Hospitality: A Program or a Presence?

As noted earlier, I spent July 10-17 with ten other people from our church on a volunteers in mission work trip to the Dominican Republic.  We came alongside Dominican and Haitian church people to work on a small place of worship for a new church start in a community called Samangola.  There's a tendency on the part of international work campers, I know, to over-idealize the cultures they encounter.  I don't want to fall prey to that.  However, even from an objective view, we were blessed and graced beyond measure by the people we encountered and the people with whom we had the privilege of working.  And we realized that they had so, so much from which we could learn.

One of those areas of learning was hospitality.  I am blessed to be a part of a church here that works hard on practicing "radical hospitality."  Our congregation has improved in welcomeness by leaps and bounds, and I am so proud of our staff, leaders, and church folks who go out of their way to make the needs of a newcomer more important than their own.  Many established churches struggle to break outside their own closed circles of relationship, and I'm glad to be a part of church people who are eager and willing to raise the bar on hospitality.  However, in our admittedly limited experience of the Jesus-followers of Bani, San Cristobal, San Rafael, and Samangola, hospitality there is not a program, an emphasis, a committee, or a spot on an organizational chart.  It is the air they breathe.  It is the rhythm of their collective heartbeat.  It is a Presence that is undeniable.  The hospitality extended to us and to those in their own culture they seek to reach for Jesus is hard to describe.  It is genuine, warm, unconditional, and energizing all at the same time.  They offer it effortlessly and joyfully.

I found myself wondering why it is this way.  Why do we read books about hospitality, have training programs on hospitality, create hospitality teams, and give instructions on hospitality, while they just live it like it's their own skin?  I'm not sure sure I know the answer, but I intend to find out.  I find myself wanting to go back and just live in their church culture for a time, maybe to absorb how the welcomeness with which Jesus welcomes us all becomes so second nature.

A couple of times in the last week people in are area have asked me, "Are you glad to be back in civilization?"   Trust me, in the area of Christ-like hospitality, many of the Dominican and Haitian Jesus-followers are the "civilized" ones, and I am the "third world" who needs to benefit from them.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Watch Those Bumps in the Road!

I suppose people in general have the right to assume that "bumps" in the road of life are always an interference, a frustration, a temporary setback, or something to overcome.  Followers of Jesus don't have that luxury.  We have to stay open to the possibility that some "bumps" along life's highway indicate the activity of an involved God.

Eleven people from our church spent July 10-17 in the Dominican Republic, the nation that shares a Caribbean island with Haiti.  We worked in a community called Samangola, alongside people from churches in Bani and San Rafael.  Our task was to help in the completion of a simple church building in Samangola, the home of a new congregation there.  For four days we painted, shoveled base gravel, and mixed and loaded concrete.  The church seeks to evangelize among the poor of the Dominican, which includes both Dominican people and people of Haitian descent.  In particular, church leaders seek to reach children.

The bulk of the group planned to fly out of Miami to Santo Domingo on June 9.  (I would catch up with them on the 10th.)  However, the landed in Miami only to find that their flight had been cancelled.  The airline scrambled to reroute them, eventually putting them up in a hotel for the night.  The next day the airline sent them to Santa Domingo - by way of New York City!  (Airlines don't care about geography - just schedules!)  At the time the team thought it was a mild inconvenience at worst and a funny story to tell eventually at best. 

But God was up to something.  The group had several duffel bags of shoes and baseball equipment to distribute in the DR.  Shipping cost was sizable for these items, but our church had been generous in support of the entire project.  As a result of the flight inconvenience, an official of the airline decided to waive shipping costs on all the duffel!   As a result, this leveraged several hundred more dollars to be put into the new church's ministry in Samangola.  A "bump" in the road turned out to be something that furthered the cause of leading people in new life with Jesus.

Don't be too quick to assume that all the bumps in your life's road are bad.  Consider the possibility that God may be at work.  I'll see you around the next bend in the river.