One morning early, I was walking through our beautiful bluebell woods asking the Lord what the next blog should be about? An idea popped into my mind that I haven’t given much thought about, and I am not sure if many people even have talked about it. Showing hospitality towards a speaker, worship leader, or performer.
People that know me well know that I can quickly get on my soapbox on how we should treat our speakers, especially those we have invited to speak to our YWAM schools, but that is a blog for another time.
When you are a speaker standing up front, you really see everything that is going on in the audience… well, most speakers do, except the ones that focus on the back corners of a room and never make contact with their audience, or the worship leader that say “Let us worship” and then closes his or her eyes and only opens it at the end of worship time.
Many years ago, when I was home on furlough, I was invited to speak at a staff meeting at a fairly large YWAM campus. I was warmly introduced and welcomed. The staff were all crowded in a smallish room, and right in front of me were three girls that were obviously friends. I later discovered they were leaders on the DTS. During my whole talk they were whispering, laughing, and sending notes to each other. At one point a joke was so funny, and they couldn’t stop laughing. It was just so distracting, that I stopped speaking and asked them to share with all of us what was so funny. Yes, it was an awkward moment for them, and when we talked about it later, they confessed that they were a bit oblivious how they came across. How did it make me, as a speaker feel? Definitely not very welcome and what I had to say was not really important to them. There was no hospitality shown towards me by them.
Two of us went to speak to a women's group at a very traditional church one evening. Mindy have spoken there before and warned me that the majority of the women will be older and more serious. We agreed that we will sit at the front, and when Mindy speaks, I will nod my head in agreement, and when I speaks she will nod her head and we can focus on each every now and again instead of serious faces. It sure did work. Our body language when we are in the audience is so important and either a delight or a distraction to whoever is up front.
I am sure worship leaders feel the same when people keep chatting or are on their phones during worship, and shall I whisper this ... let their children run wild. The way we do show hospitality is entering into worship with them.
“Hospitality is not about entertaining, it’s about engaging"
I think we need to realise that both teachers and worship leaders took time to prepare. Sometimes hours can go into prepping for one teaching, and lots of lyrics learning and practice can go on before they step up front. Giving our full attention to those up front is surely showing them hospitality. It also says that we value what they have to contribute. Do I honour them with my body language?
Well, I am not quite sure why I needed to share this with you at this time, but I do hope we all will consider how we show hospitality to the person up front by engaging to let them know what they bring has value.
