Strangers Around the Table

Have you ever been to a party and had to sit at a table full of strangers? At first it’s awkward. You sort of fumble around a little, but then the awkwardness starts to fade as you find common ground. Conversation begins to flow; and by the time you leave the party, you’re no longer strangers but friends. That’s what happens when we open our homes and practice hospitality.

Strangers in our Homes

Hospitality has become such a thing of the past, hasn’t it? Nobody invites strangers into their homes. Nobody has their neighbors over anymore, right? That’s just not done; it isn’t safe. Nobody invites somebody that they just met at church into their home; they could be a child predator, for all we know.

In our world where safety is supreme and our homes are locked up tighter than Fort Knox, we stay safe by hiding behind closed doors and drawn shades. We pull into our garage and close the garage door before heading inside, so we don’t have to talk to anybody. Or we park on the street and wait until the coast is clear before walking up the sidewalk and into the house.  

We’ve conditioned ourselves not to answer the door, not to run into people, not to take unnecessary chances of having to talk to people. We “protect” ourselves from the neighbors we don’t know and guard ourselves against the new family at school or at church. We don’t join a small group at church because we’re just not sure that’s for us, and we don’t really need to be in a small group.

Inevitably, we don’t invite people into our homes because we’re too busy. We have a schedule to maintain, and we don’t have time for company. Having people over will only slow us down, and we can’t afford that. And if we are going to have company, let’s be honest, it’s going to be people we know, people we are comfortable with. I mean, that’s what’s best for our family; that’s what’s safe. 

Boundaries

The American mindset is to set boundaries, protect yourself and your family, look for out for yourself because nobody else will, take care of yourself first, you matter…And then we wonder why our country is splintering from the inside out. We’re fracturing at the most basic level—people, relationships. We’ve closed our doors to the needs around us, and we’ve hunkered down, protecting ourselves and isolating ourselves from the outside world. We protect our kids from the “bad influence” of the neighborhood kids. To keep others out, we put up fences; and we keep our distance from troublesome neighbors. Moreover, we don’t do community events, and we are too busy to go to neighborhood activities.  

Replacing Community with Church

We’ve replaced community with the church. Here these words very carefully: we are pro-church. We are so pro-church that we started a church over ten years ago. We left our home and moved to an area outside of Philadelphia and started Greater Philly Church. Every Sunday morning, that’s where you will find our family. We, of all people, love the church Christ died for. We’ve made it our life’s work.

We have church events and activities, we have special days, and we have our small groups. But at the same time, we will be the first to admit that the church should not be the only interaction we have with people. We realize the danger of interacting only with church people. We’ve seen what happens to churches who simply stop interacting with people outside of church. They get so entrenched in church life that they forget about the people all around them.  

A Both-And Mindset

We’ve made it our mission to see it as “both-and.” We have fellowship with people from church, and we have fellowship with those who don’t go to church. Matt’s part of a group called Front Yard Mission, where the group’s focus is to spend time getting to know and developing relationships with your neighbors. We’re gearing up to have a fall cookout with our neighbors in our front yard. We hope to have a good turnout.

At our last get-together, we had donuts and coffee in our front yard. We had fifteen plus neighbors show up to that. We sat and fellowshipped with neighbors that we knew and neighbors we met for the first time that morning. It was a wonderful time of food and fellowship. Matt didn’t preach; we didn’t have a devotional. We didn’t pass out cards and invite everybody to church. There are times and places for those things, but this wasn’t it. This was simply a time of opening our home to our neighbors and fellowshipping together.  

Loving People without Thought of Anything in Return

God reminds us over and over again in his word that hospitality is from him; he ordained it. Why? Because Jesus understood what it meant to turn strangers into friends. He was the master of this. Jesus would take the time to talk to a woman at a well who was unpopular and unloved. He wasn’t doing it to get anything out of it; Jesus simply saw her. He ministered to her and loved on her. That’s the kind of ministry he had, and it’s the kind of ministry he set as an example for us to follow.  

Inviting Others into Our Homes

In our quest to follow Jesus’ example, we need to remember that he didn’t call us just to practice hospitality with our friends, with people we know well. No, he calls us to practice hospitality on those we don’t know as well. Our neighbors, our co-workers, the mailman, the guy who fixes our car. When we start to see these people as people Jesus loved and gave his life for, we begin to understand that these are real people that need to be loved and need to learn about Jesus. The best way we can do that is to invite them into our lives, into our homes. And we need to do it even if they never come to our church; they might even attend another church. That’s okay. We do it because we love them, because it’s our job to share Jesus with them.  

After we’ve loved strangers and practiced hospitality on our neighbors, having that new family over from church is a breeze! Hosting a small group in your home is super easy. It may not feel easy at first, but just start. Invite somebody over. You will be surprised at how fast strangers turn into friends when you’re gathered around the same table.  

**This is an excerpt from my book Eshel Table, releasing Fall of 2022.

More Encouragement

If you enjoyed this post, check out another post of mine, Gathering Around the Table. One of the books that I love on this topic is Shauna Niequist’s book, Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes. And one of my favorite books on this topic is The Turquoise Table by Kristin Schell.