The Key Difference Between Entertaining and Christian Hospitality

Embrace the Awkward

Christian hospitality is different from entertainment in a couple of ways. I love both. I’m happy to enjoy the fellowship and the company of people, but radically ordinary hospitality—Christian hospitality—will be awkward. It just will be. Be okay with that.

Because at some point, you are going to clean up the dinner dishes and you’re going to say, “Now it’s time for family devotions.” And your unbelieving neighbors are going to probably have the same questions that your children have: “How long is it going to take? Do I have to pray?”

So it’s awkward, but it’s not that awkward. In a world that doesn’t understand intimacy and in a world that would much rather mouth off on social media than actually sit around a dinner table and talk about real things, it takes a certain amount of practice to get comfortable with that.

But my husband is a pastor, and his position is, “My food, my table.” We’ve never had anybody leave. We’ve never had a neighbor say, “Well, that’s outrageous. I’m getting out of here.” Often, they’ll just ask, “What? What’s that? Family devotions? I’m not part of your family. Do you want me to leave now?”

So, it’s actually kind of a sweet way of just saying, “Well, no, we want you to stay.” Ken will say, “I’m going to read a chapter of the Bible, and we’re going to talk about what we’ve just read. And then I’m going to ask people for prayer requests. And then people who are comfortable are going to pray for those prayer requests. And I’ll close us. And then we’re just going to leave all of these problems at the throne of grace, to the Lord who made heaven and earth and who transforms hearts and souls and lives. The Lord, who died for the benefit and the forgiveness of his people.”

My husband, Kent, is always quick. He is not the kind of pastor who would ever say, “Oh, God loves you,” just arbitrarily. I don’t know. Maybe he does. That’s nice. But he will say, “God’s love is available to you. And this is how.”

Rosaria Butterfield is the author of The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World.

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