“Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts—for and to--express it all.” 1
I have been thinking about this one a lot lately: How much of church life is experienced by the average, ordinary person out there as “to” instead of “for” them? We do stuff “to” people all the time? We preach to them, we sing to them, we make announcements to them?
How much different would our ministry be received if everything we do was “for” ministry? A pastor friend of mine said something like this to me years ago, though I never thought of it as practicing “hospitality” at the time. He said, “We don’t preach “to” a people, we preach for them. We offer the word of God to give expression the work of the Spirit at work within a community of faith.”
In what ways can all that we do as Christians be experienced by people as our being “for” them, the way God gave his life “for” them? What would it mean for us to express our ministry in a way that makes everyone who comes in contact with us feel as if “these people are for me, they are on my side?”
1..Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business Danny Meyer: Harper Collins 2006
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1 comment:
Hi Ron,
As a counselor/therapist, I can tell you what the "these people are for me, they are on my side" feeling would do for the majority of folks...it would give them the sense that they BELONG somewhere.That they MATTER. That they have found a place of safety in what is often a hostile world. (Yes, even in the church!)It would give them the impression (hopefully accurate impression) that they are cared about and WANTED. Wow...what a difference that could make in our faith communities!
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