Brave Table (part 2): Practicing Hospitality

TO START

Tell a story about a time you invited people over to your house/apartment/dorm room and the resulting gathering did NOT go well. (Be careful not to be mean or say anything disparaging.)

TO DISCUSS

Who remembers our definition of hospitality? Winner gets ten points. (Hospitality is when you use what you have to bring someone close so they feel God’s love.)

What’s a time you were on the receiving end of meaningful hospitality? Has hospitality been an important part of your faith journey (either receiving it or practicing it)? 

Think of one important conversation you’ve had in someone else’s home. What did that person do to welcome you and make you feel safe?

Hospitality is easier for some of us, harder for others of us — is there any room for levels of engagement with this practice? Are some called to more? What do you think? 

We said on Sunday that hospitality will require four things: creating margin, fighting your fears, opening your hands, and being a guest. 

  • Do you currently have margin in your life? What could you cut in order to make space for practicing hospitality?

  • When it comes to hospitality what are you afraid of? What’s keeping you from doing it more often? 

  • What are you holding onto too tightly that’s keeping you from practicing hospitality? What do you not want to share? 

  • Are you a good guest? Think back to the last time you visited someone else’s home: Were you fully present? Were you on your phone? Did you ask questions? DId you follow their rules for their home? Did you try to help? (What other ways might we be a good guest? What makes a “bad guest”?)

TO READ

Let’s spend the length of this sermon series reading positive and negative examples of hospitality. This week, Luke 9:1-6 and Matthew 10:9-15.

  • Jesus tells the apostles to go teach the gospel and not to worry about their physical needs. Who’s going to provide for those needs?

  • What do you think it looked like to take care of an apostle?

  • What were the consequences of not taking care of an apostle who came into your city?

  • What are the potential lessons we can learn from this passage? 

  • What do we learn about who God is from this passage?

TO PRAY

Consider praying this prayer adapted from Rosaria Butterfield’s prayer in the book The Gospel Comes With A Housekey (again):

“Shape us in such a way that we let you use our home, apartment, dorm room, front yard, or garden for the purpose of making strangers into neighbors and neighbors into family. Help us stop being afraid of strangers, even when some strangers are dangerous. Grow us to be more like Christ in practicing daily, ordinary, radical hospitality, and that bless us richly for it, adding to his kingdom, creating a new culture and a new reputation for what it means to be a Christian in a watching world. Help us to see that there’s more to the Christian life than we may have realized--more to enjoy, more to experience, more to celebrate--and that practicing daily, ordinary, radical hospitality is the key to discovering those hidden treasures. Resurrect this practice in the American church, and begin with us.”

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