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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