Ask the Pastors S8 E15: “What is biblical hospitality and how is it practiced?"
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Hi, and welcome to Ask the Pastors a segment of the West Hills podcast where you get to ask and receive answers to your questions from our pastoral staff.
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Wait a minute, you're not Brian.
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No, I am not. I'm significantly shorter, but my name is Thad Yessa, one of the pastors and surprise hosts today and I'm joined today with ...
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Pastor Will.
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It's great to have you with us today.
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Yeah.
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So we're without Brian, so we figured we'd deviate from our podcast episode. We'll come back and we'll talk about annihilationism and universalism and how sorts
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Of other fun stuff.
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And other sorts of fun stuff to come. But this week we thought we'd answer the question, what is biblical hospitality and how do we practice it?
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And the reason we're thinking and discussing publicly reflecting on some of the related ideas around biblical hospitality specifically to give context is a long strain of email chain and sent responses, replies from particularly our leaders at the church. So I sent out an email just this past week to all of our elders and staff and deacons and small group leaders just with sort of a plea for help specifically in this area of hospitality. I think my subject title was Intentional Hospitality after just a number of, I guess, both anecdotal on a personal level as well as some bigger picture statistical kind of data points have recently come in for us as a church all kind of pointing to the reality that this is an area that needs some intentional care, consideration, attention for us as a church right now, specifically because I think we are in about halfway in now, a little less than halfway in, maybe halfway hopefully would be great if they were ahead of schedule on our renovation project.
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But into this year of transition for us as a church where we're out of our building for the better part of a year and it's just harder to make people feel at home when they're with us on Sunday mornings, on Wednesday nights, on whatever night your life creep or whatever might meet. It's harder when we're displaced and we don't have a physical space that we're able to invite them into that is our own. And we're super grateful blessed by West County Assembly of God where our offices are here Monday through Friday and where we've done Easter extravaganza, where we're going to be doing vacation Bible school and monthly men's breakfast and all kinds of events here, seniors lunches. I mean, super grateful for this space. We're super grateful for Westminster where we've been able to gather on Sunday mornings and their hospitality to us to let us use their building, but it's not as welcoming of a space from the standpoint of it's set up to be a school, not a church.
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It's big, which again, is great, lots of capacity for welcoming people, but also even the theater in which we're worshiping is it's a theater. It's not a sanctuary. It's not set up. Now a lot of churches these days, they purposely build their quote unquote sanctuaries or worship centers or whatever to be structured like a theater and stadium seating and dark lights and the fog machines, whatever. That's not our typical vibe. That's not our vibe and culture as a church.
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No,
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And
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I'd even words I've had people describe both the space we're currently meeting in and the space of our sanctuary at the West Hills building is cold and warm. In our actual church building, the sanctuary is- Dark and light. ... warm colors. It's temperature wise warm. The theater is dark and cold both color wise as well as temperature wise. It just feels physically and mentally different for
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People. So all of that and even the space you walk into, the entranceway to get there. I mean, we don't have the nice little homey kind of cafe area that's kind of conducive to mingling and all of that. And so yeah, it's got us thinking more and I think we've seen that play out in, like I said, some of the statistical data as well, just as far as the ... Interestingly, my impression is that we've had roughly about the same amount of newcomers coming and visiting the church on Sundays. However, we're getting fewer of them turning in connection cards, wanting to take that next step and connect with the church and then the transition or assimilation rather from getting the newcomers into say our entry point class, our kind of first touch class has been a harder sell, lower attendance there. And then the turnover from that into something like our membership class, again, lower retention rate.
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And so all of that is really kind of you put it together and we have fewer people seemingly sticking around, plugging in, feeling connected, wanting to join the church, et cetera. So it's something that we're paying attention to. And like I said, we just, Dad and I, in talking about it this week, thought rather than this just be sort of an insider like, "Hey, let's reach out to the 50 or so kind of leaders at the church and let them know and ask them for their kind of help in ideas and what can we do to help recapture some of that hospitality that we all love about our church, West Hills and our culture and the vibe that you get in. " And that really was, I think, a formative part in so many of us kind of falling in love with the church, sticking around, coming back and all of that.
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How do we recapture as much of that and even if it does have to be a little bit more effort in this interim until we get back in our building. So all of that is maybe putting the cart before the horse because the title of the episode, as you said, was What Is Biblical Hospitality? And then we can get to how we go about kind of practicing it. So you want to give us kind of a working definition for biblical hospitality?
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Yeah, I think it also fits well if we're trying to make a justification for why we're pivoting to this episode. We just talked about the different loves in the Bible and specifically in the Greek in New Testament and Phileo was one of those in hospitality that you see in Greek or in our English translations of the Greek as a compound word with Phileo being the first half of it and simply defining hospitality with the Greek words is just love of strangers That is in general as you look at it, just love of strangers. If I was to give a little bit more of what biblical hospitality is, I would start with saying what it isn't, that it isn't just showing off your house. It's not merely entertaining. It's not only hosting friends you already know. It isn't dependent on a certain level of social status in that, but I would say biblical hospitality, sorry, that's where we'll go later.
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I would say it is welcoming others into your life, home, church and table
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Are the places where I would put what biblical hospitality is. That is showing love to strangers, to believers, to neighbors, to those who are in need and using what God has given you to serve others. So it's more encompassing than just friends. It's more encompassing than just believers. It's more encompassing than just one's home. It's something that penetrates specifically all of the Christian life. If we're talking about biblical hospitality, we talk about what general hospitality is, but I think if we're really trying to nail down where we're going to go with this biblical hospitality, how should Christians think about it? And those are different areas of it. And
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It's a command. It's
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A command.
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Pretty frequently throughout scripture. I mean, going back as far as the Old Testament, you think about God's call on Israel in passages like Leviticus 19:33, 34 to when an alien lives with you in your land, treat him as one of your native born, love him as yourself, for you were aliens and sojourners in Egypt. And it's that idea. I love that. It's my favorite word in Greek, not that I'm some great Greek scholar, but I love that word Philipsina that we translate as hospitality that, like you said, literally means brotherly love for the stranger or I've heard a pastor describe it once as making the stranger feel as if he or she is loved like a brother, which maybe even takes it a step farther if you think about like ... I love that kind of calling of not just that I am called to love a total stranger like I would a brother or a sister.
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I mean, that's great, but if you think about me having to go this step further to really read and discern and empathize and get to know as best I can as quickly as can, I can that stranger and the cues that he or she is giving and what is making that person feel loved like an insider and not feel like an outsider, that takes it even a step further. I guess an example that I'm thinking of with that is in light of what we've been talking about here with the change environment for us on Sunday mornings especially. And again, it being harder for strangers to feel like anything other than strangers and just connections are harder in the physical space that we're in. I sent out the email, "Hey, here's some of our ideas. If you have ideas." And it's interesting because a couple of people replied with a couple ideas and some of them you might think at first, well, that's great hospitality, that's great Philixina because yeah, you're trying to extend that kind of brotherly love toward that visitor, that stranger and make them feel welcomed.
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But I'll give you two examples. One is the kind of meet and greet time during the surface that-
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Passing of the peace.
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Passing of the peace, which is kind of a different older thing that some churches still call it that, but it's different. Just the turn and greet your neighbor in kind of two minutes of 90 seconds of forced extroversion or whatever. And interestingly, someone else, one of our other leaders immediately replied after someone threw that idea and said, "I would strongly caution against doing that. All of the church kind of surveys and research show that the vast majority of visitors to a church hate that time. That's their least favorite. And if you go to church and because it feels so forced and it feels like the only reason anyone's talking to me is because they have to and because they're not organically going to do it before or after the service and the pastor's making them, that's best case scenario. Worst case scenario is the pastor says, turn and greet someone and nobody does.
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And they all turn and greet someone they already know and now I feel even more isolated. Anyway, so all that to say, if 90% of people polled say, I hate that, don't do it, please, then are we really being-
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Hospitable.
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Hospitable. And when incorporating that into a service, similar thing with something like an idea, another idea of someone tossed that idea of having folks who would be willing to stand at the info bar or whatever and, "Hey, we'd love to come grab lunch with you or whatever when a newcomer, stranger comes to our connections table thing and to me again, and everybody's different and there are going to be some people maybe like the meet and greet people that like 10% of the people polled that are like, if you're a total stranger to me and it's my very first time at the church, sure, I love new friends and I'll go grab lunch with you. 90 plus percent of people, that is super overwhelming, that is like coming on way too strong, way too fast that-
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Way in my
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Personal
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Space. I'm uncomfortable.
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I just learned your name five seconds ago and now you're putting me on the spot and asking me to go out to a meal with you. Maybe let's ease into this thing." So I say all that to say like with this calling of again, the command, I interrupted myself because I was starting going through the- So
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Impassioned.
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Yeah. But Romans 12:13, seek to show hospitality one Peter four: nine, show hospitality to one another without grumbling. You've got Hebrews 13 too, "Don't neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unaware." That's a whole-
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Podcast episode
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For
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A later time.
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And it's a qualification of Christian leaders. Elders must be above reproach, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable. And so one of the three two- Meaning-
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It's evidence of godly character
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To
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Be hospitable for one. So
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Anyway, all that to just say it's a command often throughout scripture is to be this way. And so that's all maybe what it is. And we've talked a little bit about maybe some things that are well-meaning but might not actually be the most hospitable in terms of making that stranger feel truly at home, truly like a brother, truly welcome, truly ... So maybe we can spend some time kicking around some ideas, even we can go generic for a timeless episode, like regardless of when you listen to this or whether or not you're at West Hills or not, or do you want to go more specific or both as far as just in our context right now?
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Probably both. I think number one thing that I would say, this is like when you're at the airports, you see something, say something, like when you see someone you don't know, you should say something to them. I think as a timeless truth for us to remember, but also a real practical that I can't even gauge a guess of how many times people have come up to me, members or regular attenders and I'm like, "Man, there's just so many people who I just don't even know their name." And my response is, "Well, have you asked them?"
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And because we're at a size and so many people have been coming to through that even I on staff and I'd like to think I have a pretty good grasp of who's there on a Sunday that there's people who I'm like, "Man, I'm sorry if I've met you before. Could you remind me of your name?" And I've introduced myself to people who've been here for six months. I'm like, "Oh man." And we've just in whatever scenario have not overlapped with each other. And so again, if you see someone, just ask them like, "Hey, I don't think I met you before, or I can't remember your name, would you mind sharing that? " Or an easy one if you're worried about potentially being embarrassed, are you connected to a life group or a D group or something like that of if you're worried like me when I ask and they're like, "Oh, I've been here for six months." I'm like, "Whoops." But just ask that question.
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So if you see someone you don't know, say something to them, introduce yourself to them. I think that's my base level number one.
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And that person majority of the time is not going to be offended that you didn't recognize that they've been there for six months, especially if you're not a pastor. If you and I are making that, I won't even call it, again, mistake because I'd rather introduce myself or reintroduce myself, "Oh, actually we've met once or twice already. Okay, sorry." And I tell people for me, look, until you go to entry point and make it to that class and make that a priority and carve at that time to take that next step, to be more than just a newcomer, to be attender. If you stick around after entry point, now you're an attender. And so until you make it to that point where you sit down and you're going to go through the class and we're going to eat a meal together and you're going to tell me your name and fun fact about you and I'm going to do the same.
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And I think people just, they got to get it. Like you said, we're a- Medium sized church. Church, medium sized, no longer that church where the pastor, much less just Joe congregant, can know every visitor and your name and what like the second time you visit. I used to really try and do that, but it's like it's going to take a handful of times, maybe even months and certainly until, like I said, you come and sit down, but they're not going to be offended.
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They're just going to appreciate that somebody noticed they were there period and cared and cared enough to come and say something to them. So I think you're right. I think that's a good low hanging fruit. I mean, the couple specific things that we asked of our leaders, but I mean, I would say to anyone in earshot of this podcast is, like you said, number one, just if you see someone you don't know, please introduce yourself again, even if you don't remember their name next time, you recognize their face and you give them the, "Hey, buddy." And then you turn and ask your spouse like, "What was their name again?" So it's fine and do that. And specifically one great place and way of doing that that we recommended was in the theater space 10 minutes before the service starts because visitors typically, especially first time visitors, tend to get there early because they don't know what the parking's going to be like and they don't know how crowded the seating might be.
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And they
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Already feel like an outsider and
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They
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Don't want to be struggling to find a seat.
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Yeah. They want to get a lay of the land. And so it's not a great look at all if you're visiting, you're there and it's eight minutes before the service starts and you're waiting for those eight minutes and mostly silence and you're looking around and everybody else is out in the foyer getting their coffee and talking to each other and connecting. And that's great. And again, that's what we want. We certainly don't want to ask our people not to connect with one another, but come on in the theater and use that as an excuse to be intentionally hospitable to those who are strangers and need that connection, that touch.
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And following up on that, the second thing I was going to say, one of our leaders did point out that at a previous church that they had been at, that the pastor had specifically asked them not to talk to their friends or life group members on Sunday mornings. Like you're going to connect with them on Tuesday night, you're going to text with them throughout the week. So don't be distracted from your Sunday task of being hospitable to strangers and making new connections. And I won't go that far. I haven't, certainly of like asking people not to talk to their friends, but we have said things like that with our quarterly all church meetings or fellowship lunches or night of thanks. We've definitely made requests in the past of, "Hey, for this meal, this all church potluck meal thing, sit by someone you don't know, don't go sit together as your life group all at the table together.
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You do that every week. Use this as a time to sit with someone you don't know.
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" And I would just add to that, to just have eyes for-
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And awareness.
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Yeah. When you're talking to people that if you see someone, especially someone who's alone in particular, that's again, you're having a conversation with them, "Hey, just be one minute." And you go and go introduce yourself. And again, we wouldn't want to crush the fellowship that already exists, but again, just to name, to have an awareness that as you're talking, you're still looking around, you're still paying attention and seeing if someone is by themselves, walking alone, sitting alone, especially if they're sitting alone in the theater, go and just introduce yourself to them or invite them to come join the conversation and introduce them to other people.
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We're all just grown up insecure teenagers. I feel like that was ... I don't know. I was never the most charismatic. I was never the world's greatest teacher or anything, but I feel like if I had any kind of superpower at all as a youth leader back in the day for years of doing youth ministry, it was just the basic kind of empathy of seeing this experience, this Sunday evening or whatever through the eyes of that stranger and just being extra thoughtful and caring and compassionate looking out for the stranger because of course we're always inviting our students to invite their friends and then you got families that are visiting the church and then they drop their kids at youth group and they know no one. And so the idea that someone could come and sit through a whole hour and a half whatever and leave and not have made any kind of personal connection, no one came and made that like is just like nothing is worse to me and to God, I think.
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And we're all just grown up versions of that. Like you think about the kid, the fourth grader getting dropped off at vacation Bible school because their parents need childcare during the summer or whatever and it's like, "Hey, here's something and I'll drop it. " And if that kid goes through that whole week, much goes through even one night or one day of that without the leaders there, the grownups who get it, who get like we're social animals and we need community, it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And so I got to get this kid connected to another kid, "Oh, you're into Pokemon. Hey, here, let me ... " Whatever it is.
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And again, adults are just, we're just grown up kids. We just carry all those social insecurities and all of it into that. And so it's hard. It's hard for anyone to step into this church community for the first time feeling like, yeah, I'm the outsider, I'm the newcomer and I'm crashing their party and all these people kind of know each other and stuff, which of course is not true. Not true. They're not the only newcomer. In a church of our size, most people don't ... And this is why you see the growing disparity. It's kind of like the church version of like the income inequality of like the rich get richer, poor people. It's like big churches get bigger, small churches get smaller because it's way easier for people to go and check out and just fall into a big church where it feels like for all intents and purposes, everybody here might as well be a newcomer because nobody's really ... If they're going to do community at a church this big, they're going to have to do it.
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They got 10 services and whatever. It's like nobody's really finding their friends. They're just here to consume the service and then they go. And if they're doing community, it's during the middle of the week and a small group thing. So it's like, okay, everybody's on the same playing field. So anyway, I'm rambling, but I think it's all relevant to the thought process and again, the ethos, the vibe, the culture that is being inculcated on a Sunday morning at any given church, and again, to speak specifically to our context.
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Yeah. I would just add one more thing that I thought helpful to think through this. Rebecca McLaughlin, she says her husband has three rules for engagement when they go to church and a lone person in our gathering is an emergency, friends can wait, introduce a newcomer to someone else. And
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I think
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You brought up a really helpful thing of connecting, not just children over things, but I can think of times where someone's like, "Oh, I'm a new student at Logan." I'm like, "Great, let me go find one of the other students at Logan. Oh, you went to S&T. Let me go find someone who went to S&D. Oh, you work at Boeing. Let me go find you one of the 35 employees of Boeing." And again, not that you have to have everyone known, but not just Just introduce yourself to them, but see if you can introduce them to someone else as well. And then they come away with two friends instead of just one.
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Well, and you and I can't have a eight minute conversation with really anyone on a Sunday morning. We are best utilized as the connectors to the people who do have that kind of time to do that. And so if we've got 12 visitors on a Sunday morning and I mean it'd be great if I could have a 60 second interaction with each one of them, but even half of them is a good Sunday for me because a lot of them, again, they're introvert and they're sneaking out and whatever else. So I'm doing my best to hunt them down, which is harder again at Westminster, very wide entranceway foyer for people to sneak past you. So anyway, I-
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So see something, say something.
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Say something. But I love what you said about, and that was kind of where I was going with the friends can wait, but the friends can wait. That's a good way of putting it. And the way I try and, and I've said this before, maybe just needs to be more frequent or whatever and you got to say it in a way that's gentle, but basically, and probably what I'll do is I'll wait and I'll say it at our quarterly members meeting because that's the family meeting, the insiders, really mostly no visitors, like certainly first time visitors almost ever stick around for that. They can and they'd love probably what they would hear if for me to say to the church, "Hey, please join me in having this kind of mindset that a stranger visitor is an emergency who's alone, who's not already talking to someone." Because again, it should just be unthinkable that someone can get all the way from the parking lot and service back to the parking lot hour and a half later and have had no personal, like no one introduced themselves.
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No one asked what you're getting. More than just
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A higher welcome,
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Which you're
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Probably getting.
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Hopefully. I mean, there's varying degrees in the minimum bar. But anyway, but also the friends can wait thing because yeah, just for me and youth Ed and the elders and maybe your life group leaders to say to you at that quarterly meeting or at your next life group gathering or whatever, "Hey, by the way, I got this email from Pastor Will and I just need to let y'all know I love y'all when I continue to go deep with y'all on Thursday nights here or whatever. On Sunday mornings, look forward to catching up and chatting, maybe even sit together in the service, whatever. Just so you know, if we're in the middle of talking and I say, Hey, hold that thought. I mean, no offense. It's just I just saw a visitor and that's an emergency. A visitor who's looking around like a deer in headlights and clearly doesn't know up from down in this place.
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And I want to make them feel at home. And so I'm going to go and prioritize that and then we can always finish this conversation later. That's always been my approach. And I know I said that and I've said that over the years in different ways, but just I feel like we're at another time in our church and there are specific congregants, a whole other specific congregants at West Hills and you know I'm talking about who every single Sunday want to come up and talk for 10 minutes. And that one's probably even more of a personal conversation with those two or three people to say, "Hey, brother, sister, this is not the time. If you want to give me feedback on the sermon or encouragement or pushback, text me, email me, call me, I'll get to it when I get to it. " But this time is for me connecting mostly with visitors and there's exceptions to all of this where someone comes in, they just got this terrible diagnosis or I'm really anxious about this divorce court case that I've got coming up this week.
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Can you please pray with me or whatever. There's times when you're going to say, "Absolutely. Hey, you're cared for here too." And the treating a stranger as a brother doesn't do any good if you're treating the brother like a stranger. So the goal is not to treat the insiders, the members of the church like Outkast, like you don't care about them. It's just again, hopefully there's enough of a security in that relationship that they know, "Hey, I've got pastor's cell phone number. I can talk to him anytime." Yeah, and he cares and I can finish this conversation later.
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Other thoughts on hospitality? I know we've gone for a while already. I mean, there's specific things we've also talked about in our specific, if we want to go specific in our context with some of the seemingly a little bit more disjointed nature of the vibe since the shift to Westminster, we've talked about consolidating instead of two entrances where if you go in that kids and family's entrance and you might not rub shoulders with as many people as you do if you go in the main entrance with everybody else and you have the cafe area there where people are kind of mingling. We've talked about, yeah, that cafe area now is so close to the theater that a lot of people, they feel like they're kind of blocking people's path into the auditorium if they stay there and hang out and have their coffee and talk with their friends and so they just don't.
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They just go right in the theater and now they're not mingling. So can we create a bagels and pastries kind of separate table that would be kind of opposite that closer to the bathrooms there and more space that people could hang out and mingle more freely. I don't know. So just some very, again, low hanging fruit, practical kinds of things, encouraging volunteers, especially when you're on duty. When you're wearing the badge and, "Hey, hi, my name is such and such and I'm here to make you feel welcome." That's my job. Don't be talking to your friends, this is-
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When you're serving, just-
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When
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You're serving, when you're holding
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Doors- Hold those doors-
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Passing bulletins.
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You're at the info bar, you're here to be eyes out for new faces. "Hey, my name's such and such. I don't think we've met.
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"I'm not going to say name because I'm actively going to get someone offended if I do. B super welcome. I would add a timeless thing that I hope will be true of our church is show up early and stay late. Show up early, get there more than five minutes before the service so that you can, one, get settled, prepare, go to the bathroom, get your coffee, get into the theater, get the kids checked in, don't feel rushed, way to prepare your heart for worship, but also show up early so that you can connect with people and stay late so that you can also connect with people and feel that sometimes it can feel like such a rush to get into church and we're going to just rush to get out and you really miss out on the quality time by rushing both in and out of the services where this really added benefit.
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I remember times at our old building where I mean it's 40 minutes after service and people are still talking long connecting in the lobby. Daniel and Hannah Casis are the best at this. They shut down church in the park. They were the last ones there minus me getting stuff and I love that because they're
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People get too extrovert, that extroverted, I mean they just had to know marrying each other like we are going to be the last ones to leave every party, every church service and we're just okay with it because we both love that and I love that about them.
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And like there's other people who I could just throw out there who've done that. But just an encouragement to don't make church feel like a duty where like we did it and so we can just run out. But for it to really be a gathering of God's people and a delight and if you come early and stay longer, not only are you being hospitable to the stranger, but it also gives you more opportunity to connect with those friends that you love to see and in doing so, like if I'm going to go the full length specific context to our church is come to a service and then attend a class or serve so that you're there for the full morning and taking full advantage of every opportunity because it's not just strangers who are feeling a little disconnected and disjointed. It's also people who are regular attenders and one of the ways to do that is by coming to our classes, by serving.
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By serving, you're going to be instantly connected to a community, you're going to be instantly connected to more people and then even further than that is participating in all the other opportunities of marriage mentorship and our life groups and our discipleship groups. But to do more than just, I'm checking the box for the church thing, even it can be a temptation for members to just, "Well, I did a thing and I'm in, went to the service and I left, but come early and stay light and then participate fully." If you're in the theater and you know surf starts at nine and 10:45 and I can tell you they start at nine and 10:45, you're in there early ready to begin participating because it's also really awkward for visitors who are coming and there's 50 people in the theater, why would I start singing if it's just the people on stage singing and no one else is even around me participating that we're not one, showing love for the body of Christ, but we're also not showing love for that stranger by not being in there ready to participate in worship to the Lord
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And each
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Other.
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Yeah. So we will keep thinking and praying and strategizing and if you're listening to this and have your own ideas again, some of them we may like, some of them we might not, and some of them we might be split on. And I think about some folks have thrown out, "Hey, we should do name tag Sunday every Sunday." And I'm like, "Well, okay, maybe that makes it easier to introduce and you see someone's name too." But maybe it also sort of conveys this message of like every Sunday, like you never settle into anything other than visitor mode. We're all visitors to each other all the time and it conveys this almost expectation that no one knows anybody's name. So anyway, and some of it is practical limitations. Like you talked about the darkness of the theater, like we're checking with the tech crew over there like, can we- Can we
(42:09):
Get it
(42:10):
Brighter? Is there any way to get it brighter because yeah, but some of it you just, there's nothing you can do, but the things that we can and our control-
(42:20):
We're going to try. It doesn't hurt to try something new.
(42:23):
I'd add one more that I just thought of, of if you introduce yourself to someone and you meet them, one thing you can do is say, "Hey, have you met Pastor Will or have you met pastor that? " And if they haven't, you then have the duty to bring them to us so that we have the opportunity to do that because a visitor might have the mentality of like, "Oh, I don't need to be introduced to the pastor. They're so busy. They've got other people. " But we would love the opportunity to at least say hi and get to know their name, even if it's short and brief. But again, that's an opportunity for you to introduce them to someone else and then it's another connection point so that we're still also connecting because we can't connect with everyone on our own.
(43:06):
It makes it so much easier if you've got other people who are eyes and ears out and like you said, grabbing those people and bringing them to us and we enjoy doing that, we want to do that and we could throw all the stats at you about how much more likely a person is to return to a church if someone introduces themselves, one person, how much more likely they are if they meet the pastor and the numbers just keep going up and up. And so yeah, please do that as well. And we talked about all of this in the context of the church environment and making strangers feel at home and loved like a brother when they're with us together corporately at the church. But I guess my last thing and before we sign off is just the reminder that all of this really is still applicable in your day-to-day.
(44:05):
The other 98% of your waking hours of the week, like when you're at work, when you're at the grocery store, when you're at the gym, when you're going on walking the dog around the neighborhood, like we can show this Philip Xenia all the time and those commands that I read from Romans 12:13 and whatever it was, one Peter four, they don't say show hospitality to those who come and attend your church. It's just like, "Hey, show hospitality." And it's not an elder must be hospitable on Sundays. It's an elder must be hospitable. You need to have that kind of mindset and that approach when you're waking up and you're spending time with the Lord in the morning, you're kind of putting off your flesh and putting on Christ and getting ready to go out and live for him today, like that's a major one that you think about like, I want to put on hospitality, no one was better at treating strangers and outcasts and Gentiles and tax collectors and prostitutes like they were brothers and sisters and loved and cherished and welcomed than Jesus Christ.
(45:20):
I want to be like that to not just, certainly yeah, to the least of these, but to everyone. How much more so should it be easy when 90 plus percent of the people that we interact with, most of us on a daily basis aren't ... It's not like the prostitute, it's not like the tactical actor. Imagine the person in your society that everybody else hated like, I don't know, the terrorist or like who is that for us today, most of who we're interacting with isn't that. It's other like upper middle class like white Anglo-Saxon ... It's people that look just like me in the aisle next to me in the supermarket. How much more easy should it be for me to just make that person feel comfortable in their own skin, find a point of connection and who knows what kind of gospel conversations can come out of that.
(46:18):
Yeah. I think as you're talking, like there's also an even better, not even better, there's another aspect that we didn't even talk about with the opportunity that hospitality is reflective of the gospel in our hearts, that we are all outsiders and it's only through God's welcoming us and through the personal work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit transforming our heart, that like being hospitable reflects what God has done for us. And
(46:50):
If
(46:50):
We are so enraptured and in awe of what God has done for us, one of the easiest ways to reflect that and show that even in just society at large is through being hospitable and to neighbors and at school and in boardrooms and at work, because that is reflective of the gospel, it gives us opportunities to share the gospel. And again, if we're talking statistics, how many people don't even know their neighbor's name, who lives next door to them and welcoming and that we can reflectively be hospitable to others just even on a practical level and a societal level in the grocery store when the person's checking out, scanning your groceries, they're all going to say, "Oh, are you having a good day?" Yep, great. And then we can go back to listening to a podcast or checking our phone, but you can have a conversation.
(47:51):
I try to use the person's name. If they've got a name tag on, I try to use their actual name with them, but also- It's a human being. It's a human being. It's an image bearer. That we treat people as though they're not actual people. And so I think hospitality ripples so much further than that for the believer in particular. And so not just at church, but yeah,
(48:13):
In an age where things are going to get increasingly AI-ified and robotified and like the trans human movement, I mean, it's going to be even more opportunities and years to come to be countercultural with our hospitality, with our intentional seeing and esteeming and honoring and welcoming of one another's humanity, but I love what you said to ... I mean, no better place to end than that. The ultimate act of hospitality is what Jesus did for us in welcoming us into God's family as brothers, though we were outcast in exiles and strangers. And anywhere better than that.
(49:03):
Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors. If you like this episode, please like and share it with someone. You can ask your questions each and every week at the infobar at West Hills or on our website at www.westhillstl.org and we look forward to joining you next week where we'll see what topic we decide to riff on.