Publisher's Pen: Who we're forgetting when we talk about extravagant hospitality
Invitation… Welcoming… Hospitality… These are words that we throw around a lot in the Church. We’ve even taken to making these words more exciting by pairing them with words like Radical and Extravagant, but making them more exciting will not make them more than words if that is all we do. Yes, we know that we have to be more welcoming as a Church. We know we have to be “extravagantly hospitable,” but do we know what that means? More importantly, do we know why we need to make people feel welcome?
The idea behind radical or extravagant hospitality is that it is not enough to do invitation and welcoming in the way that we are comfortable doing it. This is not a new idea. For as long as the mainline denominations have been in decline the Church has known that a key issue is complacency, but the language to discuss the issue has been springing up around Bishop Robert Schnase’s book, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, in which congregations are called to engage in Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity. This hospitality component was later picked up by the Western Jurisdiction and The Desert Southwest Conference as extravagant hospitality, and for a couple of years we, like so many others, have been talking about what it means.
Now, these are important conversations to be having, but there is a problem. Too often the focus is on what we, as the Church, have to do to be more welcoming so we can save ourselves. In essence we ask, “How do we make someone feel loved in church so that they become members and support the church with their time and talents?” If this is where the conversation begins, we are sure to fail. Starting with the question “how?” isn’t going to get us where we need to go. We have to start with, “why?”
This became all too apparent to me as I sat in church on a recent Sunday morning. The church had been working on welcoming for some time. Our church greeters had moved beyond the church doors towards the parking lot. The congregation took more time to “pass the peace of Christ” and visitors were introduced so everyone could say hello. We had even been working to make our signage better in spite of the cost. As a congregation we were feeling pretty good about how far we had come, and I was no exception.
Now this was the first Sunday of the month, which is when my church happened to take communion. My family and I were running late, which is a fact of life with a two year old in tow. We walked in quietly and sat in the back so we didn’t disturb anyone else, and we sat several rows behind a middle-aged couple we didn’t recognize. It was, in fact, their first visit, and they seemed to appreciate their welcome. They were introduced, they received a nice welcome gift, and people went out of their way to greet them as the peace of Christ was passed.
However, from my vantage point, I could see how alone they really were. There were empty seats all around them, and they really seemed to feel everyone looking at them. If hospitality is making someone feel as comfortable as they would at home, they were not feeling it. Their comfort level appeared to be more along the lines of being in a fish bowl than being at home. Then it got worse.
As we were called forth to take communion the husband was visibly shaking with fear. Perhaps this was the first time he had taken communion, or perhaps his last church experience was a negative one. It may have been too early to know where his fear came from, but we were all too far away to ask, anyway. The wife tried to take his hand and calm him, but with everyone watching that may have made things worse. The couple slowly and painstakingly moved forward with the congregations, as concerned glances and a feeling of helplessness were shared by all. No one knew quite how to reach out, and the very sacrament that means so much to us was causing pain to the visitors. Regardless of how hard we were trying, this could not be called hospitality. The visitors hurried out as soon as the service was over and we never saw them again.
We forget what it means to be a visitor. In fact, many of us are never really visitors in our United Methodist Churches. The fact is that usually we are just too comfortable in our own environment to realize that it takes a great act of courage to even walk in the front door of a church.
Worse yet, instead of trying to understand why the very people we are trying to make disciples feel the way they do, we spend most of our time making excuses and even putting the blame on them. There must be something wrong with someone that doesn’t feel comfortable in our church, right? Clearly they need more spiritual formation or a stronger understanding of the life of Christ so that they feel more comfortable in a church setting—we are comfortable—why can’t they be? This is what I’ll ask you, “If we cannot make them feel comfortable, how will they ever gain the understanding we think they should have?”
That is why extravagant hospitality is so important. It’s not about how we save our declining Churches. It is about why our Churches are declining, and who we are forgetting desperately need us.
In that context, this issue of Transformation will focus on extravagant hospitality. It will look at ministries around The Desert Southwest Conference that are going beyond their own areas of comfort and are focusing on those scared and lost individuals that so desperately need what we are called to share. Perhaps these ministries can help us to make the house of God home to all God’s children.
- Stephen J. Hustedt
