July 2025: Summer Hospitality
Greetings and Blessings on your 4th of July celebrations!
I pray that you have had a great start to the summer so far, and that you’ve had the chance to either go on vacation or get a solid plan in place for vacation. If you’re having a larger get together around the 4th, I pray you are blessed by that fellowship. Try inviting someone new from church or your community to one of those events this year as an opportunity to get to know them better.
This month we have several fun activities planned. On July 9th and 30th we will have our VBS days for children 3-10 (older children are free to come help out!), We will have another card and board game night on Friday the 18th from 4-7. And later that weekend will be our outdoor service and brunch on July 20th at 9:30 and 10:45 respectively. I’m looking forward to a fun summer.
The author of the book of Hebrews, in 13:2, encourages Christians to welcome strangers with hospitality. It’s easy to plan things for our church community or friend groups. It’s also an opportunity to welcome those who are either passing through the area or only staying for a little while. If you know someone like that, please invite them to one of our events this summer. We’d love to share a time of fellowship together.
Summer is a wonderful time to be in Michigan, and a wonderful time to welcome visitors to our area to church. We can do that through these kinds of activities that we have planned for church or for ourselves, and by planning other activities to invite our community to as well. I know there are some plans cooking up for the future for our church and school to join in together. If you have any thoughts and a willingness to help organize an event at church, please contact me or Tanja to set up a time for a conversation.
If you’re still not convinced or convicted, Dr. Chad Lakies from Lutheran Hour Ministries has spoken at several conferences about the need for hospitality. He has pointed out in several of the lectures that in a culture that is inherently suspicious of institutions in general, and religion in particular, one of the best sources of building trust is to act out of love and mercy for those around you.
What that means is that we see many people in our spheres no longer have an expectation for themselves or their loved ones to be a part of church. That means there is a loss of trust in the institution of the church – it’s a foreign place for them. We can work to establish trust by showing God’s love through the things that we do regardless of who it is we do it for. Having established trust in a relationship, then we have the opportunity to share why we act the way we act, that being Christ’s love overflowing from ourselves into other’s, to put it briefly. Hospitality is a doorway into lives of people who are loved by God, and so that’s plenty of reason to connect with them!