Please Go Away

Kenny Shopsin, longtime owner and chef of his own little curious restaurant in the Village called Shopsin’s, doesn’t give a damn whether you eat at his restaurant or not.  In fact, he’d rather you not.  And, as you might have guessed, Shopsin’s is very busy.  Even if you get a table, you still aren’t guaranteed a meal.  Say something wrong, order something wrong, or do something they consider stupid, and they will promptly kick you out.  Ask for a table for an odd number, say three or five, and they will tell you to get lost.  Kenny Shopsin is the protagonist in an oddly interesting documentary about his restaurant called “I Like Killing Flies.”

I have half a mind to ask Kenny Shopsin, the irreverent Jew, how he would go about starting a church here in the city.  But from the documentary, I think he would say something along the following lines: be yourself, do what you love, and %*#@ everybody else.  Seriously, his default stance towards people wanting to eat at his restaurant is, “This probably isn’t for you.  You should probably eat somewhere else.”    

Eastern Othodoxy doesn’t market or advertise itself.  Its default position to potential converts is: “This probably isn’t for you.  You should probably worship somewhere else.”  Frederica Mathewes-Greene, author of At The Corner of East and Now: A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy, and herself a convert, puts it this way:

The well-intentioned idea of presenting the appealing, useful side of faith fails, I think, because it doesn’t question deeply enough the basic consumer ethos.  The transaction that takes place between a shopper-seeker and the goods acquired (groceries, furniture, the key to the meaning of life) is one that leaves the seeker in control, in a position of judging, evaluating, and rejecting the part he doesn’t like  But entering faith is more like making a promise or beginning a marriage.  It involves being grafted into a community and requires a willingness to grow and change.  If it didn’t, if it merely confirmed us in our comfortable places, how could it free us to be more than we are?

I may try to get Kenny Shopsin and a local Orthodox priest to co-author a book with me, entitled, Please Go Away: A Counter-Intuitive Guide to Marketing.