Put the Grill in the Front Yard

I recently read The Gospel Comes with a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield.

My wife has been telling me to read this book for months (years?) I’m not sure why I put it off for so long. Maybe, after 13 years of having college students constantly in and out of our home, I thought I already had this hospitality-as-ministry thing down.

Well, I wish I hadn’t waited so long. This short book was a tremendous challenge and encouragement to me. I would absolutely recommend it to every single Christian who desires to be a witness in their community.

The book is essentially a call to what Butterfield calls “Radically Ordinary Hospitality” which she defines as “using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God.”

Here are three of my biggest takeaways:

1) Put the Grill in the Front Yard (or remove any barriers from hospitality)

My wife and I recently delivered invitations around our neighborhood for a cookout we were hosting. We walked along the street and slid the invitations into the mail slots by the front doors (our neighborhood doesn’t have street mailboxes). I noticed very quickly that some houses felt far less inviting than others. There were barriers that had to be overcome to approach them.

Some of the barriers were obvious and intentional: a tall fence with a gate, a no trespassing sign, a large barking dog.

Other barriers were more subtle: a house with all the shades drawn, a particularly prominent surveillance camera, a tall row of bushes blocking the front door from view. Signs that seemed to subtly communicate “we’d rather you stay away.”

In her book, Butterfield reminds us that our houses, and our lives, have barriers that can sometimes make it difficult for people to approach, even when invited.

She tells the story of a neighbor who would turn down invitation after invitation to come over for a meal. There was some invisible barrier that just made it too difficult for him to walk through their front door. He wasn’t even willing to come hang out in the back yard.

So, they moved their grill to the front yard.

This neighbor who couldn’t quite bring himself to cross their threshold was willing to stand on the sidewalk in their front yard and eat a hamburger. It was a start. From there they were able to build trust and friendship which eventually made it possible for this man to be willing to really engage more deeply with them.

Maybe we don’t all need to move our grills. In fact, maybe the biggest barriers we need to remove aren’t even physical. What are the unintentional barriers people must overcome to enter into our lives? Is our schedule so full that people find it hard to squeeze themselves in? Are we quick to jump to controversial topics in conversation?

2) Don’t Overthink It

So, where do you start with “radically ordinary hospitality?” Who is God calling you to invite into your home and your life? Don’t overthink it.

Butterfield titles one her chapters “God Never Gets the Address Wrong.”

Your neighbors are not a coincidence. They do not live by you merely due to an accident of the housing market. God placed you next to them and he did it for a reason.

I’ll admit, this is a scary proposition. We don’t get to pick our neighbors. What if we don’t have anything in common with them? What if they are socially awkward? What if we don’t like how they keep their lawn? What if they don’t like how we keep our lawn??

Butterfield actually begins her book with the story of a neighbor who ended up having a meth lab in his basement. So… not ideal.

But yet, if we want to practice radically ordinary hospitality, and more importantly if we want to follow Christ’s calling in our lives, we need to love our neighbors precisely because they are our neighbors.

3) Never, Ever, Ever Give Up

One of the beautiful things about The Gospel Comes with a Housekey is the way that Butterfield skillfully weaves her own story of conversion into it.

She was not a likely convert.

Before coming to know Christ, Butterfield was a professor in the English department of Syracuse University where she specialized in critical theory and queer theory. She herself had adopted a lesbian identity and was an outspoken proponent of LGBT rights. She was also involved in researching and writing about the “religious right” and “and their politics of hatred against people like (her)”.

She ended up meeting a Christian couple who invited her into their home and displayed persistent radically ordinary hospitality toward her. She describes their persistence this way:

“I tried to disappear, which should not have been hard, given that we (the couple) traveled in different circles of influence. But they were a ministry team, and they wouldn’t let go. Every week, one or the other would check in, either by phone or email. It became easier to join them for weekly meals than to dodge them. Don’t get me wrong – the smiths weren’t pests or stalkers. But they were unshakably present. Only later did I understand that no one can dodge people who are prayerfully present… they thought about me and they prayed for me like I was their daughter. They created a vortex of understanding, worked out in the heavenly realm, away from which I could not run.”

The Smiths did not give up on Rosaria Butterfield. Let’s be like the Smiths. Let’s be those whom our neighbors will someday describe as “unshakably present”.