Open Heart, Open Home, Ch 11 and 12

We're blogging through Karen Burton Mains' book Open Heart, Open Home. This week's chapters are titled The Finest House in Town, and Householding.

We visited a church in another state while we were out of town. I don't particularly enjoy visiting new congregations. It's outside my comfort zone, and that's my issue. I fight it, smiling widely, introducing myself to those with whom I can catch eyes and speak to without shouting, pretending I don't find it stressful,that I don't mind 'feeling spare' that comes in a crowd.

This is complicated in ways that people who haven't been there cannot understand. I am essentially tethered by the Cherub. She is unsteady on her feet, slow, stumbles sometimes when she walks, sometimes grabs at strangers or their belongings. If I try to move with her through a crowd, she will step on people's feet. If they are college aged and able bodied, well, I regret it, but I don't stress about it. If they are elderly, she could do serious harm, and that does concern me, so we avoid the crush of people and stay in our pew or skirt the outer limits of the crowd.

Parents of very small children are also tethered, as are the spouses of those like my father, afflicted with dementia of one sort or another. An elderly woman who uses a cane at our home church is equally tethered, as are those using walkers and wheelchairs. That is, we can all move, but not quickly. Not easily. We are stumbling against a tide of rapidly swirling humanity.

Those without these beloved encumbrances have what a friend of ours terms 'free swinging arms.' Those in the ranks of the 'free swinging arms' might look around for the tethered, and make your free swinging way over to visit with us, particularly when we are strangers. OTOH, particularly when we are not strangers, too.

Those with free swinging arms often do not do this, however. I can't say I did, either, back when I had free swinging arms (did I ever? My youngest child was 2 when then nearly 6 y.o. Cherub joined our family). Not because they are mean, selfish, or rude, but because they do not know. There is much we do not know about one another.

"...the church has lost the awareness that it is a household of God into which we are to invite the weary and downtrodden, in spirit as well as in body..." says Mrs. Mains. We have lost our sense of community, we do not know what it is to have shared lives, instead we are 'individuals with arbitrary commitments to a body of believers.'

What does it mean to be a 'household of faith?' That is what we are called to. How are we failing and why? What does this have to do with hospitality? Well, how would you feel if I invited you to visit me in my home, and then I ignored you, let you find your own way around, spent my time talking to other people I clearly enjoyed, and none of us ever came over and spoke to you?  How often is this the experience of somebody visiting your congregation?

I have spent much blog time emphasizing that there is a vital distinction between entertaining and hospitality, but one element common to both is an attentive hostess. A good hostess (or host) keeps an eye on her guests and notices if one has subsided in a corner with nobody to talk to, seemingly ignored by the rest. She will circulate, visiting with her guests, making sure none is ignored or neglected. You would be horrified to learn you had people over for an evening and had never bothered to greet or speak at all to one of your guests. And yet this happens every week in church groups all over the land.

If we have lost the sense of community, hospitality can help us regain it. Hospitality begins at home, and that includes both your physical home, and your household of faith, your church home.How could you be more hospitable in each place?

Perhaps your local body of believers is not as weak in this area as so many others are. If so, share your success.Or share your other thoughts from reading these two chapters, and link up!  I've been especially appreciative of Honey, of My REal Farm Life, and the Church Mouse for linking up pretty regularly.=)

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