by Janet Moore

Each Wednesday night Bethany opens the doors of the fellowship hall to 200 people. This dinner is exactly the kind of hospitality the Bible talks about. In Romans 12:12-13 we find, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Also in 1 Peter 4:7-10 it tells us to show hospitality with love.

Karen Taylor has taught me a great deal about Christ-centered hospitality. She wants the dinners to be the very best they can possibly be each and every Wednesday night. Thus we use cloth tablecloths, real dishes, great coffee, real cream, and Karen buys the food fresh each week. I have also witnessed the importance of greeting as many guests a possible with a “Hello” or “Glad you are here,” or “I have not seen you in a while.”

I will never forget greeting a man at the door with his name. He stopped, kind of surprised, and then said I was the first person to have talked to him that day. Karen and I feel we are welcoming people into our homes, our church home but nevertheless a place of value to us, and thus they are valued too.

There are moments when my hospitality lacks the Christ-like endurance, the persistence, that Christ had with His disciples as they blundered through their experience with Him. This is often how I view my own walk with Christ - “blundering.” But God often teaches me through our guests. One gentleman remembered my daughter is on the Ballard volleyball team and saw an article in the Ballard News Tribune with her team in it. So he brought me a stack of the papers. I never would have seen the article if he had not brought it to the dinner.

I will keep blundering with my Christ-like hospitality, but with co-workers like Karen and the other volunteers like Mona, Cindy, Mark, Jesse, Marlene, etc. at the dinner, the Wednesday Night Dinners will be a place of fellowship, community, and hospitality.