ORLANDO (BP) – A simple invitation for community over a shared meal is the most genuine approach for sharing the hope of Jesus, Amy Hannon said during an emphasis on biblical hospitality at the Pastors’ Wives and Women in Ministry Conference June 8 in Orlando.
Families today are less likely to open their homes to friends and neighbors than their predecessors, and one of the reasons could be that the messages coming from the world have confused hospitality with entertaining, Hannon said.
“Entertaining says, ‘Look what I have. Look what I can do,’ but biblical hospitality flips the focus, and it says, ‘What God has given me, I share with you,’” said Hannon, author of “Gather and Give: Sharing God’s Heart Through Everyday Hospitality.”
Women who hesitate to practice hospitality often are focused on themselves and what others think of them, Hannon said, but hospitality has nothing to do with anything a woman has deemed inferior about her home or anything she would showcase with pride.
“Hospitality is about vision and purpose, compassion and hope, kindness and grace,” Hannon said. “It’s humble. It’s not boastful. It’s genuine. It’s not imitation. It’s content. It doesn’t compare. It seeks to serve God and His people. It’s powered by a desire to make Christ known.”
Biblical hospitality, Hannon said, “recognizes that a simple invitation for connection is actually creating the perfect opportunity to share the good news of the Gospel and to showcase the abundant life that comes with knowing Christ. It values connection over perfection, people over presentation and sharing over showcasing.”
Also at the conference, a panel discussion featured Tara Dew of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Holly Groza of Gateway Baptist Theological Seminary and Brundi Crawford of First Baptist Concord in Knoxville, Tenn.
“Sometimes when we think about hospitality, we think about hostessing and how we’ve got to have the perfect centerpiece and the perfect place setting and be the best cook ever and have a house that looks like Southern Living,” Dew said. “That is not hospitality. I like to think of hospitality as opening your heart and your home to other people and showing the faithfulness of God.”
When a woman is hostessing, Dew said, the spotlight is on her, “but when you open your heart and your life to other people and show biblical hospitality, you’re really just showing the faithfulness of God and how He has been good to you. Sometimes that looks like pizza on a paper plate.”
Hospitality is really about relationship, Groza said.
“Our current culture has made it about entertainment, but if you look at the definition from 2,000 years ago, it really was about the practice of receiving guests without the expectation of reward,” Groza said, adding that hospitality can help accomplish the Great Commission by making a way for evangelism and discipleship.
Crawford recalled a time when her husband was on staff at Cross Church in Northwest Arkansas and Jeana Floyd, the pastor’s wife, brought a Tupperware container of food. Nearly 20 years later, Crawford remembers that simple act of hospitality because through it, Floyd acknowledged the Crawfords were overwhelmed and she cared.
“When you think it’s the least needed for someone else, it’s probably the most needed time for them,” Crawford said. “Never take lightly the little things that you do for somebody because it could mean volumes you will never see or understand.”
A few moments at the conference were given to Donna Gaines so that she could share how God has provided strength in the months since her husband Steve Gaines, a former SBC president and former pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., died of cancer.
“It’s hard, but God met us in the midst of it, and His presence was just tangible,” Gaines said of the immediate aftermath. She has “devoured” a book she picked up in her home called “The Dangerous Duty of Delight,” a condensed version of “Desiring God” by John Piper.
In the book, Piper writes that Christ “must be a satisfaction so deep that when death takes away everything you love but gives you more of Christ, you count it gain. Christ is praised in death by being prized above life.”
Gaines told the women, “You make deposits during times of peace that you’re able to draw from when you go through the difficulties.”
“Seventy percent of us in this room, almost three out of four, will be widows at some point. The average age is 59. It’s much younger than I thought,” she said. “The verse that I’ve been clinging to is Ephesians 2:10: For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which He prepared beforehand that we might walk in them.
“Make sure that you know who you are in Christ and what it is God has called you to do so that if and when you become a widow, your whole life is not wrapped up – your identity is not in your husband’s ministry or his position, that your identity is in Christ and as a daughter of the King you are walking in the works that He prepared beforehand for you to do,” Gaines said.
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