Hospitality, baked not fried

Wow, have you ever seen my apartment? It is small, like 700 square feet including the storage areas small. Yesterday we had a meeting here, and there were 17 people here. That's a lot, considering we used the kitchen, office/dining area and living room only (cuz, come on, let's face it, no one really needs to go into my bedroom...) It was AWESOME!!! You couldn't go anywhere without stepping on someone, it was very cool. And 2 of us were trying to cook in my little kitchen...haha that was an adventure.

Have you ever taken one of those churchy "Spiritual Gift Assessments"? You know, where you answer a bunch of questions and they give you your top 3 Spiritual Gifts? I won't tell you what I really think of those...I am sure you could guess :) But I have taken them, several times, and the answers were always the same - Administration (tell me where that is in the Bible), Mercy (I'll by that) and Evangelism (I believe that a true assessment would have shown up as Exhortation instead, but whatever). I think you see where I am going...Hospitality is not one of my gifts. I LOVE having people over, but I am bad at it. However, yesterday was so much fun. I was not nervous or edgy at all! I did throw a toy at Kim when I found out she let her 2 year old eat yellow cake with chocolate frosting in my son's bedroom, but she cleaned it up herself and all was better.

Here is my point...I AM GROWING!!! I know that there is probably a lot of speculation about whether or not this "is working" and can we really "do church" this way. Do we really fulfill all the scriptural commandments for a church meeting? Are we really growing closer to God? I think the answer is yes, and I think yesterday was proof of that for me. The point is to get rid of all the distractions and focus on getting to know God better...we really do that. Is there still rabbit chasing, yup. Are there times we get ready to leave and realize that we never sang, there sure are. But we are seeing growth, amongst the adults and the kids. All 3 of the nine year-olds sat with the adults for almost the entire meeting, and that's amazing.

Next week, we will be meeting at Lynda's house in Faribault, around 12. A lot of people will be in town, visiting or getting ready to do Berean's camp. It should be a lot of fun!