"Better than expected" service...

I had to send the "family monster truck" in for service yesterday. When we bought our SUV four years ago we had no idea that we would become church planters...or that fuel would double in price...I just loved the idea of being able to go "anywhere"...I bought into the idea of the Land Rover "adventure".

The team at Land Rover Harrisburg always delivers "better than expected" service. Yesterday they showed up at they house with a sweet LR3 "loaner", called to inform us that they had located the problem and had fixed it, and promptly returned our vehicle freshly washed with a bottle of water and a note in the cupholder asking how they could better serve us. As an added bonus the whole deal turned out to still be covered by warranty! Thank God...

I think we can learn a lot from Land Rover as a church. The "cost of ownership" of owning an SUV when gas is over four dollars/gallon is undeniably high...nothing you can do about that. The "cost of ownership" of being a follower of Jesus is also high...and we shouldn't deny that. Jesus asks us to "take up our crosses" and follow him..."turn the other cheek"..."go the second mile"... "love our neighbor as ourselves"...all of those concepts are revolutionary, and personally "costly".

What we can learn from Land Rover is that people want to be part of "adventure"...even if it's costly. People also appreciate "better than expected" service. That's why we offer Maple donuts every Sunday morning instead of day old "specials" we could get for free. That's why we offer bottled water, Duncan Donuts Coffee...anything to make our guests feel "served". (Even freshly made popcorn during the "at the movies" series.) It's why our crew works so hard to clean and prepare the club each Sunday morning... it's why we want every sermon, every song, every graffic or video to be the best we can possibly produce. Every Sunday is an opportunity to provide someone with a "better than expected" service...