I'd like to share my views of today's meeting.
Selene opened the meeting by facilitating a discussion on hospitality. She asked us to relate a time when we had experienced true hospitality. I think it says a lot about our culture that every instance of notable hospitality people mentioned had taken place elsewhere: African herdsmen slaughtering a goat for strangers, poor villagers pooling their money to buy an American visitor a hamburger, a Romanian taxi driver insisting that a couple stay in his home with his family instead of a hotel. In each of these instances, the hospitality was an instinctive, spontaneous extension of kindness to a stranger. Sadly, in our own culture there can be an instinctive mistrust-- even a fear-- of strangers. The "take-away" of the discussion for me was that true hospitality creates a space, physical and emotional, for someone to be who he or she authentically is.
Much of the later conversation was about how to break old patterns. I believe that we are called to go out into the world rather than to invite the world to come to us. That is a core mission of the church, as I see it. But in order to do so, we have to know how the world sees us so we can respond to that perception appropriately.
In coming days, we will be setting up a very simple survey that will be posted here and elsewhere. You are invited to participate. You are also particularly encouraged to share the link and have that conversation with your unchurched friends, since they make up 70% of the population of the Pacific Northwest. Just as they have some misperceptions about us, it is likely that we have some misperceptions about them. So we decided to ask rather than to assume.
We welcome your feedback and participation.
Peace,
Brad
