Strategic Planning
Radical Hospitality (Part Eleven: A View From The Front Lines)
This is Part 11 of the Spring Leadership Lesson Series: Radical Hospitality at National Community Church. As we lead our groups and ministries, we must strive to forcefully advance the Kingdom of God through strategic evangelism, exponential discipleship, and sacrificial service. Hospitality is on the front lines of such an advance.
Today, Heidi Scanlon gives us her perspective on this topic. Heidi has a strong gift of hospitality, and she is investing it into Kingdom activities through the small groups she leads and the relationships she cultivates. Let’s lean into Heidi’s encouragement and challenge to us as she shares from her front lines experience in showing radical hospitality.
In his letter to the young church in Galatia, the Apostle Paul writes that “the only thing that matters [for the church] is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6).
Interestingly, if you polled 50 of our NCC small group leaders and asked them what that verse means, you most likely would get a few dozen answers – serving the poor, visiting prisoners, caring for orphans, etc.. And those are all good answers.
But Paul gives one prescription for “faith expressing itself in love” in the close of his letter in Galatians 6:9-10 that may have an additional meaning for us. He writes:
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
Paul hits the nail on the head – sometimes ministry is hard. We can grow weary. We get tired. We do ministry out of memory and not from a sanctified imagination. When we are animated and energized by the Holy Spirit, we have staying power and in due time we reap a good harvest (think water on bare ground and carrots).
As leaders we must focus on opportunities that abound for us in the realm of hospitality – doing good – especially to those who belong to the family of believers (i.e., people in our small groups and service attendees).
Hospitality begins inside of us and makes space for others. According to Paul Habersang, “genuine radical hospitality begins on the inside of who we are and radiates to those we know and to those we don’t know. Practicing radical hospitality begins with making space for other people – within our hearts and within our lives.” It’s more than just leading a great discussion or teaching a solid bible study. We must go beyond that.
Hospitality that radiates is a decision. You don’t have to have the “gift of hospitality” to radiate Christ’s love. Sometimes we get too busy with the business of small group or church. Radiance that is hospitable is a conscious decision and expression of a generous spirit.
The 51% Club. In the New York Times best-seller Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, entrepreneur and author Danny Meyer describes the power of developing leaders who are “100 percent people” whose skills are divided 51-49 between emotional hospitality and technical excellence. Meyers explains that he is looking to grow leaders who are 51 percenters:
“Imagine if every business were a light bulb and that for each bulb the primary goal was to attract the most moths possible. Now what if you learned that 49 percent of the reason moths were attracted to a bulb was for the quality of the light (brightness being the task of the bulb) and that 51 percent of the attraction was to the warmth projected by the bulb (heat being connected with the feeling of the bulb).
It’s remarkable to me how many businesses shine brightly when it comes to acing the tasks but emanate all the warmth of a cool fluorescent light bulb. Our team must be like a scintillating string of 100 watt bulbs, whose product is the sum of 51 percent feeling and 49 percent task.”
Radiate warmth. Put that into our context. Imagine that the church’s purpose is to attract as many people as possible. (It is!) Now imagine that we focus not just on the tasks of hospitality but on the feelings of hospitality? How many of us have attended a church that preached the Word but seemed as emotionally cool to guests as a fluorescent bulb?
The hospitality tasks we embrace that make our guests feel comfortable and welcome are great: comfortable seating, good temperature, great snacks, available materials, greeters, coat checkers, helpers and the like. Hospitality tasks are great but they are only half of our purpose.
As Meyers puts it, “we can train for tasks but training for emotional skills (the 51 percent) is next to impossible.” But nothing is impossible with God! We can garner emotional skills when we are transformed by the Holy Spirit. As small group leaders we can train for hospitality tasks. But without the Holy Spirit, our bulbs are dim and our hospitality becomes just another item on our leadership to do list.
Develop emotional reflex. Meyers notes you either have this emotional reflex of warmth or you don’t. It’s just not true with us as believers. We have the living, breathing, resurrected Spirit of Jesus Christ living inside of each of us. So we can’t really say with a straight face that we don’t have the “gift of hospitality”. When we clothe ourselves with Christ we are hospitality. And we become a gift to the members of our small groups and to guests who attend our services.
Meyers says “to be a 51 percenter a team member will have five core emotional skills to be a champion at the team sport of hospitality”. They are:
1) Optimistic warmth (genuine kindness, thoughtfulness and a sense that the
glass is always at least half full)
2) Intelligence (not just “smarts” but rather an insatiable curiosity to learn for the
sake of learning)
3) Work ethic (a natural tendency to do something as well as it can possibly be
done)
4) Empathy (an awareness of, care for, and connection to how others feel and how your actions make others feel)
5) Self-awareness and integrity (a natural inclination to be accountable for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgment)
Spiritually speaking, 51 percenters can adapt the Meyers hospitality model to include a Christ-like outlook based on scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit:
1) Optimistic warmth – if the joy of the Lord is your strength, could you please inform your face? Practice purposefully smiling at your small group members and people you meet at church for one week. Be the light of Christ. Watch the transformation.
2) Thoughtfulness – do you take time in your small group to connect guests with others? Connect two tennis players. What about people attending the same graduate school? How about two people from the same state? Leaders who are “thoughtful connecters” have great groups. If people don’t make one significant friend in the first year they are in church they won’t come back (according to data from the Catholic Church USA). Help people become friends.
3) Have more than a glass half full – if you have the Holy Spirit, your glass is more than half full – it’s filled to overflowing. Are you a broker of hope? Bring hope with you to your small group. Refill constantly. Otherwise you can’t overflow.
4) Intelligence – take the time to learn about your guests for the sake of knowing them. Don’t ask them how they’re doing if you don’t mean it. Care. They can tell if you don’t.
5) Work ethic – model godly excellence for guests. Alpha does a great job at this – they work very hard to have the best party possible because Christians should have the best parties. Model godly excellence – not perfectionism. Perfectionism is not from the Holy Spirit.
6) Empathy – genuine care for others includes ministering to them in more than a teaching capacity. It makes me crazy to hear a Christian tell me they don’t have the gift of compassion. We have Christ in us. We are compassion. Who needs an extra bit of your time? Who needs a coffee date? Who is brand new and needs a prayer. Who have you been leading with for months or years that is secretly in great pain? Ask God to give you words of knowledge so that you can empathize with the guests and team members in your group through the power of the Holy Spirit.
7) Other-awareness – as Rick Warren says, “it’s not about you.” Hospitality is a sacrifice. Sometimes that means sacrificing our time with our friends in small group for the sake of greeting new comers. Be other aware. People who are emotionally hospitable will know when to drop a task for the sake of not leaving a person in the room or at church standing alone. No person in any small group or at a service at NCC should ever be standing around by themselves. If you don’t have time to talk to them then if you have to –walk them into another group that is chatting. Just do it. This is being radically hospitable. This is saying “you matter.”
In their book, Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love, co-authors Father Dan Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt describe radical hospitality as a willingness to make room for God in the unexpected. The unexpected is one place where we find opportunity.
Paul Habersang says “it means listening to others without judgment and extending compassion that opens up possibilities of seeing Christ in other people. When we extend ourselves to others, we create an opportunity for them to see Christ in us…perhaps even without uttering a word. For most of us, operating in the “unexpected” means making time to extend hospitality when opportunities are presented. Even if we don’t have the time.
A guest on the Alpha that meets in our home recently said out of the blue, “you guys [Alpha] have given me a renewed hope in humanity.” What? This guy is a believer. That statement tells me that somehow this guy in the family of believers was getting overlooked. I am not even sure what we did or said that made a difference to his life. I say that not to point the finger but to point the way. Our Alpha team is radically hospitable and it has made a difference in the life of at least one person.
How do you see hospitality? Does every small group bring opportunity? Do you see extending hospitality as a have to or a get to? Pick one practice from the list above and ask God to transform your hospitality. And do good to those who belong to the family of believers.
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