Once again, my friends, I’m off on a new adventure today. After a hiatus of a couple of months, I’m taking another work trip, this time to the bright lights of Southern California to speak at Presbyterian Women’s Synod of Southern California and Hawaii Gathering. Brianne and I are both going—it will also be Brianne’s maiden trip for the office, if you don’t count when she drove down the street to go to the PEER 1 Collegiate conference in June. Be thinking of both of us as we travel.

Brianne and I will be talking a lot about how to expand at this conference—how to reach out to young women, how to start campus groups and attract new members, how to connect with people at their spiritual level. I often hear people looking for that secret on how to get people involved. Perhaps we Presbyterians really do have an evangelistic streak at heart.

On one level, drawing people in presents many difficulties. Our own inhibitions stop us, and other people just don’t make a lot of sense (that’s my scientific analysis of why students at schools where I go visit just won’t sign up for NNPCW!). But on another, getting people interested in what we’re doing is a matter of reaching out and being persistent. Everyone is searching for a place to belong. If you can provide that, they will come.

An example—my first year in Louisville, I went to a rather large church in my neighborhood. People were friendly, of course, but they never seemed to know me. Every Sunday, even a year after I started going there, someone would approach me and ask if I was a visitor. It is understandable. I sat in the back, was kind of nondescript, and didn’t really talk to anyone or try hard to get involved (I have strange church phobias that render my extroverted self into some sort of walled-off hermit, but that’s a story for another day). But after a while, I drifted away and lost interest in that community.

This last year, I’ve started going to a smaller church. Same story for me—nondescript, sat toward the back and didn’t talk to anyone if I could help it. The difference, though, was that after I’d been attending this church for about a month, people started to recognize me. They started to talk to me, even when I tried to jet out the door right after the benediction. The pastor started inviting me to activities when I met her in the hand-shaking lineup at the end of service. I never went, of course, but she kept asking. People started asking me to join the church. When the pastor found out that I worked at the Presbyterian Center, she included me in e-mails to her church members there.

Last weekend, I finally contacted the pastor about helping out with a refugee ministry the church is interested in doing. And when someone I’d talked to at church called the other night and asked if I’d like to come to a dinner party at their house, I said yes. I’m finally coming out of my shell and getting involved.

My friends, I am as tough a nut to crack when it comes to this sort of thing as any of the folks you’ll run into. So if you’re wondering how to get people involved, ask them! Ask them again! Don’t become a psycho about it, but help them realize that the door is always open and you value their contribution to their community. Let them know that you want to get to know them, not just for the sake of numbers, but because they are a child of God.

It is all about a spirit of hospitality, something our modern culture lacks but that we as individuals crave. So open your lives, and your organizations, to others in a spirit of hospitality. Let the flood of God’s radical, amazing love come in.

“Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” --Romans 12:13

Kelsey