Hospitality and Radical Hospitality

My thanks to all of you who have been praying for my wife Elaine through her surgery on Monday. The surgery was successful, and she is recovering well.

She is helped in her recovery by a very attentive and skilled surgeon, and by compassionate and hard-working nurses and certified nursing assistants. If you spend enough time in and around hospitals you can tell the difference between people who are doing their job well and those who are going the extra mile. We've benefited from the latter.

Our bishop (the leader of our denomination in our state) talks about the need for healthy churches to practice what he calls radical hospitality. Too many times Jesus-followers regard hospitality as mere cordiality. That's not what our bishop means. Hospitality for Jesus-followers is based on Jesus Himself. Jesus is God's love going above-and-beyond to reach us and to welcome us. So that applies to hospitality given in the name of Jesus. It's like this:

A church practicing hospitality has greeters at the door. A church practicing radical hospitality posts greeters with umbrellas in the parking lot on a stormy day.

A church practicing hospitality wears name tags. A church practicing radical hospitality prepares permanent name tags for any guests, as a signal that the congregation wants them to return.

A church practicing hospitality welcomes visitors in worship. A church practicing radical hospitality gears every single element of worship, from the announcements to the worship order to the language used in print, for the first time visitor.

A Jesus-follower practicing hospitality invites a friend or co-worker to worship. A Jesus-follower practicing radical hospitality invites the friend or co-worker, pick up him/her, stays with him/her throughout worship, introduces the person to others, answers any questions, etc.

Radical hospitality takes work and motivation. If that which Jesus is and that which Jesus offers isn't motivation enough for us, then that's another matter.

I hope your path is crossed by people who go above and beyond in their hospitality. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.