BEANS ON TOAST? HOSPITALITY VS. ENTERTAINING
If you know me and the fact that I take pride in making everything from scratch, the lunch plate pictured here represents progress I have made in the area of hospitality.
When I was a student at Kingston University (near London), the pastor of my church preached a powerful sermon on practicing hospitality as opposed to entertaining, and ten years later I still remember it. Hospitality is sharing your actual life with others, whereas entertaining is putting on a show for your guests. If you labor to make your house immaculate before the guests arrive and serve special food you normally wouldn’t serve at home, then you’re probably entertaining rather than practicing hospitality. While there are occasional times when entertaining is appropriate (see feasts and banquets in the Bible), Pastor Andrew challenged us to authentically share our real lives through hospitality, even if that means your house is slightly messy and you’re serving “beans on toast” (the British equivalent of an American student’s pasta and tomato sauce).
As I prepared to move to London last summer, I planned to look for a flat to share with a few girls. Instead, before I even started looking, God provided me with the opportunity to live in a missionary family’s house by myself, at reduced rent! The idea of developing hospitality skills had already been on my mind, since I hadn't had the opportunity to do so while living at my parents’ house for the last eight years, but now it seemed God was confirming that inclination by providing me with a house, knowing it would be selfish to not share the blessing with others. I knew that if I am to continue in ministry or missions, I would need to develop in the area of hospitality. Being introverted and quite happy to live on my own, showing hospitality to others is not something that comes naturally to me, but God repeatedly tells us to be hospitable--it’s even a qualification for an elder (1 Tim 3:2, Titus 1:8). Having served in international student ministry for five years, I definitely observed what a powerful statement of welcome and love it makes to the sojourner being invited into somebody’s home.
Two reasons why practicing hospitality is not something that comes naturally to me:
It requires taking the first step with people I may not know particularly well.
It requires not “entertaining” (even though I really want to impress people with fancy cooking and baking. The idea of serving a store-bought dessert is really tough for me!)
So far I’ve had the chance to show hospitality four times:
I decided my friend Clare from Kingston would be a good, non-judgmental first candidate so I invited her over, then I spontaneously invited a Japanese student plus one of our English class helpers to join. I admit I did attempt to cook something fancy but a couple things went slightly wrong, so while the food was still good, it wasn't as perfect as I had hoped! Perhaps God was humbling me?
My table group from our midweek Springboard Bible study came over for dinner and games but since it was our Christmas gathering, I went with entertaining rather than mere hospitality and everything actually came out perfectly this time.
My landlords (the missionary family) sent one of my neighbors over to fix a door so I offered him a cup of tea (a cultural norm here). As it turned out, he was quite chatty so he ended up staying for a second cup of tea and a 1.5 hour visit, even though it only took about 20 minutes to fix the door! I assume his long visit had to do with his Albanian background and good relationship with my landlords because I’m pretty sure a British neighbor would stay only as long as it took to fix the door--having one cup of tea and a short polite chat while working. It was a good exercise for me to practice hospitality with this unexpectedly lengthy visit.
Karen is an English gal from church who works at a clinic in my neighborhood, so she came over for lunch last week. This is the meal pictured at the top. While I did make the soup from scratch, the quiche was store-bought (very commonly available in supermarkets here; on sale for £1), the cornbread left over from a chili dinner earlier in the week, and the slice of walnut loaf (not pictured) also store-bought (also £1). Serving food I didn’t make myself from scratch almost feels fraudulent to me (which is really my own personal issue) so I ended up stating where I purchased each item (which I assume Karen may have found it a bit weird!) I think it’s good to let on that you haven’t made everything but there is probably a more natural way of making that known!
Anyway, developing my hospitality skills is a work in progress. My next goal will be to follow-up on my Albanian neighbor’s invitation to let him know when I want to stop in for tea at his house (with him and his wife). They are strangers to me but I feel it’s good missions practice to go out of my comfort zone and accept this invitation.
"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
Hebrews 13:2 ESV