I am not a problem for your solution

‘Are you visitors? the church lady asked trying to determine which category to put us in?  

’Nope. They’re visiting from out of town, but aren’t Visitors’, Mom offered.  

While she was momentarily confused, the lady eventually decided that we didn’t fit the criteria in ’Step 2’ of her ‘If/Then’ script, so she smiled awkwardly at us and moved on.  

Mom taught grammar for years, but isn’t a stickler for the details (except ‘finished’ and ‘done.’ Only turkeys on the kitchen table are ‘done.’  I, on the other hand am ‘finished’ with my homework.  I learned that one the hard way).  In this case, she knew the lady’s script from end-to-end and knew where it was headed.  She politely acknowledged that we were indeed unfamiliar faces but that we weren’t looking to learn more about the church. Mom wasn’t picking on the difference between ‘visitor’ and ‘visiting.’  Grammatically, they’re different versions of the same word, but as Adler reminds us in ‘How to Read a Book’, there’s a difference between ‘words’ and ’terms.’  Terms require context and specific application.  ‘Visiting’ in this context meant ‘coming in from out of town to see grandma and going back home’. ‘Visitor’ meant a specific category of church attendee that is trying out the church in consideration of becoming a member.  We were here for the cinnamon rolls and hugs, not church rolls and pews.  

The welcoming committee continued to inquire, relying on a script laden with vocabulary meant to categorize us. While I listened, I couldn’t help but hear my colleagues from the hospitality industry.  Good, I mean really good hospitality, removes all of the context-specific ’terms’ and relies on the language of the guest.  The language of a maitre’d at a high-end hotel is built to serve with phrases designed to greet, welcome, and ultimately meet the guest where they are.  I’ve only stayed in these hotels a few times and they’re memorable for a reason.  Mid-tier hotels seem to choose their tact based on a member’s status, if at all.  If you have to, heaven forbid, call the 1-800 number, you get a very defined, consistent script.  So I wondered, other than the ’service’ provided, why was my experience of the welcoming committee at the church so much different than my experience with the maitre’d at the hotel?  Ultimately, I think it comes down to understanding who the ‘hero’ of the journey is, as Donald Miller outlines.  

We’re all in story and good stories have heroes and villains and conflict.  To my friends on the transactional end of the spectrum, I am the villain — the thing standing between them and their lunch break.  Mid-tier services selectively choose whom to serve, but the high-end services see ‘ladies and gentlemen service ladies and gentlemen’ as Horst Schulze, founder of the Ritz-Carlton indoctrinated.  Mr. Schulze made me, the guest, the hero in this journey.  Everything about my stay was centered on helping me be the hero, which meant helping me provide an extraordinary experience for my bride.  Mr. Schulze and his team treated me as the center of the story.  

The welcome committee at the church we were visiting treated their programming as the hero.  The goal seemed to be to match a category of person with a program.  Visitor? Room 115 at 12:30. Thinking about joining? Room 232 at 5:00.  Problem = Solution.   

The challenge is that it made my family and I feel like a problem that needed to be solved.  

I wonder if I view those in my world as problems or heroes?

I wonder what language I use to communicate problems rather than experiences?