How Could Baptists Miss This Opportunity

I mentioned yesterday that Will's references to Baptist recipes and food would not appear here until his return from Guatemala, but then this story shows up in the news. The Tennessean story begins, "The nation's largest franchisee of Church's Chicken fast-food restaurants is buying Nashville-based Shoney's with a pledge to bring Shoney's back to its "glory days."

This story has Baptist written all over it! Consider the following (including the sarcasm):
• First of all this IS Church related (nothing say Baptist Church like fried chicken, plus, it IS a Church franchisee)
• Secondly, there is a law suit involved from a previous bidder for Shoney's ownership...(there is probably a historical document involved as well). Just ask Tennessee Baptists if the word lawsuit doesn't sound familiar.
• Thirdly, some of the locations have been accused of being 'lukewarm' (Sure, the lukewarm-ness is related to food storage temperature violations, but the metaphor can't be lost among Baptists familiar with current theological debates)
• FINALLY, the new power player on the block wants a glory days "resurgence"... that alone makes this a Baptist deal.

How soon can we get a Shoney's Baptist Convention (savebaptistshoneys.com) web site? Think about that for just a moment...replacing Southern with Shoney's means that we can still call it the SBC, we lose the bias associated with the word Southern, there is instance name recognition with the name (that includes a Big Boy...we'll not go there theologically), and we finally admit that Baptist fellowship is best done at a breakfast bar (we'll just have to delete that 'bar' reference somehow). What an opportunity!