Page 3 - Christian Hospitality

Stewards of Time - Part 13

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 by Karen Mains

There is nothing wrong with serving things elegantly. I recall one friend rebuking me when I had gone overboard on a simplicity kick by saying, “I love it when people go to extra efforts. It makes me feel as though they have a special reason to do so much for me.”

I needed to hear those words. And, ever since have taken that attitude when I am on the receiving end of hospitality. I have learned to enjoy the work of another’s hands.

However, I have personally found great freedom in guarding my own motives, being sure that extra frills stem from a desire to give, to minister, rather than from a desire to impress.

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For decades, Karen Mains and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and churches at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

An award-winning author of several other books, Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-148)

Stewards of Time - Part 12

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by Karen Mains

Turkeys have always been my Waterloo.

On our first Thanksgiving we invited both sets of grandparents to celebrate the traditional meal in our honeymoon apartment. The moment they walked up the stairs it was as though someone had released a smoke bomb in the kitchen. Our flat was inundated. Smoky fumes seeped from one room to another.

Choking, but mustering as much aplomb as possible, I ushered each set of grandparents into our bedroom, seated them on the bed to get acquainted, and closed the door to protect them from the acrid atmosphere. Then, gasping and heaving for air, David and I rushed about throwing open windows, flapping the billows of smoke out with towels, leaning our heads out windows for a breath of fresh air, then plunging back to battle.

This process was complicated by the fact that David and I were laughing uncontrollably.

Finally the air cleared. The turkey was unimpaired. It had simply been too large for its pan and the juices had leaked into the broiler pan, which smoked happily ever afterward whenever heated and had to finally be discarded.

If I remember correctly it was a decent enough first Thanksgiving meal. But my grandfather put the coup de grace on it ten years later when he reminded me of the event.

“Do you know, Karen Sue,” he revealed most confidentially, “I never told anyone about it.” Appreciating his honorable intent, it was now my turn to keep a confidence. He never knew that his valor was unnecessary, since I had revealed this disgraceful incident to at least a few thousand people myself.

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Karen Mains has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-147)

Stewards of Time - Part 11

Monday, April 11, 2011 by Karen Mains

To me maturing has been a lengthy process of letting go—letting go of props that bolster one’s ego, letting go of ploys and gambits that vault us in the eyes of other people, letting go of many of the material means that become so important in our eyes. How lovely to be able, finally, to laugh at our disasters!

I remember one sultry summer evening in our third-floor apartment. It was the third week of a Chicago heat wave. Even the bare wood floor had absorbed the warmth. The curtains were muggy. The breeze off the lake barely stirred the sycamore leaves in the courtyard. Instead of using the oven, I chose to serve a cold salad dinner and ran to the nearby grocer to purchase an assortment of ice cream bars for dessert.

At the end of the main course, I slipped into the kitchen and pulled the sack of popsicles and ice cream bars from the freezer. To my dismay I discovered it was so warm they hadn’t refrozen. Peeling the soggy wrappers from each one I had no choice but to put away my pride, scoop the sloppy messes into individual bowls, accent them with their wooden sticks as a clue as to what they had once been, and serve them to the puzzled guests. Matters were complicated because a melted ice cream bar is considerably smaller than a frozen one and my cereal bowls were rather large. I could do nothing but laugh and pass the spoons. I’m still laughing now.

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Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen Mains serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and churches at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-146)

Stewards of Time - Part 10

Friday, April 8, 2011 by Karen Mains

A good thermometer as to whether pride was rising in me was to ask two questions:

Am I nervous?

Am I fussing?

These were pretty good indicators of the true nature of my intentions. If I was nervous, getting jumpy before that sit-down dinner for eight, I could assume something had gone awry within. Was I afraid the new recipe would flop, or that someone might wander into an unclean room and, in either case, people would think less of me?

For me nervousness stemmed from nothing more than pride. What did it matter if the centerpiece was less than spectacular, if the rolls were slightly more than brown on the bottom, or if the door to the little boys’ room was closed because to enter was to take one’s life in one’s hands?

If I found myself fussing too much about spots on the glasses, getting upset because I had to clean the bathroom sink again, going wild because someone had walked on the freshly vacuumed shag, what did it mean? Who was coming that I was trying to impress with all these efforts? Didn’t my over-concern indicate that I was depending on my human efforts to make the evening a success? Hadn’t I forgotten that indefinable spiritual quality which found its source in the Holy Spirit? Again the answer was pride—pride rearing its subtle and manipulative head, forcing me to think only of myself.

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Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-145)

Stewards of Time - Part 9

Thursday, April 7, 2011 by Karen Mains

Establishing priorities is essentially a matter of making choices. In six months the choices will be different. There will be time for the personal counseling I enjoy, for speaking engagements, for long walks going nowhere, for the intellectual feeding from library shelves, for taking a high school growth group, and for my greatest of all loves, the open door with people in every room, with food well-prepared, candles glowing, and laughter and love.

The amount of time available to us determines the quantity and personality of our hospitality. Up until recently, David and I have carried on an extensive ministry of availability almost every day of the week. When we were led to devote so much time to people who lived with us, the ministry of an open house began to diminish.

Now both David and I have priority activities which require long hours of seclusion. We have had to refrain temporarily from the style of former days, participating sometimes in nothing more than hospitable attitudes. I can now sympathize with those people who have such consuming work that they have to state, “I don’t have the time or the energy to be hospitable.”

On the other hand, there are people who can devote large amounts of time and energy to hospitality. The temptation which always accompanies this situation is to do more than is required. It is easy to spend days in elaborate preparations which have nothing to do with ministry but a great deal to do with demonstrating one’s own abilities. One must look carefully at those hidden motives and ask, “Am I really seeking to serve, or am I trying to impress?”

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-144)

Stewards of Time - Part 8

Wednesday, April 6, 2011 by Karen Mains

The pursuit of person must begin. We must all ask, “What is it I want to do or be?” For many of us that question can also be worded, “What is it am meant to do or to be?” The Lord may require that I make the largest thrust of my time the molding of little lives and hearts. To others, He gives additional trusts, and they find they are required to juggle many roles and to juggle them well.

I know that I am an instinct-impulse person with an endurance run of about two weeks. I can push myself to the limit for only about that long, after which I need a time of solitude, with several days to do the things I want to do, not the things I have to do.

When our first child was born, I learned early that I did not want to change his basic nature. Rather I wanted to help him channel his basic personality and God-given gifts. This is true for my own self also.

I may establish strict disciplines for my life, but within those guidelines there must be an ebb and flow, freedom from long-range, minute-to-minute responsibilities, provision for enough aesthetic input. I do not wish to change what I am, only to channel it better so that I can function fully.

Some sacrifices must be made. I no longer have time for leisurely shopping expeditions, long afternoons in art museums, or frequent luncheons with friends. When the portable television was dropped by one of the children it found its way to the junk pile shop because it was a time gobbler.

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Karen Mains has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-143)

Stewards of Time - Part 7

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 by Karen Mains

Planning to reach this principal goal of completing writing projects included setting aside three or four large time blocks each week to write, calling on help for baby-sitting, finding ways to survive on the simplest, quickest meals possible, and attending the barest minimum of outside functions.

I fast became a recluse, and I had haunting feelings that when I emerged no one would be there who remembered me! Hospitality for the first time in our married lives was down to a minimum. To my shock I found I could not write about hospitality and be hospitable at the same time.

Choosing between a goal and the planning which enables us to reach the goal can be one of our most frustrating tasks. As Christians this means we must only know who we are, but also what God is expecting us to be and do.

Getting to know oneself is a lifelong process. And, knowing God is a matter that takes eternity. Yet, it is only as we get to know ourselves, as well as the God who transcends us, that we can discover our unique reasons for being, or our goals.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-142)

Stewards of Time - Part 6

Monday, April 4, 2011 by Karen Mains

I found a respite in the maternity ward. There in that quiet I began to devour my new copy of The Living Bible. Despite tranquilizers, I was unable to sleep and would turn to the bedside table and read with delight. The Lord planted then in my heart a seed which one day grew into a voracious hunger for Himself.

Looking back through the years to that summer, I can see many a time when I employed this method of goal setting, establishing priorities, and then planning how to reach them. With each step of progress, He increased my usefulness until finally the day came when I realized our time is really His time. Now each day begins with an inquiry of the Lord, “These are my human plans. Is this what You want me to do?”

The principal goal for this time in my life was to finish several writing projects. The exercise of the gift of writing had taken precedence over those other abilities of ministry which have been given to me. My list of priorities, in order, from that time were:

1. My relationship to the Lord.

2. My relationship to my husband.

3. My role of mothering the children.

4. Finishing the writing projects.

5. Relating to the needs of my parents.

6. Keeping the house in order.

7. The work of the church.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-141)

Stewards of Time - Part 5

Friday, April 1, 2011 by Karen Mains

Since Abraham put Sarah away privately when she was with child, I felt as though we, in decency, should do no less. So, for the last few months a my fourth and difficult pregnancy, I remained home from church, grateful for the few morning hours of silence.

As I shuffled down the stairs, lumbered slowly from room to room, and gingerly pushed toys to where I could scoop them up with a broom, I began to see the benefits of those angry months. By hook and by crook, I had become an orderly and disciplined housekeeper!

“Am I being a good steward of my time?” is a question which needs frequent evaluation. After I came home with a new baby, different schedules had to be maintained. And, with each phase of my life new systems have to be developed. Good time management depends on the priorities we have chosen.

The late Dr. Ted Engstrom of the Managing Your Time seminars reduced this process to a slogan: “Goals, Priorities, and Planning.” My goal for that long summer was to become a disciplined housekeeper. This also became my priority, particularly in the face of my advancing pregnancy, despite the rooming-in student, the work of hospitality, the expeditionary jaunts with the children. The planning evolved through first of all logging how I employed what time I had, then setting up schedules and assigning tasks to other members of the family.

After all this had been accomplished, the Lord did a lovely thing for me in that eighth-floor hospital room in the maternity ward. He gave me a retreat. I watched the winter clouds scudding greyly above the foaming winter waters of Lake Michigan. I studied the concrete and asbestos towers of the city. I wondered why no one came to fill the other bed in this large room with a lovely view.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-140)

Stewards of Time - Part 4

Thursday, March 31, 2011 by Karen Mains

The summer I began to tackle the issue of time management in my diffracted life, a seminarian lived with us throughout those warm months. And, I blush even now to think what a continual gripe I was throughout that summer. In fact, I was a literal grump for the first six months of my fourth pregnancy.

I ordered myself around, tackled the ramshackle closets and drawers, marched children in and out of how-to-clean sessions, drew up a daily schedule, and, with teeth gritted, forced us all to stick with it. I had to be mean and angry in order to motivate myself! By 9:00 a.m. rooms were to be straightened, everyone dressed, breakfast over, and the kitchen clean.

From 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. the children owed Mommy one hour of work after which they disappeared to play. I continued to struggle over the baked-on mess in the oven, or the mountainous pile of ironing, or the upholstery project I had started months ago.

Through all this we carried on our usual open house. I particularly remember because of the maternity hostess gown I wore. However, I began to practice some noticeable simplifications, abbreviations which were good lessons to apply toward the even busier days ahead.

Soon summer was over, the seminarian had departed, the older children were off to school, and just in time, as I was nearing the end of a rough pregnancy. For the last three months there was no hospitality. I had all I could do to scrape a meal together. And finally, David took over even this detail.

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Karen Mains has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-139)

Stewards of Time - Part 3

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 by Karen Mains

Looking long and hard at time—this one unalterable, precious gift which we cannot change, but only learn to use well—I asked, “Am I being a good steward of my time?” Once I began to perceive what time was, how it could be used or wasted, and what the Lord wanted me to do with it, my whole life started to change. Time was extremely important in determining the kind of ministry of hospitality I exercised.

Setting that summer aside, so that I could learn how to manage my time, I first found it necessary to spend several weeks learning what I presently did with each moment of the day. A notebook provided me with that daily information, because into it I recorded every activity, logging the amount of time I devoted to each.

I became aware of something I suppose I already knew subconsciously. I wasted hours of each day by not finishing tasks I had started or by failing to begin the projects which most needed to be done. I was a dreamer, a passive uncontrolled thinker, an unsystemetized reader, a loafer.

From this point my goal became to discipline myself to become disciplined. With all honesty, I must admit it was comparable to changing the course of tumbling water in midstream. As I began to progress, I even gave a few sighs for the impulsive life.

After logging my time, I began to work the entire summer on developing schedules, systems, attacks, and approaches to keeping an orderly house. The home was my primary area of responsibility, and it was the one I felt I had to conquer first before I could go on to anything else.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-138)

Stewards of Time - Part 2

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 by Karen Mains

After grumbling for many years about the work compulsion of my dearly loved husband, one day I took a good look at us and had to admit that David was accomplishing the work of ten men, reaching goals, affecting many lives, whereas I was gaining headway in virtually nothing.

It seemed as though I was always behind, always catching up on the housecleaning, the laundry, the decorating. I would stay up late to prepare for company the next day or get up in the wee hours to be ready to welcome people for dinner in the evening. I was always behind!

At that point, my life was racing toward age 30 and, without a doubt, I was trapped by trivia. Somehow I got only the unimportant things in my life done. I wanted to write. I wanted to learn. I wanted to make significant contributions as a Christian in our society. And, here I was (unexpectedly) expecting our fourth child. I was even behind on that!

I realized the basic difference between David and me was in our viewpoint of time. My husband had learned—albeit I often felt a little too well—how to be in control of time. On the other hand, time had always been in control of me.

I thought back to the overdue term papers, the unwritten letters, the belated reports, and I suddenly became avowed—a deep, firm commitment—that, even if I died in the effort, I would become organized, disciplined, and motivated.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-137)

Stewards of Time - Part 1

Monday, March 28, 2011 by Karen Mains

By nature I am an instinct-impulse person, preferring to do things when I “feel” like it. For years I cleaned the house stimulated by the thought that company was coming. I wrote because of a certain mood. And, I was easily able to lay aside planned operations when the zoo suddenly seemed more inviting or the Lake Michigan shore beckoned.

My husband, David, on the other hand, is by nature an organized-compulsive. He feels most comfortable when the day is plotted to the minute, when every conceivable activity is on a list, when he is able to chart ahead and thereby determine how much time he will have in order to accomplish all his work.

These differences are most easily illustrated in the methods by which we both prefer to vacation. I would love to simply get in the car, follow the road, stop where I feel like stopping, meander here, explore there, and let the vacation happen to me.

My husband, however, derives as much pleasure from the pre-vacation plan as he does from the actual event. Road maps are spread on the table, atlases consulted, tourist guides and chamber of commerce information requested months ahead of time, itineraries planned, special sights to see chosen, tickets purchased, and friends we love who live on the way contacted in advance. David makes the vacation happen.

We have bumped more than frequently on this fundamental divergence in our characters. David’s lists are endless. And, for many years it was his habit upon rising first thing in the morning to organize his stacks of notes and papers for the day. I’ve teased him many a time about the esoteric shorthand he uses on these lists—”K K,” I’ve wheedled. “I’ll bet that means 'kiss Karen.' You even have to program me into your systems!” My jesting was not far from the truth.

If I suddenly received the inspiration to take a walk, some inward journey demanding outward response, and if I decided it would be nice to be accompanied by a chatty or pensive husband to match my mood, David would have to consult his schedule to see if it fit in! Asking him to reserve next Thursday at 2:00 p.m. for a stroll simply didn’t satisfy my need to follow impulses. By next Thursday, I wouldn’t feel like taking a walk!

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For decades, Karen Mains and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and churches at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-136)

Hospice - Part 10

Friday, March 25, 2011 by Karen Mains

Yes, Jesus has said that we are the light of the world. I often think about all those missionaries who have picked abandoned children from garbage piles or from jungle edges or from the clay steps of their front porches. I think about the hospitable Christians of history. I think about Catherine Zell of Strassbourg in the Middle Ages who opened that city to the refugees of the Peasants’ War and single-handedly administrated relief to these several thousand. I think of the unadvertised hundreds of Corrie ten Booms, now Trees of the Righteous, who throughout centuries have sheltered the displaced, the life-hounded. I wonder what kind of illumination they have sent against the darkness.

What unseen incandescence rolls back the gloom when I open this my door and stand silhouetted against the warmth inside?

Often I’ve wondered at the soft glow which fills the rooms only on hospitality nights. Is it candles? Is it my inward love toward these people making my eyes filmy? Or, is it a Presence totally apart from myself, “the true light that enlightens every man”? What shadows are actually dispelled when we share Him with those in bondage, those with broken spirits, or those strangers in prisons of their own making?

When I open my door, do I send unseen rays to dispel the night? When I open my eyes and see the suffering, is my soul flooded with an unknown shimmering because I am seeing now with the eyes of Christ?

When I open my heart, does it shine somewhere like the flame in a cavern, one living pinprick warding off the monstrous cavity of nothingness? Am I a light in the world? And, is this house set on a hill for the city to see? I hope so. I fervently hope so.

Life Response

Take some tentative steps toward worldwide hospitality.

1. Contact a foreign student advisor to inquire as to whether there is a need for people to provide the atmosphere of a substitute family for internationals.

2. Give the church secretary your name to call the next time she needs someone to provide overnight housing for missionaries returning from the field.

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Karen Mains has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-135)

Hospice - Part 9

Thursday, March 24, 2011 by Karen Mains

Internationals often complain about Americans and their one-time relationships, opening homes for Thanksgiving or Christmas celebrations, and then never establishing contact again. There is a great desire on the part of these dear ones so far from home to be adopted by a family with whom they can share and from whom they can learn our customs, or develop a facility with our language.

Many organizations seek to aid internationals while they stay here in America, giving legal advice regarding visas, job permits, and a host of other documents. Most large universities have a foreign student advisor who would be willing to provide contacts or answer questions.

Foreign mission boards can offer another source of cultural information. Such information could help us prevent many of the insensitivities that can destroy relationships before they start.

I wonder often about Jesus’ illustration that we are the light of the world. And, then I think about that special, spiritual light—invisible to the human eye but amazingly transmitted onto film—surrounding those sheltered in the Calcutta Home for the Dying in India.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-134)

Hospice - Part 8

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 by Karen Mains

You can be a part of the work of the Kingdom though you may not be on the front lines. Think of yourself as a behind-the-lines supply depot, a resting place away from the heat of the battle. Find ways to use the good things the Lord has given to you to ease the battle-scarred veteran or that fresh young recruit. You will give much to them, and they will give to you heroic stories of the conflict, marvelous undertakings of the Commander-in-Chief, and intimate knowledge of the direction the battle is raging.

Hospitality is an open heart as well as an open home. All of us must develop this attitude whether we feel the Lord would have us invite people into our homes twice a year or two hundred times a year. I am not concerned so much about the quantity of hospitality. But, I am concerned about the attitudes from which our practice of hospitality springs. We must all have hospitable hearts and must ask the Lord if He wishes us to be a part of that minority whom He will require to open their hearts and homes radically.

Whenever we begin to exercise hospitality in this way, it is best not to operate out of ignorance. We need to inform ourselves as much as possible, locate other people who have walked this way before, and welcome assistance.

For instance, the first time we invited a black family who attended the church to our own apartment, we parked in the back, went up the back stairs and in the back door. This was a normal procedure for us because of the few parking spots. Our black friends, however, had had the experience of, “Go to that back door, boy!” They thought we were pulling the same racial stunt they had known all their lives. If only we had asked someone more familiar with extending hospitality to African-American families. Such insight would have been helpful in preventing this gaffe. Fortunately we were able to eventually rectify this error by welcoming these people many other times through our front door.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-133)

Hospice - Part 7

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 by Karen Mains

David and I have also been the recipients of such healing hospitality. On our sometimes rather fixed income we have greatly appreciated the beautiful homes Christian brothers wealthier than ourselves have openly shared.

We’ve dug clams for chowder off tiny Oak Island in Long Island Sound. We’ve watched the clouds break over the mountains from a retreat in Colorado. We’ve roamed Salem, Massachusetts on Halloween with our children. We’ve floated on a yacht in the clear Caribbean with Jamaica bejeweled on the horizon.

We’ve viewed the World Champion Sled-Dog Races in 15-degree-below-zero weather in Alaska. We’ve picked Florida grapefruit from our host’s trees in the backyard. We’ve participated in these many wonderful experiences, all because of other Christians’ hospitality toward us. How often our spirits have been turned again toward ministry by the release of these experiences.

Once after a weekend escape to a friend’s house overlooking Lake Michigan I sighed, “Oh, I wish we had a place like that.”

“We do,” David reminded me without glancing from his paperwork. “You have been told you can come whenever you like. And, we don’t have the worry about monthly payments or upkeep.”

Really, it has often been this way. People make me feel that I am welcome to share in as much of their lives as I am able to enjoy. And, then take some away in my heart to store for memory replays.

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-132)

Hospice - Part 6

Monday, March 21, 2011 by Karen Mains

When we are given to hospitality, we can become missionaries without leaving our homes by inviting international students to live with us. We can become social workers without the frustration of bureaucracy. We can help to break racial barriers—especially if both sides chip and chip and chip away so that one day all walls will fall—by marching in demonstration through our front doors. We can become way-stations for workers wearied by ministry.

My own spiritual life was radicalized by one missionary who stayed with us for several days. This person’s brand of faith was unlike any I had ever encountered. A witness to the reality of God in our lives was given that influences me to this day.

Another missionary couple and their two children lived with us for a month and demonstrated a style of marriage important for David and me to observe at that particular time. Due to their responsibilities on the field, they had developed a natural and delightful shared-role type of relationship. Child-rearing and homemaking were divided equally between husband and wife.

I recall thinking how well-adjusted their young children seemed to be when they had every reason to be upset or insecure. The family had been traveling from spot to spot for over a year, unable to root in any one place, meeting new people, saying good-bye to those they had come to love, moving on. Yet the children were well behaved, cooperative, and excellently disciplined, as well as obviously developing distinctive and delightful personalities.

Able to observe them firsthand, I concluded that much of this well being was due to the even amounts of attention they received from each parent. A relaxed mother not overwrought from the exhaustion of too much childcare, or the wearing day-in-and-day-outness of menial responsibilities had to contribute greatly to her children’s own happiness.

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Karen Mains has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

In addition, pastors will find special resources to help them create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-131)

Hospice - Part 5

Friday, March 18, 2011 by Karen Mains

The question one might ask in considering the self-sacrifice required to minister this radical hospitality is, “Why is it necessary?” The answer is simply that there are some people who cannot be helped unless there are others who will open up their lives in this way.

In Jerusalem there is a large war memorial built to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Jews who met their deaths in the holocaust of the insane Nazi inferno. Not a name is written on this building, but the street leading to this monument is called the Avenue of the Righteous. Here tree after tree after tree has been planted in living memory of those who aided the oppressed descendants of Abraham—courageous men and women who refused to capitulate to human law because they recognized the existence of a higher spiritual law.

Philosophers have often wondered how good people could stand by and allow such outrageous suffering: Ignorance? Hidden racism? Helplessness? Cowardice? Perhaps they were just out of practice?

We in America have not yet been forced under such extreme circumstances to make these ultimate moral decisions. Perhaps, if that time comes, we will be so out of practice, holding so dearly to our earthly possessions—my home, my country, my race, my nationality—that we too will stand incapacitated in the face of great evil.

I wonder if there is an Avenue of the Righteous in Heaven where trees of life are planted to remember those people here on earth who have provided hostels and hospices for the disembodied of our land? Is there a tree for those who chip away at the mountain of racism by sharing their lives with black brothers and sisters? Is there a tree for those who bear cups of sanity to the mentally ill? Is there a tree for those who care for little children? Is there a tree for those who open their doors to those refugees from another kind of war, that of light against darkness?

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Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-130)

Hospice - Part 4

Thursday, March 17, 2011 by Karen Mains

How many times have you risked an un-antiseptic situation by having a girl who might easily have a sexual disease sleep between your sheets? We have girls come to our homes who have three or four abortions by the time they are 17. Is it possible they have venereal disease? Of course! But they sleep between our sheets.

How many times have you let this happen in your home? Don’t you see this is where we must begin? This is what the love of God means. This is the admonition to the elder—that he or she must be given to hospitality. Are you an elder? Are you given to hospitality? If not, keep quiet. There is no use talking. But you can begin.

If you have never done any of these things, or things of this nature, if you have been married for years and years and had a home (or even a room) and none of this has ever occurred, if you have been quiet especially as our culture is crumbling about us, if this is so—do you really believe that people are going to hell? And, if you really believe that, how can you stand and say, “I have never paid the price to open my living place and do the things that I can do”?

The compensations of this type of radical hospitality are often completely underestimated. For one friend, unexpected resistance came from her Christian mother: “What will your neighbors think if you take that troubled personality to live in your home?” Quite contrary to those expressed fears, the neighbors soon recovered from their surprise, viewed closely some of the costly struggles of this dedicated family, and witnessed the marvelous end results. Their admiration was boundless. They had viewed in action a Christianity about which, before this demonstration, they had only heard words.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karen has long had an interest in Christian hospitality and is the author of the best-selling book, Open Heart, Open Home.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

(OHOH-129)

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