I Don’t Want To Talk To Them

When making a call with the first telephones you didn’t dial up a number, you talked to an operator. These ‘hello girls’, as the operators were called, would then connect you to the person or business you wanted to contact. That is until a Kansas City undertaker named Almon Brown Strowger killed them all.

Well, not literally.

He did, however, invent the first automatic switch to route the calls and the first automatic telephone exchange to connect them. He called it the "girl-less, cuss-less, out-of-order-less, and wait-less telephone exchange. It made the position of ‘hello girl’ obsolete.

Why did an undertaker care about phone calls?

Strowger was convinced that one of the operators was diverting business calls away from him and to a rival undertaker who also happened to be her boyfriend. His indignation made him want to do away with all telephone operators.

Her playing favorites doomed the profession.

Scripture warns us of this. James tells us, “do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism” and “if you show partiality, you are committing sin”.

There is no partiality with God and there should be in his church as well (Galatians 2:6).

However, that is often easier said than done. We find it easier to greet a friend than a stranger. We gravitate to the successful rather than the lowly. We talk in jargon that isolated the visitor. We develop habits that are walls to a newcomer. Partiality isn’t always something we do intentionally but it takes an intentional effort for us to keep from doing it.

Make sure you monitor yourself that you don’t fall in a lazy habit of favoritism. Churches that play favorites are ones that find themselves dying from within.

Playing favorites won’t just be bad for you but could doom the church as well!

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