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Hospitality. We in the church like that word. It brings up images of welcoming. It reminds us of times we have gathered together singing around a fire or standing in a circle of warm and happy faces. It brings up images of setting a beautiful table for all to gather around. We think of our church as a hospitable space where people can worship together, learn together, sing together, pray together, converse together. We even use phrases like “radical hospitality” and “extravagant welcome” to signal that people of all backgrounds, races, genders and nationalities are welcome and safe within our walls. Yet, hospitality is a complex concept. And creating hospitable spaces may be more challenging than we first imagine.
I take pride in being a member of and leader in the United Church of Christ. I like that we stand behind the Communion table and call people from the North, West, East and South to gather. I have heard words at tables and altars that are much different than that and I have grown to value deeply our sometimes all-too-unique call, to share in the grace this invitation gives. I appreciate that in a society that is ever enamored of division and distrust, we profess to create and develop a many-hued fabric of the faithful. That we are committed to create hospitable space for all to experience is a testament to our responsiveness to the call of Christ -- a call to merciful justice, just peace and radical love.
Most of us know many biblical references to the importance of hospitality. From Elijah filling the woman’s jar, to Martha and Mary feeding and conversing with Jesus; from the story of the good Samaritan to the one of the woman washing the feet of Jesus when the powerful host had failed to engage in this custom, hospitality is seen as an act of welcome, an act of love, an embrace of the holy in everyday life.
In our own time, as Christian Nationalism spews a message of anti-hospitality and draws only the like-minded around itself, it is most important that we profess and enact the call of Jesus to see the face of God in the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick and the stranger (Matthew 25). In a place and time where words of hate enjoy the limelight and where acts of cruelty are cheered even by those we have known and loved, it is most important that we find very concrete ways to enable our noble visions of who we should be. We as churches, as congregants, as leaders need to respond to the chaos that is being created in these days with focus, courage and hospitality.
And hospitality has many dimensions. In their book Conversational Learning, Baker, Jensen and Kolb talk about creating hospitable spaces where people come together for any number of reasons. Referring to what we know as groups or gatherings, they provide a model for understanding how we can have the difficult conversations that face us. They say that hospitality consists of “conversational space within which opposing ideas can be explored, resolved or embraced through conversation” (2002). They talk about the dynamic processes that hospitality undergoes in any group, organization or even interaction and conversation. In explaining these processes of hospitable spaces, they refer to several creative tensions or dialectics that often take place. Within any gathering, they explain, there are a number of these happening at once. These creative tensions include:
- Apprehension: Comprehension (the ways we generate/receive and critique ideas and experiences).
- Extension/Action: Intention/Reflection (how we deal with/internalize the experiences around us).
- Epistemological Discourse: Ontological Recourse (doing and being).
- Individuality: Relationality (what’s mine, what’s yours what’s ours).
- Status: Solidarity (where power and influence lie).
What helps me in seeing this model is that I can imagine places where we work together to try to solve both the big issues and the small problems that our churches face, both on a societal level and on an organizational one. I can think of local church meetings where people have colorfully opposing ideas for the direction of the congregation. Some of these ideas might come from careful study. Others might come from the “way it has always been.” Still others might come from someone who is new to the group who sees things from an entirely different perspective. On top of this there are those who think the best way to settle differences is for each to do their own thing, while others press for collaboration. And then there are the issues of who holds the power and what gives them the power that they have in any particular group. Some will want to study the issue further. Others will be frustrated by a lack of action.
I’ve participated I groups like this and I have probably been in most all of these positions at one time or another. If creating hospitable space means that we embrace contradictions and differences, it will likely mean that we have some awareness of who is in the space and who brings what perspectives, insights, reflections and calls to action. I know of groups that while they want new ideas and thoughts, are so entrenched in listening only to one another’s ideas they wouldn’t see a new one if it blew up in their face. I’ve been in groups that are stuck because each member thinks their own way is the right way. I’ve seen leaders bully a group into doing something nobody really wants to do. I’ve been in groups that stagnate in a place where all they can do is research more angles on the issue at hand and then don’t actually do anything about it. And I’ve been guilty more than once of acting or speaking without thinking.
Hopefully, we can take time as groups to assess where our own particular strengths and challenges lie. Do we have too many people who come up with solutions to problems and not enough people who can actually define what the problem is? Do we have too many who can bring up problems and dwell on them and not enough that can offer the promise of solution and action? Do we have enough idea generators or are we so committed to keeping each other happy that we don’t let a new thought disrupt us? One tool that I have found helpful is David Kolb’s Learning Styles Inventory. It’s possible for a group to use this inventory to help address differences among group members and how to use such differences to benefit the group.
While I think these are very helpful tools to exploring what it means to engage hospitable space within a congregation, I think one of the most challenging issues that we face in any group is that of who gets in and who is left out. One of the simple tests that I like to use whenever I am in a meeting is to look around the table and ask who is missing. Simple, I say, but it is not a simple task. Our own implicit biases blind us to who we have left out. When you have been left out, you usually know why. But when you are doing the leaving out, it often doesn’t even dawn on you that there were others to include.
I am glad that we have called for implicit bias training and anti-racism training for all of our clergy and lay leaders. I think this is a step in helping us to truly create hospitable spaces within and around the Conference. To be aware that we are often so unaware is certainly a beginning in the process of being more inclusive in our congregations, in our meetings and in our Conference actions. But as the above dialectics tell us, it is one thing to know and another thing to act on our knowing. In the learning community where I have spent much of my working life -- Alverno College in Milwaukee -- we used he adage that you don’t know it till you show it. You must show what you know. I’ve also found it interesting that some of the research on implicit bias training tells us that it can sometimes backfire, because rather than changing our behavior as a result of knowing about implicit bias, people might use it as an excuse to continue to be willfully ignorant about the biases within them. Some may think that implicit bias knowledge is only needed in (what their own implicit bias thinks of) as diverse communities, towns or cities. This leaves many in their own communities the object of multiple microaggressions with a sense of being unimportant and left out of the conversation. Awareness, even partial awareness, is better than privileged ignorance. But any awareness, unless paired with behavior change only contributes to the ongoing, permanent inequality that so many experience too much of the time. Underrepresentation on committees and boards, well-meaning people who have not educated themselves by having the uncomfortable conversations with those who are most different from them, and the fear of disrupting the status quo all lead to unwitting damage to hospitality and the sacred love/beloved community it seeks to embrace. Moreover, it keeps us from really being the church.
But what does behavior change look like? How can we behave more hospitably as congregations, boards and committees? It may be as simple as looking around the table to see who is missing and then developing a strategy that fully invites the “other” to join in (and lead) the conversation. It may be preparing a strategy for inviting, sheltering or providing safe spaces for those who most need it. I am reminded of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Martha’s Vineyard, which a couple of years ago housed many immigrant families who had been transported from Florida to Massachusetts just as colder weather was settling in. When the minister, the Rev. Janet Newton, was asked how the church acted as quickly as they did, she said “We were prepared, even though we had no warning” (Diana Butler Bass, Substack.com). This process echoes both biblical (Paul) and ancient Christian theologies of living in the “now but not yet.”
It may be setting up listening programs in your church community, much like the talks over dinner that Interfaith Milwaukee sponsored over several years: people eating at tables with those very different than themselves and having the difficult conversations regarding race and ethnicity, power and privilege. Services of reconciliation and forgiveness where the church community recognizes what they have previously overlooked and listens openly to what might be done in the way of community repair and hospitable conversational space that embraces the contradictions and differences that have been a part of that space for a long time. It might be setting up judgment-free zones based on agreed-upon relational covenants, where people can speak truth to each other without fear of emotional or organizational reprisals.
I’m not saying these are easy things to do. We are not living in easy times. The call for us to be a church where there is honest hospitable space is upon us. If we do not embrace our differences -- and by "our," I mean the differences in the whole community -- we are nothing but a resounding gong or a clanging symbol (I Corinthians). Who is at your table? Who is missing? The courageous challenge of creating hospitable space awaits us all.
Questions to consider:
- How would you describe your congregation’s efforts to create hospitable space?
- What people are missing from your congregation’s tables? People from a race or ethnicity that is different from the majority of members? People who are LGBTQ? People with disabilities? Older people? Younger people?
- What do you think your own church could be doing to actively increase the element of hospitality? How would you start this process?
- How might you assess the ways your committees and boards include or ignore those who are different from the majority voice?
Some examples of implicit bias. First a favorite poet, Alice Walker, says this:
When you thought me poor,
my poverty was shaming.
When blackness was unwelcome
we found it best
that I stay home.
When by the miracle
of fierce dreaming and hard work
Life fulfilled our every want
you found me crassly
well off;
not trimly,
inconspicuously wealthy
like your rich friends.
Still black too,
now
I owned too much and too many
of everything.
Woe is me: I became a
success! Blackness, who
knows how?
Became suddenly
in!
What to do?
Now that Fate appears
(for the moment anyhow)
to have dismissed
abject failure
in any case?
Now that moonlight and night
have blessed me.
Now that the sun
unaffected by criticism
of any sort,
implacably beams
the kiss filled magic that creates
the dark and radiant wonder
of my face.
Next, a womanist theologian speaks of spiritual implicit bias:
“The prevalence of white male images of God easily lead us to conclude that God is definitively and exclusively white and male. And like many culture-shaping ideas, we don’t even question the idea or how it shapes our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. For most of us, regardless of what we might want to believe or claim to believe, the image that immediately comes to mind when we imagine God is that of a powerful white man who is for and with powerful white men. It’s a deceptive idea that flies under the radar, powerfully shaping us without our consent.”
―Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman
And finally, the voice of someone we might never realize thought this way:
“More insidious than those moments of outright hostility, though, and maybe more powerful, are the constant, low-level reminders that you're different. Many of us feel different in some way, but it's really jarring when one of your differences is obvious at a glance — other people can tell you're different simply by looking at you. . . . Even when you feel like you belong, other people's reactions — even stares and offhand remarks —can make you feel that you don't, startlingly often.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
The Rev. Sandra E. Graham is a UCC pastor, psychologist and retired college professor and dean.
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