Using Hospitality for the Gospel
“We’re trying to use hospitality to reach people for the Gospel. So, do you have any tips on how we can best do that? How do we also protect our time as a family?”
We got this question at a previous Snowbird Marriage Conference, so we asked Little Holloway to answer it in a panel conversation on stage. Using hospitality for the Gospel is central to the heartbeat of SWO (and the Bible), so we wanted to share her thoughts here. Let’s dig in:
Okay, some of you guys are extroverted, so it’s pretty easy. You just have people in your home all the time. Regular hospitality is no big deal. Some of you are introverts, and so having someone in your home would be like the bad dream where you go to school naked. And honestly, that’s me.
We’ve had tons and tons of people in our home ever since Brody and I got married, and it is something that Satan does battle against. You think about the physical force of gravity, it just brings everything to the center of the Earth, and then it takes thousands of pounds for a rocket to get out of there, right? So it’s the same thing — there’s like a psychological force that wants us to pull everything into ourselves, our tendencies, our home. So we have to have the love of the Lord and a want to share that to be able to minister to people in our home.
Jesus is Our Example of Hospitality
And Christ invited us into his household, and he wants to sit with us and sup with us and sing over us. He set the example for us to follow.
There is something that I have been encouraged by when people come into our home, whether they are newlyweds or a teenage girl. So many people doubt the faithfulness of Christ to provide a good home, a good family. Where the husband is faithful to the wife, the wife is faithful to the husband, and the kids are actually obedient and not throwing stuff at each other. When people see that, it’s huge, people need to see that because it’s so absent from everything that’s on TV or in their schools or whatever. There is power in the ministry of that presence.
It doesn’t need to be neat and tidy
When someone walks into your home and they walk into the presence of the Lord, that’s a ministry in itself.
So don’t be in the mindset that you have to entertain, it’s better if you don’t try to impress or have an extravagant meal, just popcorn and Coke, whatever. Just hanging out is the main thing, not trying to impress, because then it just flops. After all, at the end of the night, you haven’t had an intentional conversation. The Lord hasn’t been felt in your home because you’re just trying to keep everything nice and tidy.
Using Hospitality for the Gospel Needs to be Strategic
I’m going to share with you one thing talking about what is strategic hospitality?
It says, “What I mean by this is, the hospitality that thinks strategically and asks, how can I draw the most people into a deep experience of God’s hospitality by the use of my home or my church home? Who might need reinforcements just now in the battle against loneliness, who are the people who could be brought together in my home most strategically for the sake of the kingdom, what two or three people’s complementary abilities might explode in the new ministry if they had two hours to brainstorm over dinner in my home? Strategic hospitality is not content to just have the old clan over for dinner again and again. It strategizes how to make the hospitality of God known and felt all over the world, from the lonely church member right here, to a farmer in Liberia, don’t ever underestimate the power of your living room as a launching pad for new life and hope and ministry.”
So even just being strategic is really cool way of thinking, if you know somebody who’s super organizational and someone who is a real creative, idea-type guy, having those people in your home together so the Lord can create and stir up different forms of ministry in your home, and you can be able to host that in your home.
How to Protect your family time
As far as being careful with family time, if you have a couple of nights set aside in your home where you have that family time. Time when you are just hanging out, reading the Scripture, anything like that. Don’t let that be tampered with, keep those nights. Maybe it’s Wednesday night, or Sunday night, keep those for your family only.
But having people in your home needs to be Spirit-led. If you are, for example, having issues with your teenage son and you’re dealing with him looking at stuff on his phone, or your little girl is being a brat, you don’t necessarily want to bring somebody in that night, you might want to be able to just focus and just really work on that within your family, so you have to be Spirit-led in everything, it’s just when the time is right and all that.