Personally, I'm a huge fan of a server's spawn being a place that showcases the community and its builds, but which only gives the player a single advantage: Getting out of Spawn.
The early game is the most fun for me, so give-aways of armour and food, enchanting facilities and shopping just don't interest me. Players can provide those things themselves, elsewhere, if they want to.
There's little enough challenge in the early game on most servers, with no real danger from fire or creepers, and the ability to warp and teleport around making it so much easier. Handing new players a bunch of things just to give them a leg up as soon as they join the server just serves to further reduce the challenge.