waiting to be found. I understood her point, and as much as I wanted to scream out against the capitalist notion of people being worth only what they have, I stayed quiet.

You see, I applied and interviewed for this job with the intent of making money. It was what I needed and still need. However, my mindset has begun to change. In the four weeks of working at Aurelio’s, I have felt more challenged and more stretched in my spiritual walk than I have in a while. I am starting to see that I am truly a “server.” This term goes far beyond serving the customer, though I do pray they see a certain joy in the act of bringing their food and clearing dirty dishes. There is something at Aurelio’s that I have not seen in 3 years: that I have not had in 3 years. I am working with people who do not confess Christ.

Somewhere in between leaving high school and entering a Christian University, I have lost any connection I may have had with those outside “the Church.” It’s weird to think that I am in a program geared towards ministry, and yet I have not contact with those to whom I am to be ministering. How am I to assess culture and the state of living if I do not live and breathe from within that community? Surely Olivet does not reflect the norm of society. I’ve heard and seen people leave and are shell shocked when they don’t have the “protection” from the world that Olivet so willingly gives. But now I find myself once again out in the world, and I find myself accepted. Somehow, and in some way, we students at Olivet are under the impression that those non-Christians don’t want anything to do with us. They think we’re weird, fanatics, too conservative, or just plain not any fun. Is this not what we hear about in our youth groups and see in an underlying tone in chapel? Give me a break! They are people just like us with dreams, ambitions, insecurities, and a longing to be not only “loved” but actually liked. I think there may be a difference between evangelical love: which seems to lean toward “share the good news of Jesus’ death to as many people as possible in the hopes that we can scare them out of hell and into heaven.” It seems to me that that is salvation “from” something rather than salvation “into.” One is exclusive and the other is inclusive. Jesus not only loved, but cared and liked. His love and soteriology (philosophy of salvation) revolved around being inclusive.

The truth of the matter in working at Aurelio’s is that I want those I work with to come to know Christ for who He is. I can not escape Jesus’ mission of making disciples. But I think that when it comes to sharing that good news, we must first start by truly loving, caring, and serving. I am not ostracized as I thought I might be, but instead am accepted by them and they have invited me as a friend. As a result, I have begun to see how God has been working in their lives even outside of the Church. And it has been my prayer that they may also see God through me. That is why I thank God for this opportunity.

Shalom,
Eric