As a high school student, I worked more than one job waiting tables. The minimum wage for servers at the time? $2.13. That was just about half the minimum wage for all other workers. But most nights, I came home with more than a few dollars in my pocket. In fact, as me and the other servers counted down our earnings for the night, one thing was clear: often, great service wasn’t good enough.
You see, a waiter only has control over so much of your dining experience. They can smile, they can look you in the eye, get your order right, and keep your water glass full… but if the food takes too long to come out, or if it’s just not good, the guest won’t go home happy, and the server won’t get paid.
It was responding to situations like that as a 17-year-old where I learned a lot about what it means to provide great service. And, over the last few years, I’ve been helping to bring some of that to the already rich culture of service at SpringHill.
We’ve trained all of our staff in what it means to say YES to our guests.
We’ve taught them how to stand, and smile and greet people.
We’ve made sure they’re dressed professionally.
And we’re seeing it pay off when guests say things to me like, “Your staff, in my opinion, bent over backwards to do whatever they could to make our event a success.”
And that is success… for our guests. But just like serving bad food with a smile isn’t the mission of [most] restaurants, simply providing great service isn’t our mission either. Sure, it supports our mission. It helps us accomplish our mission. But it’s not our mission.
At SpringHill Camps, our mission—why we exist—is to glorify God by creating life-impacting experiences that enable young people to know and to grow in their relationships with Jesus Christ.
So, while the quality of our service may be how we deliver that, it’s the entrée that will pay off for eternity… which is causing me to ask some important questions about how we achieve our mission. For instance,
- How can we create life-impacting experiences for every guest of SpringHill Camps?
- Are we providing great service to our guests to glorify God, or for some other purpose?
- What can we do to ensure all of our programs and retreats ultimately help young people to know and grow in their relationships with Jesus Christ?
And I think the answers I’m finding are that we are, as an organization, clearly focused on our mission in nearly every aspect of what we do.
I have often heard, and seen it to be true, that people will evaluate the content of our message by the care we take in presenting it.
So, just like we make no distinction between faith and fun so we can help kids discover spiritual truth in every day experiences, we will also continue to blur the line between Christ’s message of grace, hope and love, and how we present it to every guest every day. And while we’ll never compromise or water down the message, we’ll always look for new ways to tell that story on and off the stage, and inside and outside of small groups. His story.
The bottom line is this: for the incredibly professional people who answer our phones, mow the lawns, clean our cabins, cook our food and do so much more, the quality of their service is their testimony to our guests of their commitment to glorify God in every aspect of the camp experience… and I’m proud to be a part of their team.
How are you sharing Christ’s message of grace, hope and love through your life and work?
