#237. Tipping at restaurants with a tract.

If I wasn’t busy with the SCL Facebook group, I would start a new one called, “People that have given their lives to Christ because a customer tipped them with a gospel tract instead of money.” The preliminary numbers I’ve run estimate that I should have roughly 2 members by the end of year. (This would be a great point for a waiter that embraced eternal salvation and the blood of Christ through a “tip tract” to blow this whole idea out of the water.)

I didn’t really want to write this post because I didn’t believe it really happened. I grew up outside of Boston and never heard of doing something like this. But when I wrote about those fake ten dollar bills that are actually tracts, a lot of waiters and waitresses wrote in to tell me they’d been given tracts instead of tips.

The key word is “instead.” That’s no good. I mean if you want to give a tip and a tract, that’s your call. That is different to me. I have some friends that give out tracts and candy at Halloween to neighborhood kids and I don’t have any issue with that. But the tract always rides shotgun with a blow pop and a tootsie roll, they never just throw it into the bag solo. I don’t do that at my house, but I’m in no position to judge folks that do.

In defense of people that leave a tract instead of a tip, I think we have to remember some verses in Luke 20. When they asked Jesus if it is right to pay Caesar taxes, he responded, “Instead of paying your taxes, leave behind a gospel tract.” What? That’s not how the story happened? Oh, minus ten points for me.

Please resist the urge to leave a tract instead of a tip after church today.