Pastor creates Web site to shame bad after-church restaurant tippers

Whenever the collection plate used to come around in church, necks would crane to observe how much people were contributing.

"Were those just coins?" you could hear one lady mutter.

"One measly note? But they've got a four-bedroom house in Spain," a man gruffed.

It seems, though, that some leave church with parsimony still churning around the stomachs.

For a Tennessee pastor, Chad Roberts, has taken it upon himself to chide those who tip meanly in restaurants after church.

He has created a site called "Sundays Are The Worst." There, he wrote: "This is a place of pure honesty and testimony for those who serve at a local restaurant to share how they get treated when the church crowd comes in."

I am not entirely sure how you can judge who is part of the church crowd and who isn't. Perhaps it's the neatness of clothing. Or the beatific smiles.

Still, Roberts told the Kingsport Times-News that he was moved to action by the sotry of Pastor Alois Bell, who left this message on a check in St. Louis, MO: "I give God ten percent, why do you get 18."

Pastor Roberts said: "I think everyone knows there's a disconnect between the serving community and what's quote unquote the Sunday church crowd. Mainly when we saw the comments that people were making about (the situation in St. Louis), that's when we knew we needed to address this issue."

Sundays Are The Worst will be up until Easter. It allows restaurant staff to post anonymously and they certainly do.

The stories posted there are passionate and heartfelt.

Sample:

Christ told us to love thy neighbor as ourselves, and I will tell you many Christians choose not to live by that mantra. To this day, I still see servers who are mistreated even verbally abused by these people. I call them out, because as a Christian myself, I sickens me that their actions are destroying people's perception of Christ by their actions and their words. While working at this store, I had a church youth group destroy our dining room; I even had one group cause thousands of dollars' worth of damage to our restroom by clogging the toilets with paper towel and toilet paper.

Some of the customers reference allegedly leave fake money as a tip.

There is a movement in America to do away with tipping altogether. Some restaurants find it both archaic and inequitable.

While it still exists, though, Roberts' Preaching Christ Church will choose one server a week to receive a gift card.

He added: "The two goals we have with this are number one, that Christians would begin to realize that their attitude really matters when they go to eat. The second goal is that particularly unchurched servers would understand that not all Christians are rude, impatient, lousy tippers."

Of course a third goal would presumably be to suggest that the Preaching Christ Church is one that has a certain awareness of the outside world and is worth checking out.

In this, Pastor Roberts might just succeed. Indeed, he might get a tip or two, while he's at it.