Or would you?
My wife and I were new believers attending a small church of about 75 people. The campus was simple—a worship chapel, an office, a few extra rooms, and a parsonage nearby where the pastor and his family lived. Inside the chapel were long wooden pews on both sides of a center aisle leading to the altar. Windows lined the walls, filling the room with sunlight. There were no assigned seats, but everyone seemed to have one anyway. Week after week, people sat in the same pew, in the same spot.
Everybody knew everybody. They knew your name, your spouse’s name, and probably your kids’ names too. We had visited the church only once when the pastor and his wife came to our home during the week. Sitting in our living room, they shared the gospel with us, and that evening my wife and I gave our lives to Christ. That’s another story all by itself.
We joined the church and quickly fell in love with the people. Before long, we were there every time the doors were open, and Sundays became the highlight of our week.
Then one Sunday, I noticed a couple sitting near the back that I didn’t know. During the welcome time, we greeted them like everyone else, but that was about it. Then the music started, and we discovered this couple loved to worship—and I mean really loved to worship. The woman would step into the aisle, dance, and play a tambourine.
You could almost feel the reaction in the room.
People noticed.
Eyes rolled.
As the weeks went by, fewer people seemed interested in greeting them, including us.
Then one day my wife said, “We should invite that couple over for dinner to get to know them.”
I wasn’t nearly as excited about the idea as she was, but eventually I gave in. The next Sunday, there they were again, sitting in the back, worshiping enthusiastically, tambourine and all. After church, I walked over and invited them to our house for dinner. They said yes, and as I walked away, I remember thinking, What did we just do?
Dinner night arrived. We sat around the table and began making conversation, but it was awkward. You know the kind—generic questions, polite answers, and pauses that seem to last a little too long. The air felt thick with tension.
Then Came the Interruption
In the middle of our small talk, I asked a question that changed everything. It turned out the man knew my father-in-law. Not only did he know him, but they were also in the same line of work.
Suddenly the entire atmosphere changed.
We had a connection.
The conversation became easier.
We laughed, shared stories, and started learning who they really were. Something happened that night that I didn’t expect: they stopped being “those weird people in the back” and became our friends.
At one point, they even mentioned their dancing and tambourine at church.“If it ever bothers anyone,” they said, “just let us know.”
Our response? “We love it!”
The next Sunday was different. When we saw them at church, they weren’t strangers anymore. They weren’t simply the couple with the tambourine. We began introducing them to other people by saying, “Have you met our friends?”
Think about that. Nothing about them had changed.
We had changed.
All it took was an invitation, a meal, and enough conversation to discover their story.
That is the power of personal hospitality. Hospitality opens doors that a handshake never will. It gives us the opportunity to move beyond appearances, assumptions, and first impressions. When we sit across the table from someone and take the time to hear their story, walls begin to come down.
Everyone has a story, and those stories can fuel hospitality and connection with others. Sometimes the people we are quickest to avoid are the very people we need to invite a little closer.
Maybe hospitality begins with something as simple as, “Would you like to come over for dinner?”
You never know what might happen when you interrupt the distance between yourself and someone else.
That’s The Interruption.
