The Gospel Comes With a House Key, by Rosaria Butterfield

I love the title of this book and the imagery it invokes: The Gospel Comes With a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World.  Rosaria Butterfield writes about her lifestyle of hospitality, setting an example that Christians can emulate.  Butterfield, who is married to a pastor, goes far beyond traditional pastor's wife hostess duties.  She hosts a large dinner in her home every Sunday night for friends and neighbors.  Her model is not fine china and carefully placed table settings.  Her model is what she calls radically ordinary hospitality: "using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God."

The Gospel Comes With a House Key is full of stories of her life as a neighbor and hostess.  She plans ahead while keeping the meals simple and plentiful.  She writes about adopting foster children, befriending the drug addict across the street (and maintaining that friendship after he goes to prison), dealing with the burglary and vandalism of their home, hosting a home worship service for the neighbors when the churches close because of snow, and providing a haven for the sick and wandering.

One miraculously odd part of Butterfield's story is her background.  While she was a liberal college professor, living with her lesbian lover, a pastor invited her to his home fellowship.  Over time, this family and their circle loved her into the kingdom.  She was radically saved.  Ironically, some of her model of fellowship is based on her experiences in the lesbian community, as they banded together in a hostile world.  But just as lesbians like to fellowship with their own kind, so do Christians tend to fellowship with like-minded people.  Radically ordinary hospitality reaches out, giving our "post-Christian neighbors" a chance to "hear and see and taste and feel authentic Christianity, hospitality spreading from every Christian home that includes neighbors in prayer, food, friendship, childcare, dog walking, and all the daily matters upon which friendships are based."

Butterfield's stories and example inspire and challenge me to open the doors of my home and pass out some house keys.  She doesn't provide a lot of "how-tos" but, like a true disciple maker, models hospitality for us.  In doing so, she never loses sight of the goal: bringing people close to God. It's not without cost or hardship, but worth the effort.  Making the "transition from stranger to neighbor to family does not happen naturally but only with intent and grit and sacrifice and God's blessing."  May our homes become places of radically ordinary hospitality for the glory of God and the growth of his kingdom.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!