AUDIO
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Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
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Tip,
n.
A small sum of money given to someone for performing a service; a gratuity.
I miss tipping.
It was not always so. When I first visited America, I thought of tipping as an out of control ogre: a hideous cross between a hidden tax and highway robber. Nothing was ever its actual price. It was always 15% more; and then 7% tax; and then double it with the Aussie Dollar. Add that up, and you've got one poor and frustrated visitor to the land of the free.
I still remember, with some level of bitterness, carrying my own bags to the door of my cheap hotel room one winter in New York (which, by the way, was as cold as a meat locker) after which the porter - who merely pressed the elevator button - stood waiting for a tip.
You know it.
So does Nigel Richardson in the Herald's travel section last weekend. He bemoans: Excuse me, sir, where’s my tip? And he blames the Americans.
I don't.
Bemoan tipping that is.
After three years of living in New York, I actually miss tipping. Here in Australia, I feel like a cheapskate every time I simply sign the bottom line, and leave nothing extra. I know that Australian waiters are on an award, and Americans rely on their tips etc. But it still feels wrong.
I think that tipping in the US - even the obligatory 15% - has created a culture where performance and service are pursued. To tip is to say 'well done'. And 'do that again next time I come'. It's a vote on performance. It is to restaurants what clapping is to theatre. And on the whole, waiters work hard to please; the servings are generous; the expectations are high and the food good. I certainly felt this when I drove a taxi. I worked hard to make it easier for someone to want to leave something extra. Performance coloured the ride.
But tipping could never work in Churches, for so many reasons. Not least of which is that giving ought never to be the result of a better 'performance'. That is not why my God gave his son for me.
That is not to say that believers won't give to a vision. We will give to a clear proposal that honours and preaches Jesus. We may give a car and a home to a missionary on furlough. We may see the need for a strategic ministry, and decide to gather a group of people to fund it. We will give to relieve suffering when the needs are clear.
But none of that is about performance. It is never 15% of 'well done'. It is never clapping.
Having read the Corinthian correspondence, I can see why. The thing that stops giving becoming tipping is intentionality. We are urged to decide to give ahead of time. That is the nature of 'deciding' - it is choosing something before doing something.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7 that each one should give what he has decided to give. From the heart. Not 'reluctantly', nor 'under compulsion'. In 1 Corinthians 16:2, Paul urges each of his readers to set aside a sum of money on the first day of the week 'in keeping with his income'. In other words, Christian giving isn't done in accordance with performance, but according to how God has prospered. And it is decided upon, and set aside before the money is collected.
And Christian giving goes deeper too. Giving is built on the grace of Jesus who 'became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.' That's not 15% of 'well done'. It's 100% grace.
For a believer in Christ, our motivation to give freely is simply that we have received freely.
But I still miss tipping. Is that wrong?
Woof, woof!
a) If I am inspired to give some extra to a person(s) for their good work, above and beyond, then I will. Waiter, concierge, bartender, preacher, mechanic – it makes no difference to inspirational instantaneous generosity.
b) Is the practice of % executive bonus for good results (or even rector bonus as happens from time to time) merely a tip, albeit formal, from the board (or Parish Council)?
Justin I agree - I can't tip Gods grace, Jesus' death or my salvation. Nor do I have enough to give - even eveything I am is not enough.
Neither, though, can these awesome things ignore me or others in need, promote mediocraty under the guise of careful planning or make rash decisions that harm congregations and community.
So I don’t think it’s possible to escape a monetary goad for performance. Both paid church and non-church workers live and breathe capitalist principles. Maybe they shouldn’t – but I think they do.
He got a surprise when an envelope appeared in the plate at the end of the month with the exact amount of the IOU.
He began to realise that the IOUs varied depending on the quality of his sermon so he began to try harder and look in the collection eagerly each week for the result. Some weeks he got $50 and some $5
One week he decided to preach a blinder to see how much he could get from his ultra-critical parrishoner.
He went to the vestry eagerly after the service to see what he scored and found, "U O Me $10".
I know its an old chesnut.
I guess the tipping question and my silly story does raise the question of whether people in churches do think of the offertry as "tipping" which raises very uncomfortable questions about whether we are entertaining people.
The question is uncomfortable because in our day of entertainment on demand, there can be a element of people expecting to come to church and have the kingdom dished up to them.
This doesn't mean that I don't tip; I actually tip quite often if I feel that I have gotten service in excess of what I paid for. But I'm offended when people expect me to do this.
Similarly, I'm quite happy to be asked for donations, but you'd better be willing to accept a genial 'no' as an answer if it doesn't fit my plans. If you feel you have a 'right' to ask something of me (or I have an obligation to you), then politely express it in those terms; don't disguise it as asking for a favour.
Maybe I'm just lacking in social graces :)
As an extension to this, I often wonder about how "outsiders" handle "passing the plate" in church. It's not an unreasonable expectation that members of a club (to use a secular analogy) contribute; my hockey club charges fees, for example. But suddenly waving an offering plate under peoples' (visitors') noses feels discourteous to me, as if we're pressuring them to contribute an unspecified amount of money without fair warning or explanation.
Am I unique in feeling this? How do other people / church meetings handle it?
There is something disturbing about giving an extra 15% when the sermon is better.
But, as I say in the post, people will value, say, a vision - and then give to it.
But it doesn't have to be that way, surely.
I haven't experienced the 'surley service' of the UK, as you say. But Americans are so good at service it is scary.
It isn't right.
@ Messrs White and Schwarze -- You know, I'm with you about mandatory tipping in theory. But for some reason it works in practice. I suspect it has to do with the power of denying the mandatory amount. If you don't give the 15% at all, you communicate more strongly than giving an amount.
I also think citing 2 Cor 8&9;is not helpful when we are talking about paying for goods and service - these are a matter of contract.
The idea of rewarding/rebuking someone through the size of the tip when that tip is part of someone's remuneration is entirely arbitrary and has more than a whiff of servant master relationship to it. It is not for us to communicate pleasure or displeasure but to honour a contractual obligation we have entered into.
* God himself;
* His work in the world;
* the spread of the gospel;
* the community of believers;
regardless of your own view of how perfect, or imperfect, the "performance" of a particular individual appears to be. That is, there is a much bigger picture to take into account here, bigger even than any human vision of what a church could be.
Amen.
Justin has clearly spent more time in the states than I have, but I used to travel their regularly for work and this was never my experience. I found the restaurant and hotel service in LA, San Francisco and Chicago pretty much the same as that in Sydney and I had some service shockers which were made worse by the fact that the staff still expected a tip (and maybe also by the jetlag I was experiencing at the time).
I do like to leave a little bit extra at a place that does a good coffee!
For all I know, the staff saw me and my companions give thanks before the meal, or overheard us talking about Christian things at the table, or saw me read the Bible while I had my morning coffee. In that context, I consider my generosity not just a reflection of the quality of the people serving me, but also of Him whom I claim to serve.
@Michael Jensen - I can't speak for all wait staff but, in all my years waiting tables, I never felt demeaned when people left a tip! And it's been my experience that there are plenty of rude, bossy people in Australian restaurants anyway, and they usually aren’t the ones that leave the tips...
That is an insight I'd forgotten. I've worked in two industries that involved tipping: taxi and waiting tables. It was the humble and the gracious that left a tip. And the poorer ones too (as far as I could tell).
At City Night Church, given that 1/3 of the people who are there any given Sunday night are visiting, and include a large number who are not yet Christian, we don't pass the plate. There is a black giving box in a discrete location that our partners in the gospel know about and can contribute in cash that way. We do print the details to give electronically on the back of the outline. And we talk about giving with people when they become partners in the gospel and also visit our prayer and Bible study groups and talk about generosity, where we can do so more freely, because the majority of people in our groups are converted and committed to gospel ministry with us.
We might get less cash because of that decision (anecdotally, when my non-Christian parents first visited they asked me at the end of church why we didn't 'pass the plate' - they were expecting it and had money ready to contribute!), but at least it clearly communicates that people don't have to pay to hear about Jesus.
:)
In any church these days that is serious about reaching outsiders, I reckon passing the plate conflicts with "present[ing] the gospel free of charge" (1 Cor 9:18). We are much better off not to do it. The 2 congregations I'm part of now, of widely different cultures and contexts, don't pass the plate (or bag, or whatever), but both have a box at the back - in one, this is explained every time as a mechanism for the members to contribute; in the other it is rarely mentioned. In some other churches I've been part of, the passing of the plate was always explained as a mechanism for regulars, and visitors told not to feel any obligation to contribute.
(But "in the olden days" in "Christian countries" where there was a high % of church attendance, the passed plate was widely expected. The culture provided the "fair warning or explanation". In many western countries there is still a legacy of this expectation amongst older people.)