Can't Swallow That

CBN.com -- My wife and I walked into a restaurant recently in the town where we formerly lived. How I have enjoyed that restaurant through the years: good service, good food, good atmosphere.

We were looking forward to the experience again. The service was still fairly good, but the food was something not to be believed. I ordered a slab of ribs, ribs that I remembered could just set your feet to tapping. What I got was something totally unexpected.

I think it was somebody’s old boot, cooked to a fare-thee-well and covered with some unknown sauce you wouldn’t give a goat. In the entire slab of ribs, there was not even a fork full of meat.

When I asked the waiter about it, he blushed and said, “Our restaurant has been sold to a big corporation somewhere and we just follow their orders.” When we had walked into the place earlier, we noted that it was nearly empty, whereas it had always been “wait in line” before.

If that corporation thinks customers will continue to frequent their restaurant simply because it used to be good, they have a real revelation coming! People will go to the place where they’re fed and cared for.

Same thing goes for church. How many ecclesiastical buildings now stand virtually empty that were once revival centers! The leaders opted for form over substance.

When the pews became empty, they moaned about post-modernism. Truth of the matter is that they just started serving old cooked boots, that’s all.

People are incredibly hungry for God today. The problem is that too many of God’s restaurants serve only jive music and PowerPoint hash. The good folks just won’t eat it.

Used with permission by author, Dan Betzer. Previously published on ByLine OnLine, copyright © 2005 Media Ministries of the Assemblies of God.