How to Welcome the Stranger in an Unexpected Way
At the heart of hospitable leadership is the desire to welcome and serve an ever-expanding diversity of people. We celebrate every opportunity to “show hospitality to strangers” (Hebrews 13:2).
A stranger is a person who is strange to us in some way or someone to whom we are strange. This may be someone from a different faith experience, political affinity, socioeconomic status, or from a different race, ethnicity or nation of origin.
One of the most effective ways to bond with a stranger is to accentuate areas of common grace.
What do we have in common as human beings created in the image of God? In the current crisis our world is facing, COVID-19, common grace is disguised as common need. All of a sudden pretty much everyone in the world is facing the same horrible sickness and all of its negative effects. And this presents a wonderful opportunity for leaders who have committed to wake up every day and try and figure out how to love the stranger.
Of course welcoming the stranger looks like serving those in need. But what if we widened our definition of welcoming a stranger to include those whom we serve alongside?
Crisis creates opportunities to welcome “strangers”
At The Life Christian Church in West Orange and Paramus New Jersey, where I serve as Lead Pastor, our serving partnerships have allowed us to find common purpose with a diversity of organizations as together we try to meet a common need during the pandemic.
We've partnered with other churches, various agencies in multiple communities, a Jewish relief organization, food pantries throughout our region, major Christian relief organizations, and our local school board to name a few.
Our partnership with our local school board is instructive as to the possibilities to create welcome during this time.
We rent space at our West Orange campus to a public school for children with special needs. Over time the normal stresses and strains of sharing space with another organization have taken a toll. Two radically different entities – a public school and Christian church – using the same space week after week year after year.
And introduced into this is a new and dynamic Superintendent of Schools who does not know us and seems displeased with the contract negotiated by his predecessor years ago. But then COVID – 19 came, and this new leader had a passion to make sure hungry kids in his district were being fed. So he set up a makeshift food shelter in the West Orange Board of Education headquarters.
And guess who got to restock food on more than one occasion when the pantry became empty? Our church did.
And…all of a sudden there was a Facebook post where this good man was celebrating the “brothers and sisters and our family at The Life Christian Church” and lauding our generosity toward the poor in our community.
By faithfully extending hospitality to our literal neighbors, the door was opened to unite under one mission: feeding local kids. We went from strangers to family through one act of service to meet a common need.