THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

January 19, 2002

Service and personal care is dying in America. Neighborhood stores are being replaced by corporate franchised mega-operations. The corner coffee shop is replaced by yet another McDonald's (or Burger King, or KFC, or Carl's Jr., or Hardee's -- who cares they are all the same damn place.) There are some reasonably good reasons why this shift has occurred, mostly economic. Bigger operations generally lead to lower prices, consumers like lower prices so they are successful. Chain restaurants provide uniform quality that most people really appreciate.

This trend; however extends in to areas where it is less than satisfying. Service calls to your home from virtually anyone turn you into a hostage to the broken appliance. Warranties are really just insurance policies and claims made against them are handled in that manor, as opposed to a case for great embarrassment and much humility on the part of the seller. Eventually the customer is turned into a simple piece of datum floating around in the great vendor computer in the sky. The object of the company becomes not to please the customer, but to move the datum along to its next destination.

And then, of course, there is the travel industry. Who does not have a story to tell about the time they went to…. At any rate, my real beef is that all of this is very dehumanizing. In the search for better prices we willingly allow ourselves to be transformed into a series of work orders and tickets, credit cards and "satisfaction" surveys. As if in the great American mindset we instinctively know that the consumer system is far more important than our individual needs or desires, despite the fact that the system arose specifically to fulfill our needs and desires.

Needless to say, I had a personal encounter with the system this past week. Part of the great Schroeder curse against major appliance purchases. The lost eleventh commandment is "The Schroeders shall never purchase a major appliance that does not need to be replaced within one week of delivery at extraordinary personal inconvenience." This marks the third time in 18 months we have had this happen. Each time we have changed vendors in search of decent service and each time it is the same stuff. This time it was the much vaunted, highly praised and always dependable Kenmore brand that did the deed. If you can believe it, one woman at Circuit City (yes I'll say it out loud) last year actually told me that, "We cannot be responsible for all the items we have in our warehouse." HMMMMMMM.

The Schroeder appliance curse is not the real issue here. In some sense, neither is the consumer system. The consumer system is what it is -- it is driven by economics, which are in turn driven by consumer desire. Obviously, I have desires the average consumer does not, or I would not complain. But that is not the point.

The point is that the "conventional wisdom" I discussed last week for churches is really a part of trying to run churches along the same model as the consumer system. "Offer a broad range of good services to people and they will beat a path to your door." That is an indirect quote conglomerated from any number of the dozens of church growth tomes circulating today. It is at this point that I become very, very afraid. Jesus came to affirm our created humanity -- not the fallen one, but the created one. If the church reduces me to a simple piece of datum, then I really am lost. But in Christ I am found, not lost. So I guess if in church reduces me to that datum, then it is they who are lost.

With Love,