The Power of Hospitality

What's holding you back from making a huge difference in someone's life by extending hospitality? It's not like I need to go so far out of my way to find strangers to love.

I just need to start paying attention to who is on my Jericho road. No matter what, I think if we're opening our eyes, there's people that God has put right next to us. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" .

Our world is an increasingly lonely place, and with the explosion of the internet and social media, we're getting lonelier. Author Leslie Verner says that hospitality is the answer to the connection we all crave. And this is the question that we would love for you to think about right now. What is holding you back from extending hospitality? The program today may cause you to think of someone and maybe entertain the possibility, maybe a family, of showing hospitality to them, even if that topic scares you a little bit. And as you consider that, here's our host, Dr. Gary Chapman. Gary, you have talked about the way you and Carolyn opened your home up years ago. You two, to me, seem like naturally hospitable people.

Is that true? Well, I think it is true, Chris. Let me admit that Carolyn is more hospitable than I am. But yeah, for 10 years, every Friday night, we had our house open to college students.

And those were great years, just sitting around talking to college kids. But we still have folks into our home. Yeah, we love that.

And Carolyn's a great host. So yeah, it's been a vital part of our life. So I'm really excited about our conversation today on this topic.

I am too. But I want to ask you, was that a risk for you then to open on Friday nights? I mean, what if you had to go and speak on a Saturday and they were staying too late?

Did that ever happen? Oh, what we did, if we were out of town. Of course, I wasn't traveling that much in those days. But when I was out of town, we would arrange for somebody else to come to our house and be the host. But the house was always open, so the kids knew there was a place to come on Friday nights, you know.

So yeah, that's the way we handled that. Love it. Well, let's meet our guest. Leslie Verner writes about faith, justice, family and cross-cultural issues for She Loves, Relevant, The Mud Room and other venues. She earned her master's degree in intercultural studies and her bachelor's in education from Wheaton College. She lived in China for five years, where she taught English as a second language and studied Mandarin.

She now lives in Colorado with her husband and three children. And our featured resource, we are proud to say, is her first book, Invited, The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness. Find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Leslie, welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you so much for having me. We are delighted to have you, and I'm really excited about this topic. This is, of course, as we were chatting, a very interesting topic, one that seems to me that you have kind of gravitated toward naturally. Tell us why you want to write about hospitality.

All right. So I spent about five years before I was married in China and got to travel a bit. And just while I was overseas, I experienced so much hospitality from people. And here I was a stranger in that country. So that kind of got me thinking differently about hospitality. And then we moved from Chicago to Colorado about four years ago. And we kind of had a difficult time finding community, finding a church, you know, a lot of it stage of life, too, because we had little kids.

And, you know, I think through transitions, it's difficult. But it kind of got me asking the question, like, what, you know, what would our society look like if we practice hospitality the way so many other cultures, like, organically practice it? And so through that question, this book kind of emerged as I kind of look for answers and look to my international friends, even here in Colorado, for the ways that they naturally practice hospitality. That's interesting, because I've made that observation also that sometimes in other cultures, just by nature, the culture seems to be more one in which people invite people into their homes. And it seems to me, we used to do that more here in America, you know, 50 years ago, than we do today. Well, let's talk about loneliness, because we see a lot of that in society.

And sometimes even in the church, we see that. What is your perspective on that whole aspect of life, the loneliness of people? Yeah, I mean, obviously, we experienced that moving out of our comfort zone.

And when we moved to Colorado, we didn't know anybody. But then as you kind of start to study even beyond yourself, there's lots of studies out there that talk about loneliness, and how it's actually an epidemic today. And people who are lonely, you know, die earlier than people who are surrounded in community. So there's actually a lot of, you know, even scientific research surrounding loneliness. And, you know, most people, I think, can recognize that it's a very lonely society today.

So from my own personal experience, but then also kind of looking out to there's, I think it's just super prevalent in our society today. I remember once I was speaking, and I dealt a little bit with the topic of loneliness, and a single adult came up to me after I lectured and said, Dr. Chapman, I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. I said, what do you mean? And they said, you're talking about loneliness. And she said, you may know what it means to be lonely, but I don't think you know what it is to experience loneliness. She said, you know, you can go away for three weeks, and you might be lonely while you're away, but you're coming back home to your wife. She said, loneliness is when you don't have anybody to come back home to. And I said, ooh, okay, I stand corrected.

Because I think she was right. Yeah, yeah. And I experienced that, you know, I was single the whole time I lived in China, and so I definitely experienced loneliness.

But then I also experienced the hospitality of the people around me that helped so much with my loneliness. Yeah. Has technology helped or made us more lonely? That's the big question.

Yeah, I mean, I think it goes both ways. And I found this really interesting article. I believe it was in the Atlantic from about how the smartphone in 2012 is when more than 50% of our population had a smartphone. And that's also when we began to see a huge rise in teen suicide rate and loneliness among teens, things like that. So I think that we're connected, but we're not connected at that full level that we really long for. And a lot of other studies have shown that what's really important is face-to-face contact. It's not just being connected on a Facebook group that meets that longing that we have. It's important that we're, you know, interacting with our neighbors in our communities and things like that. Yeah, I think technology can perhaps be an asset, but it's not the heart of what community is all about.

Right. You know, the younger generation, of course, is dealing with this. We know and we're seeing more anxiety, more depression, along with this sense of loneliness.

I mean, that is loneliness often leads to depression. And so it cuts across all generations. It's not just a single young, single adults.

It's teenagers, right? Yeah. You know, yeah.

I think it impacts all of us. In your travels, you mentioned earlier that you did a good bit of traveling while you were in China. What are some of the places you went and what are some of the observations or things you learned in that?

Yeah. While I lived in China, I was able to visit a lot of my students' homes in the countryside. I was teaching English as a second language in a teacher's college, and so a lot of them would invite me home to their villages. And a lot of my students were from farming communities, and they were often the first person in their whole village to go to college.

So it was really fascinating. It wasn't always comfortable, because different cultures show hospitality in different ways, and I found it challenging to be a guest sometimes, honestly, just because it wasn't always the way I was used to receiving hospitality. I felt like it taught me a lot about just the way that a lot of cultures value people over tasks. And I also lived in Uganda for about six months with a family, a Ugandan family, and just have had some opportunities to travel other places. So I think that's the main takeaway, that I was able to see how other cultures really do prioritize time with people over time with tasks.

And that's a pretty broad generalization, but just from my time living in China especially. I mean, personally, it also taught me flexibility and to have a good sense of humor, because to live overseas is challenging. So I think it was important to me to keep those things, too.

Yeah, so I feel like it hasn't influenced me in a lot of ways, maybe in ways I don't even realize. But I feel like I've brought some of those things back with me to my life here in the United States, and they're things that I'm thankful for. Let's think I want to ask you a question, because when I saw this topic, I thought of the song by Billy Joel, Piano Man, and it's a story of song about a guy who plays piano in a bar, and people put money in his jar and say, man, what are you doing here? It's all this longing. But he describes all the different people that are in the bar with him. And there's at one point where he says the line, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone. And all of these different people, they have a certain relationship, but what brings them together is the alcohol. And it's a picture of a community. There is a community there, and I guess there's a certain amount of caring. But the bottom line is people go there to get rid of their troubles, to get inebriated. They want to get drunk, so that they don't have to deal with their problems anymore. And I wonder what you would say about that whole, you know, that milieu of the bar and how much that has become a staple in our world today that people retreat. They want community, but they really want to forget about it.

What would you say about that? It is true that it's the loneliness that connects us. And so I think what it goes back to is being vulnerable and authentic and admitting we're lonely to each other. Those of your listeners who are believers, we should feel like we have a place to admit those sorts of feelings that we have. And so, yeah, I've often passed bars and places like that, and it seems like such a wonderful community of people, strangely.

And yet, obviously, it's built around something that doesn't bring you ultimate fulfillment. And so, yeah, but I think just admitting we're lonely to each other, it builds a bridge to one another so that we can admit that we need each other. For me personally, that's been a lifelong struggle to admit that I need other people. I think that's one of the downsides of our Western culture is that we're very individualistic, we're very independent. Our country is built on that, and there's some wonderful things about that. And yet, it isolates us from one another. Our country is like, on the scale, it's like the most individualistic country in the world.

And so there's fabulous things, but then I think it builds walls between us so that we can't admit that we need each other and that we need to receive from one another. Chris, you mentioned that song and that phenomena. I remember over 50 years ago, my grandfather, whose wife had died, and he was by himself for 20 years, every day after he got home from work and had dinner, he would go out to a place that was called Goat Turner's. And it was just guys sitting around drinking beer, you know? And they would do that for two or three hours, and he would come home and go to bed. And that was his style every night he did that. And that was in that day. And Goat Turner's was not a very nice place, I mean, in terms of facilities. You know, today, the bars are beautiful and colorful and music and all of that.

But it's the same thing. It's reaching out, trying to connect around the context of alcohol. Wasn't your grandfather the one that kind of showed you, you know, yourself? You went out with your dad and found him at some point?

Yeah, yeah. That was one night when a man came to our door in the wintertime and told my dad that, he said, your father's up there in a ditch, drunk, and you better go get him. So my dad said to me, I was probably 10 years old, he said, get your coat on. We got to go help grandpa. So we went up there and got him out of the ditch, you know, and he was arguing with us all the time.

I don't need your help, you know, all that kind of stuff. And we took him home, put him in bed. And that was really the experience that said in my mind, don't mess with alcohol, man, you know. And I just made that decision as a kid. You know, I'm never going to get involved in this.

I just saw what it did to him. But anyway, that's another whole topic. Let's come back to the topic we're on today. Let's talk about the Bible. You know, the Bible has a lot to say about hospitality. Leslie, talk about that and the invitations you see in the Bible. Yeah, the title is Invited, and that was actually my, that was my working title.

As you know, a lot of authors have a working title and they don't end up using the same one. But I really pushed for it, because I wanted to show that really the message of the Bible is a message of invitation from Genesis to Revelation. As you start looking for invitations in the Bible, you just see so many of them. You know, it's mostly God calling us and welcoming us to himself. And so that was important to me, to kind of have that be the framework, and just to remember, we invite because we are invited.

We are invited ones. And then obviously, as you look through the Scriptures, the Bible was, you know, written in, it's an Eastern culture, most of the people in the Bible in the Old Testament and the New Testament. So I feel like there's like an intrinsic understanding of what hospitality should look like. And sometimes I even wonder, maybe Paul didn't, you know, people didn't always spell it out when they said things like practice hospitality, because it was so understood in their culture.

So I, you know, I feel like we in the West, as we read it, we might have needed a bit more description to be like, well, what does that really look like? So throughout the Bible, you see stories of hospitality, stories of invitation. And then obviously, if you read all about Jesus, it was just this constant, you know, he was more often a guest than he was a host, actually.

And so we see that throughout. And then the disciples going out, being sent, they stayed in homes of people. There weren't, it's not like there were hotels, they were, you know, they were welcomed, or they weren't welcomed into homes. And they, there were people that, that were stayers, but they weren't the goers that we like to talk about so much.

They were the stayers. And they were the ones who welcomed the disciples into their homes and the missionaries. And so I think as you start looking in the Bible, hospitality is just everywhere you look. But my favorite part is the word hospitality in Greek. It actually means love of strangers.

It's phileo xenos, and that xenos is the same root word for xenophobia, like fear of strangers. But I think we so often think of hospitality as welcoming our friends and family to our home for a meal. And yet, that word hospitality in the New Testament is love of strangers. To me, that just cracks open our definition of hospitality and expands it in so many ways. You know, as you were talking about that, just all kind of scriptures begin to roll into my mind. Jesus himself once said, come unto me, you who are labored and heavy laden, I'll give you rest. There's invitation, strong invitation, just come. And the other side of that is, you know, when Jesus said, if you believe in me, my Father and I will come and make our home with you. We'll come and live with you.

We'll come and live with you. Wow. I went to the negative, Gary. I went to the shake your dust off your feet thing.

That'll work too. That's the folks who hadn't read the book. Well, and here's the other thing. When Jesus comes to the man in the tombs, the man who lives among the tombs and howled at night, you know, nobody could corral this guy.

He comes for that one guy, and then the whole village comes out because the pigs jumped off the cliff. That didn't work out too well for them. And they want him to go away. They're upset with him.

And from a business perspective, you can understand that. But they weren't hospitable. They had no idea who this was. You know, it was making this big ruckus in town. And look at that fellow sitting dressed in his right mind.

And he hadn't been that way in an awful long time. That's one of the things that came to me as you were talking. Well, invitations, of course, as you said, Leslie, are throughout the whole of the scriptures. And you mentioned that they live, the apostles would live in homes that would receive them. But really the church also met in homes, right? I mean, for the most part, you know, he talks about the church that meets in so-and-so's house.

So the homes were, yeah, it's a very different culture, of course. But what do you say to people who feel like they don't have the gift of hospitality? I've heard people say that, well, that's just not my gift. Well, I grew up in high school, going to church and college. And I feel like if you've spent any amount of time in certain churches, you've probably taken a spiritual gifts test.

At least I've taken probably 10. And I've always been surprised because some of the tests say that hospitality is a gift, like one of the spiritual gifts. But as I started researching for this book and, you know, really combing through the Bible, looking for what the Bible said about hospitality, I was surprised. Like, it is never listed as a gift. In fact, hospitality is only listed as a command for all of believers.

So there's not people who are exempt because they're not good at it. In fact, that's why I think Peter says in 1 Peter 4.9, that we should show hospitality without grumbling, you know, because it's like, even then in that culture where people were very used to practicing hospitality, even they needed reminders, you know, that like, this may not be easy. So I feel like that actually, that idea that like, I don't have the gift of hospitality is actually a myth that we've perpetuated throughout the church.

Because I think it's true. Some people maybe just naturally love cooking, or decorating, or they're more extroverted, maybe. But I think that's where you can look at hospitality, meaning love of strangers, and looking at some of the other invitations in the Bible.

And remember that it doesn't have to look one way. Hospitality can fit our personality, and it can fit our comfort levels. Like, it's going to push our comfort level no matter what. But it doesn't have to be something that we dread.

I think we just need to redefine it and reframe it. But then, you know, not use that as an excuse, like, I don't have the gift of hospitality. A lot of people don't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think our personalities are different, to be sure. And some people are just more, they're more outgoing, you know, they feel more comfortable reaching out to people than others do.

When you have a command of God, it doesn't matter what your personality is, it may be harder for some than others, but God gives us the ability to do what he challenges us to do. Leslie, I love everything you're saying about invited and about hospitality. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about what happened to me when I was a kid. I think I'm doing what I'm doing today because my grandmother opened her house.

They did the same thing, Gary, that you were talking about 50 years ago. We just go over, we just drop in, you know, there's no phone calls, no nothing. They'd stop whatever they're doing, they'd sit and, you know, talk and have conversation and share whatever they were having for the meal that day. But I think, Leslie, one of the things that you're talking about is a lack of agenda, that it seems like if I'm going to be a good Christian, and if I'm going to do everything God wants me to do, then I've got to be hospitable, and I've got to have a list of people that I'm going to be hospitable to. And when I do that, I have this agenda that I put over there, and I've got to get the gospel in as I give them brownies and whatever it is. It sounds like the hospitality you're talking about is very organic. It's very non-agenda or non-list related. It just kind of springs from your life.

Is that true? I mean, that's my hope. Yeah, I mean, I think it's more important for it to be a lifestyle and a habit, you know? At least that's my hope, is that our family will have a lifestyle of hospitality. I mean, I think there's a place for programs, because sometimes we just don't think a certain way, and so maybe that will train us so that we could have the lifestyle. But I think more than, you know, for example, like visitors at a church, because we visited a ton of churches when we moved to Colorado, more than just having people with nametags come over and talk to us, we long to have people that we sat next to talk to us. Or, you know, I think we long for it to be organic, and people can spot from miles away something if they feel like they're being a project, you know? And so I think it's really important to make sure that doesn't happen, and as we have a lifestyle of hospitality and people see us living in our life just the way that we're called to do, which is to love others and to love strangers and to welcome, that's compelling, you know? I mean, even just, I often think if people would just read about Jesus, like just read over and over the stories of Jesus, His life is so compelling.

I just, I can't imagine how someone wouldn't fall in love with Him. And so to try to live even a little bit of that way, I think that has to be compelling to the people around us. People in the church can see hospitality as an evangelistic outreach, really, as well as a ministry to people inside the church. It seems like you're broadening the definition or the mission of hospitality. Sounds like there's a lack of agenda in the kind of hospitality you're talking about. We're not necessarily reaching out, inviting people into our homes just so we can, you know, share the gospel with them, though obviously that's always a part of our makeup and our desire, but often showing hospitality, it may take a while until you build a relationship before you would share the gospel, right? Right. You know, sometimes we just need to kind of be alert and aware of the people around us. I think that's kind of the first step. Leslie, I love this conversation. The book is Invited, The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness.

You can find out more at 5lovelanguages.com. You talk in the book about staying on your Jericho Road, or that's what you're encouraging us to do, stay on your Jericho Road. What do you mean by that? That comes from a story in my life from about a year ago as I was writing this book, and I went overseas. I went to China. I wanted to, you know, do big things for God and not live the white picket fence life or sell out any of that, you know, I just like went all out.

And that's a whole other story, but God brought me back and I ended up getting married and having kids. And so, as I was researching for this book, I kept, you know, coming across all these stories of Jesus and, you know, loving strangers, and he was spending time with, you know, the misfits of society and those, you know, on the margins. And, you know, looking around at my like 1976 split-level home in the suburbs of Colorado, I'm like, this is not a radical life, you know? And so I started kind of looking at like, well, maybe I should teach writing at a prison, or maybe I should use my, you know, my ESL training, and maybe I need to go teach English as a second language, or, you know, our city has a ton of homeless, like a large homeless population. Maybe I need to go and volunteer at a shelter or something.

But in the meantime, I had a one, three, and five-year-old, and like not a lot of time to do that. I was also writing a book. And so one morning, I went on a run, because I'm a runner, and I just started reflecting on the story of the Good Samaritan that I had just read that morning, just for a refresher for your listeners. But the quick version is, you know, a man is beaten and robbed and left on the side of the road, and a priest comes along and crosses to the other side and continues walking. And then a Levite religious leader comes, does the same thing, you know, like physically crosses to the other side of the road and keeps walking. And then a Samaritan comes along, and, you know, and it's presumed that the man that was beaten was an Israelite on his way to Jericho. And the Samaritan comes along going the same direction, and he stops, and he helps this man. As I was running, I was just thinking kind of about how that story impacted me a little bit, and just thinking, okay, well, these people are going somewhere. The Samaritan was on his way to Jericho, or at least in that direction, and he wasn't, like, looking for people to help.

But there was, here was this man. I felt like, I don't know if it was the voice of God, or at least an impression in my mind, said, stay on your Jericho road, Leslie. Stop veering over into everyone else's roads. What I took from that was, you know, I was trying to veer off and do all these different things instead of paying attention to the people that I saw every single day. In that moment, I thought of this woman that I had been getting to know at my son's preschool pickup, and she was a single mom, had five kids, and she had been telling me she was struggling to, you know, find things for her youngest son to do. And, you know, here I was Googling, you know, all these other places I could go, and all these other things I could do to help people, the strangers, and love strangers. I didn't even notice this woman. Here she is, you know, on my Jericho road, someone that I see every day, almost every day.

You know, my husband and I are in this stage of life, like, we call the narrowing, which just means, like, ever since we got married, it's like, our road just feels narrower and narrower, and, you know, we have three kids, and it's just like, we feel like we can't do it time, you know? And yet, there's still people there. I still have neighbors that I see. I still have people that I see at my children's school, like, in sports, you know, not just church people, but, like, people that I, you know, cashiers.

It's not like I need to go so far out of my way to find strangers to love. I just need to start paying attention to who is on my Jericho road, and, you know, maybe one day my road will open up, and I'll be able to go teach a writing workshop at a prison, you know, like, some of those things, but that's not right now. And so, I think it's just important to remember, like, certain seasons of our life may be more restricted as far as helping people, but, like, no matter what, I think if we're opening our eyes, like, there's people that God has put right next to us, and I think we're just maybe not even noticing them sometimes. That's powerful.

I have to be very honest with you. I've never seen that concept as clearly as you just laid it out. I hope our listeners are hearing that, you know. It's not that we have to manufacture or run here or there to find people.

They are in our normal journey if our eyes are just open to them. Yeah, that's powerful. Yeah, well, and it's not like the Samaritan was like, I have this ministry to people who are beaten on the side of the road, you know.

It wasn't a program. It was just, he was living his life, going his direction. He was busy.

He was probably inconvenienced. There someone was, and he was willing to help them. Yeah. You know, I have heard individuals say, you know, I invite people over to my house, or I have lunch with them at a restaurant, and I share the gospel with them. And if they're not interested, then, you know, I don't try to build a friendship with them. Well, I guess I understand where they're coming from, but it seems to me building a friendship with a person who's not interested in the gospel might be the pathway to where they become interested in the gospel. Yeah.

No, I totally agree. Well, the other thing about that, Gary, is if you visit a church, and we used to do this when I was a kid, they'd have people who are new stand up, you know, stand up, and everybody will look at them. And if you're new at a church, that's the last thing that you want to do is to be, you know, picked out of a group or, you know, turn around. And so there are ways that we can be sensitive to other people's, you know, bents and makeups so that we are, in a sense, it is more hospitable just to say, if you're visiting for the first time, thank you very much for being here. You know, we have a gift for you at the end if you want to go out in the North X or wherever. But not to do something that makes me as a regular attender or a participant there that makes me feel better.

I got to think about them, right? Yeah, I actually asked on social media about the welcome time in churches where people all shake hands. People have very strong opinions about that, you know, about how a lot of people feel really uncomfortable during that time.

And so, you know, people gave different ideas about maybe lengthening the time or adding that time to the end so that people could actually get into a deep conversation. But yeah, I know the church we attended in Chicago, the first time I visited, they had a newcomer luncheon downstairs, and they had a maybe once a month, but you didn't have to RSVP. And it was just like, come on down.

And I did. I went downstairs. I was single, you know, new to Chicago, and I never left that church because it was just this open, easy place for me to go.

And it was a free meal. I think if we can make things less awkward for visitors, hospitality in the church is a whole other kind of segment of the discussion. But I think that people are more likely to stay if they feel seen and not just kind of accosted by the hospitality committee or something, you know. Early in the book, you have a chapter on staying put, or what one group calls stability. Why has stability been important in your own experience of hospitality and community? I'm still learning this, honestly, because I have been such a goer and have moved a lot and kind of been that person that didn't want to stay. I have plenty of friends that just wanted to get married, buy a house, and stay put for a long time.

And that was not me. So we bought a house in our late 30s two years ago. It's been a really different feel to kind of put down roots in a way. It's funny because it's actually also mirrored my beginning as a gardener.

So I have all these metaphors that I think through as I'm thinking about staying put. But this one story I came across as I was researching for my book was about a guy who was dissatisfied with his church, and he complained to the pastor. I'm sure a lot of people in church leadership have heard things like this, but he was like, I've been here a year. I just don't feel connected.

I don't feel like I have community. And the pastor answered. He's like, okay, so you've been here about a year.

And he's like, yeah. So he said, well, you know, you have about a year's worth of community. If you stay for 10, 20, 30 years, you'll have 10, 20, or 30 years worth of community. You know, and I think we just forget how important that is. I think we have to have a certain mindset too.

It's not like it just happens naturally. But I think that if we're committed to a place, committed to the people that we live around in our neighborhoods and our communities, there's just a different level of buy-in to where we are. And it does affect our community. That said, you know, I also talked in the book about the importance of relationships with people that you know are going to move. So it doesn't mean that you don't befriend people who are going to leave. And yet, I think that when we commit to a place, it does put our roots down deeper, and it does make us care more about where we are and the people that we live around. For many people in our society who don't have the concept of hospitality, we don't even know our neighbors. You know, we drive our car in, we pull it into the garage, we close the door, and you can live there for 10 years, and all you do is wave at your neighbor.

You don't even know who they are. That's how far we've come, I think, in our culture away from this whole concept of hospitality. Yeah, and that's why I think it's important that we're intentional and available and, you know, maybe make a commitment to be less busy because, you know, because we value those relationships. We did have a, we've had a few parties for our neighbors, like Christmas parties, and we did a block party, and every time I've been shocked because neighbors that have lived maybe four houses down from each other for 25 years had never met, you know? And I'm like, I just, that's just unbelievable to me. And yet, there's people that don't come to those parties that I've never met, you know?

I mean, our neighbors, we've seen them in two years, we've seen them maybe like five times. We just, yeah, they don't come. So, you know, you can do your best, but yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you mentioned this whole busy thing, and I think that's a question. When you think seriously about hospitality, you have to think about how do we carve out time to do this and to have people into our house periodically?

Because with our lifestyle, we don't have a lot of margins. So how, and you mentioned, you know, figuring out how to be less busy, but how do you do that? I wish I knew the way I've been thinking about it.

But I think being aware of it, you know, like, I think there was so many things about my culture that I didn't even know about until I lived in another culture. So I think sometimes the first thing is just admitting that we're busy and that maybe that's not always a good thing. But lately, I've been thinking about my time in terms of, like, playing cards. Like, I have my hand and I have a certain number of cards, and when I pick up a card, I have to discard a card. And so, you know, I have a limited amount of time. So if I pick up, you know, ballet lessons for my daughter, I have to put down another card. And what often gets put down is my time to be hospitable, you know, my energy, you know, that space in my day that while she's at ballet, we used to go down the street and hang out with the neighbors and our kids would ride their bikes around.

And I would chat with the other moms or dads. But now if I pick up this other activity, I don't have any space in my schedule for that anymore. And so I think it's just acknowledging we have this limited amount of time in our lives.

What do we want to prioritize? And just acknowledging that when we when we fill our hand with so many activities and so much busyness, what we sacrifice is downtime with people, you know, instead of running into the grocery store or just walking in the grocery store to buy a few things. If we see a person, we avoid them because we're too busy. I would have done that plenty of times. But like, maybe I have actually a few extra minutes that I could stand in the, in a certain aisle and chat with it with somebody. I'm not avoiding them. You know what I mean?

It goes back to what you were saying earlier, Leslie, about other cultures value people more than things or the schedule. And I think that's very biblical. I mean, Jesus, I think of all the stories where he was on his way to do something, you know, and a woman touches him in the crowd, and he stops, you know, or, you know, he's, there's plenty of stories where he was on his way to do a certain thing. Someone interrupted him. And he never made them feel like an interruption. You know, he never said, I'm sorry, this thing is more important.

I have to get to it. Or the children, you know, you kids get out of here. No, no, no.

And he said, this is the kingdom. Look here, you're going to learn something from these kids. Right.

Yep. Leslie, you mentioned maintaining boundaries in your chapter on solitude. What are some boundaries that we can consider so that we don't burn out? Well, I think because we were just talking before about busyness, we can tend to get busy even with hospitality. And so we could, you know, think, okay, I'm going to have this goal of inviting people over twice a week or something. But before you know it, you're burned out. And then you don't invite anyone over for an entire year. So I think with boundaries, we need to cut the corners that we need to cut so that we can keep inviting. So if that means you have paper plates, and you get grocery store prepared food, it's just really important to remember that people just want to know they're invited and that they're welcome.

They don't care as much about those things. So I think, you know, cutting corners is helpful, but then also to just pay attention to ourselves. Like I know, I personally, I need to pay attention to my motives. Like, why am I doing this? Am I doing it because I want to feel good about myself? Am I doing it because I think I should?

Because I don't, you know, I think we can have a lot of motives maybe that aren't the right ones. Do I like to feel needed? I think that's a huge one is, you know, I like feeling good about myself. I like knowing that other people need me. And I don't think that's the right motive to have people over. But that said, I think a lot of times we do let things get in the way and prevent us because maybe we don't feel like it. But I've talked to a lot of friends who say, you know, yeah, I didn't feel like it.

But afterwards, I was so glad that I invited. So, you know, I think you just have to maybe be reflective and aware of your own inner life. But not be afraid to put up boundaries. And sometimes I think we have the energy, you know, like I said, we're on the narrowing.

You know, sometimes maybe we're on a wider road. And it's the time where we have the energy to host. Sometimes, like when I've had babies, like that's not the time. Like that's been my time to receive. And I've received amazing hospitality from my community.

And so I think certain seasons of life, it flips too. I think at that time we have to admit that we need help and know that one day, you know, the day is going to come when we can turn around and help others again or invite. But it's okay sometimes to just be the guest and just, you know, I have this memory of going to a friend's house and she had a baby and she made me this pumpkin bread with chocolate chips. And she let me sit on her couch and made me a cup of coffee. And that couch in my memory is the most comfortable couch I've ever sat on in my life because I just felt so cared for. And it was so simple.

But I was receiving at that season, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about introverts and extroverts because they see hospitality differently. And how can, let's say a husband and wife, one's extrovert, one's introvert, how do they learn to support each other in the practice of hospitality? Yeah, so I tend to be more extroverted. But my husband is an introvert. And I've actually always lived with introverts, like for the past 20 years.

My roommates in college, my roommates in Chicago, and now my husband. So I feel like I can speak to this a little just in trying to study the introverts in my life over the years. And from what people have told me, it doesn't mean introverts never want to host or be hospitable. I think sometimes the crowds just need to be smaller. You know, my introverted friends have said it's important that they know they have some alone time on either end, like before you host and then after so that they know they're going to get some time to themselves.

I think it's important to you for in a marriage, like if you have an extrovert and an introvert, to just be in communication about that. Like I can see when we're talking to people and my husband just like, internally like disappears. Like, I just were all talking and then he's just gone. He's there, he's on the couch. I'm like, he's not with us anymore.

Because it's just, he's reached that limit. And so I think it's, it's good for me to just kind of be aware of his signals and be like, okay, well, it might be time to, you know, wrap up, you know, just to be sensitive to him. And then on the other hand, for me, I think it's important that I have a lot of time, maybe not, not always with him. Like if I need to get to some of those needs, Matt, like I'll just show hospitality in other ways, you know, maybe not forcing him to be involved in it. If you're going to have an hour and a half long conversation with someone, probably the best, it's better to do it with the person, not with the husband. Right.

Yeah. And I talked to some other friends that said they, they just kind of had this silent signal that it was okay for the spouse to just wander upstairs in the middle of dinner, even for 20 minutes and just disappear and then kind of wander back. Like they just, you know, so, but it doesn't mean that introverts don't need that because I, all my introverted friends need that connection. I think a lot of them just don't like small talk. It's just, they would rather have a deeper one-on-one conversation than have a party. And so I think it's okay to just, you know, be aware of what you enjoy with people and do that. You know, you don't have to, we don't have to be like everyone else.

Yeah. For those who have children at home, what does hospitality do to children? Well, my children are extroverted, so it makes them nuts. For my book, I specifically didn't want a certain kind of cover, which is a lot of books about hospitality have these covers of like a table with, you know, steaming bread and maybe people toasting each other and they're all smiling.

And I'm like, I don't want that on my book cover because that is not what hospitality looks like for us. Because when you involve children, it gets really messy and it gets loud, you know, but I do think that kids who grow up in homes that are hospitable, they do carry that into their own family culture later on. So I think it's important for them to still be involved, even if it's chaotic. I mean, my kids are tiny too, so I think that makes it even nuttier. But honestly, I learned hospitality from them. Just watching them get excited about people, you know, watching them want to invite people over, like they actually push me in certain ways. The way they talk to strangers and love people without fear or questioning, you know, I think it's so fascinating that Jesus told us to change and become like children. Because I'm constantly just watching them for like, how are they responding to these people and what can I learn from my own kids, even about hospitality? When we were doing the Friday night events for college students, our daughter was probably seven, eight in the beginning of that and her son was about younger than that. And they would sit in on the meeting, just wander around on the meeting, sometimes sit in the lap of students, you know, for the first time until their bedtime came.

And then, you know, Carolyn would take them and put them in the bed. But they look back on those experiences and say, you know, what an impact it had on their lives. In fact, our daughter says, the reason I got interested in medicine is I was listening to these medical students talk about all this stuff, you know, and I just in my mind, I thought, I want to be a doctor, you know, and she went on to be a doctor, you know.

Both of our kids are very hospitable. I mean, just, you know, reaching out to people all the time. And I think a lot of it had to do because they saw it demonstrated. So it does have an impact on the children. Well, Leslie, this has been a delightful conversation. And I think this is an important book.

And I hope that many of our listeners will not only get the book, but will also share it with their friends. So thanks for being with us today. And thanks for what you've done for the Christian community and writing this book.

You're welcome. Thanks for having me on the show. We started out today asking you to think of someone who comes to mind in this hospitality topic. Maybe there's some inviting that you want to do as a result of the conversation. To find out more about Leslie Verner's book, it's our featured resource at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Invited, the power of hospitality in an age of loneliness. Again, go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. And coming up next week, a big thank you to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.