A friend of mine who grew up in Ethiopia shared with me a cultural practice they have regarding coffee. If you can smell the coffee someone makes in his home, then you are invited over to partake. I learned this shortly after a friend from my small group offered to give me his pellet smoker. He knew that I had been scouring facebook marketplace for years deciding whether or not to pull the trigger on a smoker, and decided he should just give me his “old” one (a high end grill in almost flawless condition).
Right away I adopted the Ethiopian coffee custom and told my neighbors, if you can smell the smoker cooking, you’re invited over to eat. I wanted to fill my neighborhood with the aroma of Christian hospitality.
Hospitality is one of our greatest opportunities for mission as a family. Our family and our home are Spirit-empowered outposts of the kingdom of God that invite neighbors to hear and experience the good news of Jesus Christ.
Hospitality and the Gospel
My wife, Jillian, and I view hospitality to our neighbors as not just a command in Scripture, but a God-shaped calling on our lives. It’s a joy to share this calling with our three children and to give them a vision for opening up our home to love neighbors and share about our faith in Jesus. The Apostle Paul exhorts the Church in Rome to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God (Rom. 15:7). We have worked hard to weave this into the culture of our family, which has led to backyard barbecues, neighbor kids running in and out of our house stealing our pantry snacks, and new friends sitting in our living room asking us about church and our faith in Jesus.
In Denver, it’s common for a Christian family to be the only household on the block who follows Jesus and attends a local church. This places an incredible weight of responsibility on these families to be a hub of the good news for their neighborhoods. Furthermore, although Denver is one of the most attractive and beautiful cities in the world, it is often marked by a fierce commitment to self-reliance and personal freedom. The result is that neighbors often don’t know one another, or build deep relationships, or open up their homes. This culture of individualism has such a powerful formational influence that we have to fight to create a different culture in our home.
The Christian Family on Mission Together
In seeking to resist the cultural introversion of Denver, we discovered a secret weapon for building relationships and practicing hospitality—our kids (our dog is a definite second). Our three kids have opened up countless doors through our local elementary school, the playground, birthday parties, neighborhood movie nights, playgroups, soccer teams, and swim lessons. We teach our kids to step into each of these spaces as heralds of the gospel of Jesus and beacons of the light of God.
Just like a smoker fills the block with thoughts of brisket and ribs, we want our kids to grow their hunger for Christian hospitality. We want them to view our home as the place where Jesus’ great commission to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:18-20) and his great commandment to love one another (John 13:34) come together. By instilling this as a cultural value in our family, we are teaching our children to grow into Christ-likeness and to view their lives in the context of the mission of God.
Practical Ideas for Inviting Kids into Mission
1. Get to Know Your Neighbors
The first step to building a culture of Christian hospitality is to learn your neighbors’ names and begin to pray for them with your kids. I once heard author and pastor Dave Runyon, who co-wrote The Art of Neighboring say, “what if when Jesus said to love your neighbor, he didn’t mean our metaphorical neighbors, but our actual neighbors?” Alongside the book, they provide a simple tool – a refrigerator magnet where you can write your neighbors names (I’m also keeping track of neighbors names using the iPhone notes app). This simple practice has led to our kids’ praying, of their own volition, for their neighbor friends to know God and join us for church.
2. Talk with Children About the Mission of God
In addition to prayer, Jillian and I create spaces to talk about the mission of God with our kids. Our kids are elementary and toddler aged, so it’s hard for them to naturally grasp the concept that just because our family attends church, reads the Bible, and seeks to worship and follow Jesus, many other families don’t do any of these practices. Our two oldest girls were so surprised that their friends across the street did not know the story of the birth of Jesus that they wanted to buy them The Jesus Storybook Bible at Christmastime. I swelled with pride as I watched these two tiny heralds of good news sprint across the street carrying precious words from Sally Lloyd Jones.
3. Introduce Your Church Friends to Your Neighbors
Many Christian families are comfortable having their church small group over or hosting a new friend from church. We look for natural opportunities to intertwine the communities of our church community and mostly unchurched neighbors as much as possible. We host a halloween party every year where we supply food and cider in the front yard before all the kids go trick or treating. Whenever I host my men’s group (usually to eat smoked meat), I invite my next-door neighbor to join. It’s powerful to see how a culture of hospitality stretches our small group to go beyond our tendency toward introversion and infuses our group with mission.
Children learn best through example, and culture takes shape more through experience than by what we speak. If you sense the Spirit calling you to increase your missional engagement in your neighborhood, apartment, or block, I suggest a simple goal: aim to make one connection and extend one invitation into your home per week. This simple but aspirational goal will orient your family toward your neighbors and create a revolving door of gospel conversations in your home.
Pointing Our Children to the Kingdom
Finally, it’s important we see the bigger theological picture God paints through missional hospitality. Through expressing this Christian value, we are showing them a foretaste of the kingdom of God. Jesus promises at the end of the age, people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God (Luke 13:29).
When our children pray for their friends who don’t know God, or host a birthday party split evenly between “church friends” and “school friends,” or play with the single dad next door who struggles to relate to his teenage daughter, they participate in the story of the gospel. They are inviting others to sit at a table marked by the grace of Jesus. A table he broke his body and poured out his blood to bless with his presence. When we welcome our neighbors to this table, we are also feasting with the risen Lord Jesus.
If you’re looking to grow in Christian parenting, consider using Rooted’s family discipleship curriculum with your church or small group.
