Hospitality Works (October 15, 2006)

I'll never forget the Sunday when I was 13 and I went with my Baptist parents to visit a Christian Reformed church. We were looking for a new church and somebody had recommended this fellowship to us.

After Sunday School several people (deacons!) stepped out into the parking lot to smoke cigarettes. (Baptists don't smoke - our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.) Then during the service the pastor baptized a baby! I thought, "Obviously we're not coming back here next week."

Then in the car on the way home Mom and Dad shocked me by saying how happy they were with the worship service and the people. We went back the next week, and the week after, and became members. How in the world did Baptists wind up at such a non-Baptist church? Because the Word of God was faithfully preached and the people were unbelievably nice to us from the moment we stepped in the door. We were invited into their homes immediately.

Eight years later as a missionary trainee with Wycliffe Bible Translators, I arrived early one Sunday morning at a large evangelical church in Grand Forks, North Dakota. I hung around the narthex and went to Sunday School and the service. Not one person so much as said "hello" to me the whole time. Just before I left I was washing my hands in the restroom when the person at the sink next to me greeted me and we talked and I thought "Finally! Someone here has the courtesy to greet a visitor." But then he told me he was a first-time visitor himself. I never went back.

Two years later I arrived with my wife in Urbana, Illinois, and, out of some obligation, we visited a church that we had no intention of going to long-term. But we were greeted kindly and were immediately invited to a member's home, and that is the church we attended for the duration of our stay in Urbana.

Twelve years later when I was pastoring a church in Melrose Park, Illinois, I took a phone call from a middle-aged woman in the neighborhood who was distressed about some spiritual issue. We talked and I read to her some Scriptures. I invited her to come to church on Sunday, and she surprised me by saying she had visited before, but... "But what?" I asked. "I don't want to offend you," she said. "No, no, please, speak freely," I said, as I thought, Oh boy, what did I do now?

She said, "Well, the people of your church are so unfriendly!" and my heart sank through the floor. I knew she was right. More than once from the pulpit I had spotted visitors sitting by themselves in the pew, and afterward they would file out by themselves as church members gathered in their groups and planned where they would go for lunch.

When you're stung by a fair criticism it is hard to know what to say. I probably answered her along the lines of a commercial I've seen lampooning bad cell phone companies: "That is a problem and we're working on it!"

Be hospitable. I preach hospitality because it is good and right and sweet and pleasant and honoring to God. I also preach it because, frankly, it grows churches.