Hospitality events in our homes can be tools to reach out to our unbelieving friends and neighbors, to shine the light of Jesus Christ to them.

For example, secular young adults are the first truly non-Christian generation. Many of them have no personal history of what Christianity is, not even a grand mother or great-grandfather who attended church. For these people, an oppor-tunity to have fun in a Christian home may take away the scare factor that the word Christian carries for them. As they talk, share, and have fun with Christians, their stereotypes and prejudices begin to break down. For non-Christians, it is only a short step from being attracted to Christians living their faith to investigating the relevance of Christ to their own lives.

The Roots Party is one such hospitality event that helped my husband and I share our lives and home with non-Christians.

Roots: A Covered Dish Dinner

Objective: Christians and secular people will share backgrounds as a basis for building friendships. (Ask each Christian you invite to send two invitations. Or, invite people in the church neighbor hood. Or, invite first- and second-time visi-tors to your church.)

Idea: Adults will bring a covered dish that says something about their historical or geographical roots. Plan the whole evening around the sharing of backgrounds. As people share recipes, childhood stories, and facts about families, they add enormous amounts to the little most of them know about each other. The more people share, the more a feeling of trust, and even family, develops.

I have found that for parties that are slightly unusual, I need to give people some idea of what the evening involves. On our invitation, my husband and 1 wrote: “Share your roots. Dig into your personal history and come up with a dish that tells something about your ancestral or geographical background. For ex ample: Marlene is French, so she could bring French pastry. She and her brother grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, so he could bring pickled red beet eggs.” My example encouraged people to think creatively.

You may want to supply coffee, tea, and punch and your own Roots contribution, but dinner will come walking through your door with your guests. When I hosted this event, people brought enough for six to ten people. There were lots of leftovers, and people used little throwaway containers to box up food to share with new friends.

When guests arrive, have them write their names on slips of paper and place them in a hat. They’ll discover the reason for this after dinner

Give guests Root sheets. Before dinner and up to the time of the drawing, instruct guests to talk to six or seven differ-ent people. From each they should get the answer to one question on the Root sheet. Obviously the goal of this activi-ty is to get people to talk. What they find out about the person’s answer to a written question is not as important as the conversation after the question has been answered.

Here are some sample items for a Root sheet. Add to or revise these as desired. You’ll probably find it necessary to nudge people at the beginning. Let them know there will be a time of accountability for what they have learned!

Root Sheet:

• Listen to an interesting story about someone’s grandparents.

• Talk with a couple who each came from different parts of the country. What background quirks did they bring to their marriage?

• Find someone Who has a famous or infamous ancestor.

• Talk about a childhood experience a person would like to pass on to future generations.

• Talk with someone who has a relative who could have been rich and famous if he or she had followed through on an opportunity.

• Find the person here who has the most living relatives he or she can identify by name.

• Find the person who comes from the longest line of people who chose a similar way to make a living.

• Ask someone who grew up in a Christian home to share the story of his or her parents’ or grandparents’ conversion.

• Ask someone to dig back into his or her middle school or junior high past and come up with something that made that person blush.

Rooted in Christ

At least a half hour before you want people to begin eating the Roots meal, ask three Christians to prepare “Rooted in Christ” prayers—just a sentence or two. The 30 minutes will give them time to think about what they will say and per-haps even to write the prayers. Ask one to center her prayers on thanksgiving for this neighborhood’s roots. Another should praise God for his family roots. The third should thank God for any friendship roots that deepen or begin to grow this evening.

If prayer is approached correctly, many non-Christians will not be turned off by it. Recently I was at a large tourist ranch where several thousand people were served beef and beans on a tin plate. Before the meal, the master of ceremo-nies announced that he would pray a simple grace for the meal. He said, “1 know this isn’t the politically correct thing to do, but its part of our heritage and part of the roots on which our country was built. We believe a lot of our prob-lems would be solved if we could return to those roots.” The largely secular crowd clapped.

Sample prayers are included here. If the people you have chosen to pray don’t understand what you are asking them to do, allow them to read these samples. Encourage them to use their own words in their prayers.

Thanksgiving for Neighborhood’s Roots:

“Lord, thank you for the people who make up this neighborhood. We especially thank you for the children who will someday look back on this place as their roots. May they be happy and safe here, and may they feel our love for them and your love.”

Praise for Family Roots:

“Thank you for our families—mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters—and also for those people who we consider family, because they have added immeasurably to our lives.”

Praise for friendship Roots:

“Thank you, Lord, for parties, for times when we can get together, say hello, smile, and get excited about one another. Keep your hand on our conversations tonight. Guide the growth of our friendships.”

Give people plenty of time to eat. Just the amazing array of food should provide interesting conversation. Encourage food refills and exchanges of recipes.

After the meal. draw three or four of the names you collected from all the guests and placed in the hat. Ask those people to share an interesting thing they discovered about someone in the Root sheet conversations. This type of accountabil-ity is fun, and no one will be embarrassed since each person is encouraged to pick anything from the list to share.

At my Roots party, I gave some small plants that had been rooted in water, so all their roots were exposed. They were silly extras that made the evening more fun.

After the planned Root activities, our guests stuck around for hours. They had no trouble at all growing friendships once the “roots’ had been planted.

Hospitality events require prayer, planning and often follow-up. Opening our homes is not easy. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his sermon “Christianity at Home in Chaos,” used the story of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox. Re member how Brer Rabbit saved his life by talking Brer Fox into throwing him into the brier patch? Brer Rabbit had convinced the fox that the brier patch was the worst possible place he could be thrown. What Brer Fox didn’t know was that the rabbit was born and bred in the brier patch. Fosdick drew a comparison between Brer Rabbit and Christianity. He said “Christianity, far from feeling strange in a troubled time, was born and bred in a brier patch like this” (Mark Yurs, “Preaching in the Brier Patch,” The Christian Ministry, Jan-Feb. 1997).

If you open your home to people who don’t know your Lord, who are antagonistic toward the gospel, or who are lukewarm about their faith, you’ve entered the Brier Patch. Yes, you may end up with a few scratches, but you will also feel the delight of knowing you’re where today’s Christian disciples need to he.