Cerulean Sanctum Series

The Little Things: Homes & Churches That Say, “Keep Out!”

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Michael did particularly well in the Internet boom. He and Linda bought a large home as a result of that success. But that home was never just theirs alone; that home belonged to their church—and to anyone else who wanted to drop by. And there was always someone dropping by.

My wife and I had the pleasure of hanging out at Michael and Linda's place. We witnessed some baptisms in their pool, ate several dinners there, and I weekly practiced our worship music in their basement. Magnifying GlassWhen they learned we would be moving away, Michael and Linda sent us off by taking their time to make us Cincinnati-style chili from scratch. Nice touch.

Michael and Linda are the epitome of hospitality. Their home is open to anyone because they understand that God has a heart for sojourners and those who need a place to lay their heads. Michael and Linda are our inspiration.

It doesn't take a protracted examination of our American society to see that we have fostered a culture of desert islands upon which a family here and a single there and an elderly couple over there float in the same social ocean, but have virtually no real contact. With civilization itself based on a foundation of strong social ties, we seem to be heading for a collapse of that civilization if we do not restore the broken-down relational machinery God built into us.

Last year, as I was trying to understand the whole Emergent thing, I picked up a book by Joe Myers called A Search to Belong. This book was getting great press within Emergent ranks, so I read it and promptly felt my stomach sink. One particular passage flat-out made me seethe. Myers insisted that it was too much for some people to enter another person's home and that we should not expect people to want to do this.

Now I'm no expert on sociology, but the bigger question has to be, What happened to hospitality that we've bred people who suffer fits of anxiety should they have to come to someone else's house?

Church, what happened to hospitality?

Do we no longer practice it because

  • It takes too much time?
  • We have too many expensive things in our homes that can break?
  • It costs too much money to be hospitable?
  • We have no physical energy reserves that we can use to make others feel connected?
  • We don't like our space being invaded by others?
  • People, in general, give us a rash?
  • We're too busy shoring up our own nuclear family?

I wonder if the problem stems from this passage:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
—1 Peter 4:8-9 ESV

Maybe we are trapped in that sinful no man's land where if we did practice hospitality, we'd grumble about it—grumbling's a sin, right? Better to not grumble by not having anything to do with hospitality and then everything's okay. Who can say?

I remember my parents entertaining people at our family home all the time. They went to other people's houses all the time. But as I look around, I get the discouraging sense that this idea is passing away with that generation. I hope that isn't the case, but it's what I see.

You would hope that the Church would do a better job of this, but I find that hospitality is as commonly practiced by people who don't know the Lord as those who do. I'm just as likely to hear of someone who acts like the devil's compadre but who lets his buddies crash at his place as much as I hear that Christians welcome even their own kind into their homes.

And what is the point of having greeters at a Church? They have greeters at Wal-Mart, but that doesn't make me feel loved by Sam Walton's megacorporation. Sure, it feels nice to have someone shake your hand, but if it goes no further than that, what's the point? Too often the onus is on people visiting a church to reach out to the church members rather than it being the other way around. Shouldn't we be the ones to note the visitors—or in our own fractured relational world within our churches can we not tell the regulars from the visitors? And if you consider Myer's comment, if folks get a nervous tic thinking about going into someone else's home, what does it mean for them to go into their church—and then have to be the one who makes small talk?

Even before we met Michael and Linda, my wife and I decided that we would be the ones who sought to bring people together and show others hospitality. We've tried very hard at this, but the results have been middling. As much as we want to be hospitable, we sometimes wonder if people want to receive that hospitality. Perhaps Joe Myers is right. We may have reached a place where being in another's home is too much of a freak-out for too many people. Maybe the failure of people to practice hospitality has spawned a generation unable to not only practice it, but receive it as well.

But we will not stop being hospitable.

As for our churches, we should identify the people who are blessed with the gift of hospitality and underwrite them. Huh, you say? Well, what if we designated church funds for use by the most hospitable people in our churches to locate the new people every Sunday, then offer to take them out to a local restaurant for lunch after the meeting? The church could pick up the visitor's tab. Those same hospitable people could have visitors over to their own home later (regardless of what Myers says.) Wouldn't that be more effective to reaching out to others than what we are doing now? If the Church is not overflowing with the grace that pours out through hospitality, then where will people see it practiced?

What if the hospitality of early Christians was one of the very things that set them off from the people around them, the practice of hospitality being the very aroma of heaven to the lost and perishing?

Do we really believe this verse?

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
—Hebrews 13:2 ESV

Or don't we? How many individual and corporate blessings have we missed because we failed to be hospitable in our homes and churches?

Remember, we are awaiting a heavenly dinner party called "The Marriage Supper of the Lamb." If we're not emulating that idea this side of heaven, will we appreciate that Supper when we finally sit down for it?

Some things you can do to practice hospitality:

At home

  • Pray that God would fill you with love for other people and with hospitality
  • Let other people know you have an open home
  • Let your children know that you have an open home
  • Invite all your neighbors over for a backyard BBQ
  • Periodically invite one neighbor family over to your house for a 1:1 time
  • Invite people from your church over who would not get invited elsewhere
  • If you are worried about a dirty house, pay a responsible young person in the neighborhood or your church to help you clean before and after get-togethers
  • Host church events at your home
  • Take a cooking or entertaining class
  • Teach a cooking or entertaining class in your home
  • Cook for neighbors and church members when they are sick or overwhelmed
  • Remember that you need no reason to have people over

At church

  • Pray that God would fill your church with love for other people and with hospitality
  • Identify the most welcoming and hospitable people in your church and work with them to develop that gift
  • When visitors come:
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    • Make certain your hospitality folks identify them and offer to sit with them
    • Offer to take them out to lunch—on the church's tab—after the service
    • Don't put the onus on visitors to identify themselves, but put that on the hospitality team to identify visitors
    • Hospitality team should offer to have them over for a home cooked meal (pastors should consider this also!)

If we worked harder at this little thing, I believe we would go a long way to strengthening families, couples, singles, churches, and neighborhoods for the Lord.

The Little Things: Ingrates

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Magnifying glassThere's a medium-sized river birch tree in our backyard with a lovely shape and exotic, silvery bark that gleams in the sun. This year, the bark is hard to miss because the tree is leafless, stone dead.

This same time last year all the leaves turned yellow and fell off long before all the other trees on our property surrendered theirs up. Spring came and nothing green appeared on our tree with the metallic-looking bark. A few weeks ago, that bark split and startled me with a bizarre revelation: some plant had grown up under the birch's bark, encircled the delicate living part of the trunk, and strangled the life out of the tree.

I know of parasitic plants from the tropics that will girdle a tree, but I'm at a loss to explain this.

However, I'm not at a loss to explain what strangles the life out of Christians in America. In our materially wealthy country, more than one Christian walk has been girdled by thanklessness.

I'm not going to win any friends by saying this, but I'm going to say it right off—many people in America are ingrates, and that goes for American Christians, too.

Yes, we are the country famed for our one day a year in which we are thankful. Increasingly, I hear that day referred to as "Turkey Day" and not "Thanksgiving Day." One year, the well-known retail computer company I worked for jumped the Christmas stuff grab by opening for a half day on Thanksgiving Day. I still can't get over that one.

Regardless of whether or not there's a holiday set aside for Americans to give thanks, we live as ungrateful wretches most of the year. I believe that part of this is due to the fact we have so much money that we never have to truly rely on God for our daily existence.

For a few people, though, life is marked by losing rather than accumulating. My wife and I have been married for nine years and through much of that time we have been assaulted by loss. We take refuge in something and find it taken away as soon as we acknowledge how much it has helped us. Blink and it's gone.

What this has taught me is that the Lord alone is our daily portion. But it was only through loss that I learned this. Oh sure, if pressed plenty of people say they're thankful, but it's lip service. Take too many things away and they'll gripe like there's no tomorrow.

The other part of being thankless is that the blinders go on. We stop noticing how we are provided for by God. We stop noticing that other people are desperately lacking in the basics. Meanwhile, we moan because our kid got shut out of the exclusive Montessori school that all the VIPs send their kids to. We cry about the fact that we don't have the latest electronic gadget while the couple sitting next to us in church is facing foreclosure on their home because they cannot pay for their medical bills after a prolonged—and expensive—illness struck unexpectedly.

Thankful people, on the other hand, have their eyes made wide by God. They see what God has provided in the natural world and give thanks for it. "Isn't that butterfly gorgeous! Wow, look at the spiral web of that garden spider. Isn't God's world amazing?" They see other people's needs and they meet them. "I hear the Yoders' crops got burned up in this drought, hon. Let's call the electric company and offer to pay their utility bills for the rest of the year." They see hurt and they bring joy into the pain. "That old widow lady who lives alone, Mrs. Samms, had a stroke. Let's go to the hospital and sit with her for a few hours."

The ingrate says, "Look at what I have accomplished by my own effort! Look at all the things I have!" The thankful person says, "God, all I have is yours, even the hours of the day, and I am only the steward of your good provision."

We know about the root of bitterness from the Scripture. But I also wonder if there is not a root of ungratefulness that strangles just as well. Perhaps the two are the same wicked plant.

When we are filled with thanklessness, we

  • Cannot forgive others because we are not thankful that we have been forgiven
  • Cannot live in humility because it requires the death of the bragging self that takes credit away from God
  • Cannot praise God because praise is the essence of thanksgiving
  • Cannot pray because we have become self-sufficient and have no need of God
  • Cannot love because love means acknowledging others, even when they have nothing they can give us.

In short, ingrates cannot know Christ, no matter how much they protest that they do.

The lesson of thankfulness is one I learned through suffering and fear of loss. I always thought I was thankful, but it wasn't until I understood that I could actually lose everything that I made every prayer I prayed afterwards begin with, "Lord, how thankful I am to You…." This is how I've taught my son to pray, too. Sadly, he does not get too many opportunities to have this truth reinforced by others around him. He once wanted to know why we are the only family that prays for our meals when we eat out in public. That's an especially difficult question to answer when you live in what many consider the very heart of "Jesusland."

There are times I believe that thanklessness is the number one reason that the Church in America has reached a plateau and can go no further. I believe that living in ungratefulness has stymied more blessings than nearly any other failure we can bring down upon our heads. Thanklessness is the very act of robbing God, and God does not suffer thieves who want to plunder what is rightfully His—even when they pretend to come in His name.

Thankfulness may indeed be a little thing, but the lack of it can choke the life out of us.

The Little Things: The Zodiac Blogger

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God's been bringing these Little Things to my mind more and more. These posts were supposed to be occasional, but I can't stop noticing them of late. This post is about one little thing that makes my heart sink when I see it.

I'm sometimes clumsy when I confront people, so I hope that I'm not accusatory in this post. Think of this as a challenge to purity of conviction then. We've become inured to the whole issue, and anything we're inured to is for all intentions invisible. Magnifying glassThe diabolical part about this particular Little Thing is that it's astonishingly prevalent. I want to believe it's just because it's so ingrained in American culture that we don't think about it at all.

It's being a Zodiac Blogger.

It may seem like a little thing, but my informal poll of people who listed "Christianity" or "Jesus" as a topic of interest in their Blogger profile shows that two-thirds of them have their zodiac sign listed.

God says this:

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
—Deuteronomy 4:19 ESV

And also this:

…but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.
—1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 ESV

Horoscopes and astrology fail the test of the above passages. The Father desires that we have no other gods before Him.

This look at Little Things is about just that: the little things that keep us from walking in fullness of life. They may not seem like much, but they still speak to our allegiances. I don't want to show the world I have any allegiances to worldviews that are against the worldview of Jesus Christ. Honestly, I wish I had no idea what my astrological sign was. But this I do know: I definitely won't be putting it out there for others to see. I don't want anything to disqualify my witness for Christ, so I just avoid anything astrological altogether.

If you have a Blogger profile that includes your zodiac sign, consider removing that sign. It may not seem like all that much, but I think God would be pleased if we eliminated those things that might hold us back or divide our hearts.

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
—Philippians 3:13-16 ESV

Update: I've been told—I assume the sources to be good here—that Blogger automatically puts up your zodiac sign if you fill in your birthdate in your Blogger profile. I did not know this. Still, it's a product of the times that these things are assumed as being desirable to know. If I were in the position of displaying that sign, I'd still consider removing my birthdate if all it's doing is generating a zodiac sign.

Some of the commenters here have said that this may be too little a thing to be part of this series, but I don't feel that way. I'm a big advocate of grace and grace will cover these things if we are ignorant of them. But I believe we still need to think about them because too many things like this add up to us being held back by the world.

I've long been convicted of the narrative in Joshua 7 that found the army of Israel being routed in their battles against the Amorites. When Joshua fell on his face before God and asked why, God told him that someone in the camp had taken as plunder of war items that were dedicated to the Canaanite gods, items that God had said must be destroyed (after a previous military victory.) That man, Achan, had hidden these in his tent. Joshua took Achan, his entire family, and all his animals, and stoned them to death. Then he burned everything that had been associated with Achan.

God takes these things seriously. Thankfully, we don't have to suffer stoning for what we've done. I know that I'd be under a pile of stones for the things I've done in my life. But it doesn't mean we should tolerate those things, either, especially when we consider their source.

This last year the Lord has been showing me what I need to purge from my life, more things than ever before. I think what has changed is that I no longer desire anything that will hold me back from being all that He can make me, so now He can get down to work. I'm sharing some of those issues in this series and Cerulean Sanctum, in general. I'm simply hoping my comments on this will help others out there. Whether people can accept these things or not, I understand.

Have a blessed day, all of you.