Brave Table (Part 6): Stories

TO START

Thank you so much for sending in your lists last week of ways we can better show hospitality to outsiders on Sunday mornings. We discussed all your ideas at our weekly worship meeting. Thank you!

TO DISCUSS

Here we are at the end of this series on hospitality. Let’s review:

What’s our definition of hospitality?

What have you learned over the course of this series? If you’re struggling to remember, here’s a list of highlights. Read it and encourage members to pick out which idea struck them most (and share why).

  • Hospitality is primetime Christianity. 

  • When I offer hospitality isn’t about me; it’s about the person I’m bringing close, and about the God who loves them. 

  • God seems to have a penchant for using hospitality to deeply affect people. Every bit of effort we put forth in this area, God multiplies like fish and loaves. 

  • There are true artists of hospitality--there’s much to aspire to in this space...and, much of the magic is in the Just Doing It. 

What do you want to do more of (or do better) in light of what we’ve discussed about hospitality?

What do you resolve to do going forward? How will you let this study change you?

Have you already started practicing hospitality more intentionally? How’s it going?

We ended this series with some inspiring stories of brave tables. In group this week  we’d love for you to tell some stories of your own. Spend some time reminiscing on the moments when you’ve been brought close and felt God’s love. 

TO READ

We’ve spent the length of this sermon series reading positive and negative examples of hospitality. This week we’ll look at one last one in Luke 7:36-47. 

  • What were the failures of hospitality Jesus pointed out? The successes? 

TO PRAY

One last time--let’s pray that prayer we’ve been praying each week from Rosaria Butterfield’s prayer in the book The Gospel Comes With A Housekey:

“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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