Who's it for?

In the book "Raving Fans" I ran across this:

"Now here it is in a nutshell. Service is so awful customers expect to be abused. Cold food in restaurants, lost orders, lazy staff; it's all normal.

Bottom line: people expect bad goods and rude service. Give 'em junk and they aren't surprised. Just what they expected. As long as the abuse isn't any worse than expected. As long as the abuse isn't any worse than expected, they'll be back for more. They are not upset. Do a survey. Check it out and they'll say they're satisfied. Satisfied customers. Ha! Satisfied sheep, that's what I call them.

'The service at your company should be good,' Charlie continued, 'Your customers are a revolt waiting to happen. They're only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing any better. Your customer service slogan should be: NO WORSE THAN THE COMPETITION."

I look at what is going on in churches all over the world and I see the same thing. Churches are bleeding members who are looking for something better....or something different. Some people would rather stop going at all than continue to attend a church which has 'bad customer service.' I think if the church is meeting the legitimate needs that God has placed in all of our hearts for Him, then people begin to show up.

This made me think about how our churches many times operate. But here are the questions that come to mind. In church, who are the customers? God? Us? Can we get 'satisfied with church' and totally drift away from the purpose of the church? And what is the purpose of church? Are you a satisfied sheep? What do you think it would look like to be "better than the competition?"