Faux Radical Hospitality

Mike Green sent me a note today and said he was ready for us to get up and posting on this blog -- so I thought that I'd give it a "stream-of-consciousness" go, to help things get kicked off.

The words "Radical Hospitality" get tossed around really loosely these days. Since we began this blog I have heard many, many people in church circles talking about radical hospitality. Seems that the term makes an appearance in a popular book in some church circles (the book shall remain nameless here).

A couple of years ago a friend of mine was driving through a small northern Indiana town on Sunday morning and decided to attend the local United Methodist Church. The sermon that morning was on Radical Hospitality. The example offered that morning was that the church was going to start offering umbrellas to help ferry people back and forth to their cars in their parking lot on Sunday morning. Wow. What radical hospitality. I'm overwhelmed (which has obviously led to a bout of extreme sarcasm). A further irony was that when my friend pulled in the church parking lot that morning he had noticed a man who appeared to have had a very rough night stumbling around the outside of the church building. The folks going by him were ignoring him as they walked into the sanctuary (SANCTUARY!). Sounds like the umbrellas were arriving just in the nick of time.

In late 2007 I attended worship, while on sabbatical, at Broadway Christian Parish in South Bend. The particular Sunday we were there was one of those terrific days I used to call "Broadway Sundays" when I was there, because they were so special. The pastor, Rev. Nancy Nichols, did a great job. The focus on the day was talking about the chapter on Radical Hospitality in the aforementioned (but unnamed) book. The bishop had asked all the congregations in that conference to study the book. The people of Broadway were talking with each other that morning about how they could exemplify radical hospitality more deeply.

Now - like John Wesley -- I agree that we are working to move toward perfection (and that we'll not make it in this lifetime) - but those good people of Broadway Christian Parish have a lot more to teach about Radical Hospitality than most (if not all) of the United Methodist congregations in the whole Indiana area. I heard several people struggling with how they didn't feel like they were doing radical hospitality well enough. And that made me sad.

That morning in worship -- Prince was there. And Prince, like on most of the Sundays that I was there, got up and stomped out right at the beginning of the prayers, his curses ringing the congregation as he left. That congregation makes room for Prince and his family every Sunday - they know a lot about Radical Hospitality. Guy was there -- playing his guitar in the front row. While Guy would be welcome in many United Methodist congregations I guarantee you that he would not be welcome to play his guitar in most of them. Guy is labeled as a person with fragile x syndrome. But that congregation simply knows him as a brother - and makes room for his gifts in worship and in life together. That congregation knows about Radical Hospitality.

A few weeks earlier I had stopped by the church during the week and interrupted some pretty complicated work on the sound system in the sanctuary - that had not worked very well my entire 11 1/2 years there. The fellow working on the system was somebody who doesn't have a place to live, but who stops by Broadway every day for breakfast and company. He knows a lot about sound systems and it was sounding great. That congregation knows something about Radical Hospitality.

That Sunday we were visiting, as always, there was a Sunday Community Dinner after worship. Many neighbors, some who were at worship and some who weren't gathered around tables downstairs and shared a meal and laughter and stories. You couldn't tell, even during the clean up, who were the guests and who were the hosts and hostesses. That congregation knows something about Radical Hospitality.

I could go on and on...but this is the problem we face in the church - we don't recognize Radical Hospitality when it lives in our midst. Instead of reading this book the annual conference should be telling people to go visit Broadway Christian Parish and let them teach you about Radical Hospitality. But no - let's read it from a book and then keep people from getting wet as they go to their cars.

Many of the places who are "studying" Radical Hospitality wouldn't know what to do if a heavily tattooed and pierced young person (or old person) turned up on Sunday morning - much less one who cursed loudly during prayer or who played the guitar frantically and out of key, but joyously none the less. That little congregation of around 90 members provides lunch for nearly 100 plus people every week. I remember that a member of a 600 member church in town said "heck, we couldn't do that four times a year."

Radical Hospitality is not gained from a book....but from the heart and by the practice of making room for the stranger. I hope this blog will become a place where Radical Hospitality, real radical hospitality can be celebrated and perhaps copied and morphed and used as fodder for inspiration. Ride the wave!