Radical Hospitality - The End?

What can we do? What are the groups or places that it is easiest for newcomers to join or fit in? How does inviting people become a regular part of everything our congregation does? In what ways are people who come into our church made to feel like they aren’t new any more? What training or tools do we need to improve our invitation? As you can imagine, these questions generated quite a bit of discussion today. I bet they even have your wheels turning, don’t they? It seemed that the biggest challenge for us was not in coming up with answers and ideas and suggestions, but in avoiding our natural, human tendency to want to assess our progress in some quantifiable, measurable, concrete way. Maybe we just need to have faith that if we give the invitation in a radical way, then the rest will take care of itself. We may have a committee in charge of welcoming and following up with visitors, reaching out to help them find their place, offering opportunities for participation and service, but there is something more. Just offering the small, familiar, seemingly insignificant acts of kindness acknowledges and values each presence. That is what makes people feel at ease, a part of the body. And in the end that is all we need to do. How does that happen? Mark 4:3 from The Message "Listen. What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed.”

Radical Hospitality - How doin'?

How doin'? A common greeting among my kids and their friends, but also an invitation to assess current practices, state of "the union", how we are doing as a church and how we are doing as individuals. And that is just what we did this week. We started out by redefining what radical hospitality is - practices drastically different from the norm, exceeding expectations, offering the utmost of yourself to others, feeling restless because there are so many people who do not have a relationship with God, and being genuinely interested in others so that they intuitively know that people really care for them and they are a part of the body. We then proceeded to examine where we are, found we were right where most other mainline churches are and weren't very comfortable or happy with that. A natural outflow of that conversation was an invigorating brainstorming session, with everyone contributing ideas about how we could offer radical hospitality - pretty easily identifying things we could do as individuals, as a small group, and even things we could offer to the entire congregation. It was such a hopeful, uplifting, exciting and empowering conversation! What can you do right here, right now, no matter how small it may seem, to offer radical hospitality to your neighbor? If you are reading the book along with us, we will be putting the finishing touches on Radical Hospitality and moving into Passionate Worship next week.

Radical Hospitality - It's All About Me!

Today we started looking at the first practice, Radical Hospitality. We looked at some of the scriptural basis for Radical Hospitality including Romans 15:7 , Deuteronomy 10:19 Matthew 18:5 and 22:8-9 and 25:35, Hebrews 13:2 and 1 Timothy 6:19. We talked about how each one of us came to be a part of this particular church and discovered that we all had been raised with the custom or habit of attending church. Some fell away and came back, others were always very active and still others took breaks and bounced around amongst different denominations. But in the end we had all come from a churched background. Considering how we offer hospitality to those with a different experience was a bit more difficult than we had anticipated. What is the appeal of our church or any church to someone who does not or never has regularly attended church? Schnase states on page 31 that, “People are searching for churches that make them feel welcome and loved, needed and accepted.” We focused on the need to get it right, to be sincere and honestly caring about others in our invitations and the need to offer an invitation, no matter how uncomfortable we may be in doing so. We digressed to worrying about how the church as a whole can do that and thank goodness for the one who brought us back, reminding us to focus not on how we prevent others from doing it “wrong’” but on how I do it “right.” In the end it’s all about me and how I offer Radical Hospitality, because that is all I can control. But this isn’t the “It’s all about me” that I wanted, this is hard work…

Introduction - Part Deux

Well, as usual we got a bit into the discussion and didn't make it all the way through the introduction so we finished it this week. But that is a good thing! We always try to take our time and go at the pace the group is comfortable with, leaving the end open - we are about the journey, not the destination. Today's discussion centered around some interesting questions posed by our leader.

1. What is a fruitful congregation? What do you think it looks like?
2. On page 8 of the book Schnase writes, "The most visible way God knits people into community to fulfill the mission of Christ is through congregations, and these five practices give congregations a common language." What do you think he means by a "common language"?
3. The entire program related to the book is structured for a church-wide study, but as a small group what can we do and how do we apply it?
4. If you attend any church any where for the first time, what kind of hospitality would you expect to receive?
5. When you moved into a new neighborhood, or you started a new job in a new place, what happened that made you feel welcomed? How did you know you were a part of that new community?
   

Our discussion focused on our own situations locally, but the questions are valid anywhere for anyone. Considering and answering these questions gave us a chance to clearly, consciously articulate what is understood in our subconscious.