The Art of Hospitality Implementation Guide: A Practical Guide for a Ministry of Radical Welcome

By Yvonne Gentile and Debi Nixon

Engaging worship and intentional follow-up processes are important, but what compels guests to return to our churches is the warmth of our welcome and hospitality that goes beyond their expectations.


The Art of Hospitality, a new comprehensive program developed by hospitality experts from the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, promises to guide a local church in exactly what the program’s title implies: the artform of creating radical hospitality that infiltrates the heart and culture of the entire church. Complete with techniques and strategic planning throughout, The Art of Hospitality will effectively change how you do church, leaving guests surprised, delighted, and eager to return.

The Implementation Guide contains step-by-step implementation strategies for leadership and teams tasked with developing and leading hospitality ministry.

Additional components purchased separately include:


The Art of Hospitality: A Practical Guide for a Ministry of Radical Welcome Book: Loaded with key principles and methods honed by hospitality experts Debi Nixon and Yvonne Gentile in their work at The Church of the Resurrection, this guide is designed to engage staff across all ministry areas in creating a common language around the ministry of welcome.


The Art of Hospitality: Implementation DVD: A supplemental DVD to accompany Implementation with visual training in all areas of hospitality.


The Art of Hospitality: Companion Book: Three-chapter book for the congregation as a whole or small groups to coincide with a sermon series in order to prepare the hearts and minds of the people in the pews.
This compelling and practical program has been created by two hospitality leaders with credentials to claim their expertise: Debi Nixon is the Executive Director of ShareChurch, and Yvonne Gentile is the Senior Director of Guest Connections at The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection—the largest United Methodist Church in the United States with more than 22,000 members and 13,000 average weekly attendees across its campuses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: May 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781501898969

Yvonne Gentile

Yvonne Gentile is the Senior Director of Hospitality and Connections at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas. Before joining church staff in 2011, Yvonne worked in an executive leadership capacity in retail, where she discovered the power of radical hospitality. She has been part of Resurrection since 1996 and served in numerous volunteer roles at Resurrection until 2011, when she joined the staff team, including leading the Spiritual Gifts Team, the Leadership Development team, and serving on the Committee on Nominations. She has led workshops and teaching events nationally on spiritual gifts, leadership development, building exceptional teams, volunteer management best practices, and radical hospitality. She is co-author of five books: Serving from the Heart: Finding Your Gifts and Talents for Service, Leadership from the Heart: Learning to Lead with Love & Skill, and Leadership Essentials: Practica

Book preview

YVONNE GENTILE & DEBI NIXON

THE ART OF

HOSPITALITY

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

A Practical Guide for a

Ministry of Radical Welcome

THE ART OF HOSPITALITY IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR A MINISTRY OF RADICAL WELCOME

Copyright © 2020 Abingdon Press

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission can be addressed to Permissions, The United Methodist Publishing House, 2222 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., Nashville, TN 37228-1306 or e-mailed to [e-mail].

ISBN 13: 978-1-5018-9895-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935319

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Common English Bible, copyright 2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Staying Outwardly Focused

2. Principles of Radical Hospitality

3. Creating a Digital Front Door

4. Providing an Excellent In-Person Experience

5. Intentional Follow-Up

6. Creating a Culture of Hospitality

7. Strategic Planning

Appendix: Practical Tools for Creating or Enhancing Your Ministry of Hospitality

INTRODUCTION

Engaging worship and intentional follow-up processes are important, but what compels guests to return to our churches is the warmth of our welcome and hospitality that goes beyond their expectations. It surprises them. It engages them.

The Art of Hospitality is a comprehensive program developed to guide a local church in the artform of creating radical hospitality that infiltrates the heart and culture of the entire church. Through scripture, stories, practical ideas, and conversation starters, this program will energize, organize, and help a congregation begin the transformative work of turning outward to reach people with the good news of Jesus.

This implementation guide will help your congregation start or enhance a ministry of hospitality, becoming outwardly focused and radically welcoming toward those who are not a part of your church. In the pages that follow, you will find summaries of key ideas from The Art of Hospitality and guidelines for implementation that include assignable task lists, samples, and reproducible scripts and forms.

As you embark on this journey of discovery, it is important to see every aspect of your church through the eyes of someone who has never had an experience with the church or with Jesus. Do everything you can to create a favorable first impression so that people are motivated to give Jesus and the church a try. Do everything you can to communicate they are welcomed and loved. Do everything you can to invite them into the lifelong journey of following Jesus.

Let’s start a movement together.

Carriers of the Vision: Inviting a Team

This implementation guide is designed to help determine your next steps as you develop a ministry focused on a culture of hospitality. Ideally, you will invite a team who will take ownership and be accountable to guiding the process of transformation. The owners or champions are integral to ensuring that the hospitality values are maintained consistently.

Maybe you already have a team in place. The key is that this group must be willing to examine every aspect of ministry through the lens of an outsider. They must be dedicated and committed to the vision. They must be first to give up their seats in worship if needed. First to say yes to changing the time of worship or style of worship in order to reach people in the community who have yet to give the church or Jesus a try. They must be able to articulate with great passion the why and help others in the congregation join in this outward focus.

Real and lasting change comes when the congregation catches the vision, and the implementation guide is designed to help equip the team to carry out the vision as the congregation begins to grasp it.

The team may be your pastor and church board; the pastor and representatives from each program ministry area; or the pastor and task-oriented teams that might include representatives who lead these areas (or the equivalents at your church):

•greeters

•ushers

•worship

•connection and follow-up

•discipleship

•facilities

•communications/marketing

However you choose to identify and gather your team, remember that its members should be diversified in gifts, abilities, passions, influence, gender, and age. It is important that you find a teenager or young adult to serve on your team. You may even want to invite a person from the community to sit in on your team meetings and provide fresh perspective as an outsider.

How to Use the Implementation Guide

Each member of the team should have a copy of the book The Art of Hospitality. Schedule time to meet and work through each chapter of the book together. In this implementation guide you will find discussion starters, questions, tasks, and suggested next steps. The Appendix includes templates, job descriptions, and scripts, all of which are also available at www.sharechurch.com/artofhospitality for you to download for free.

When you gather, organize your meetings as follows:

•open in prayer

•reflect on your reading from the main program book, beginning with the Conversation Starters printed in this implementation guide

•work through the suggested steps and tasks in this implementation guide

•report on actions taken since the last meeting

•agree on next steps

•close in prayer

Keep in mind that you will not be able to take all of the suggested steps or complete all of the tasks in a single week, or even across several weeks. The process will take time, and some parts of it will move faster than others. Think of this implementation guide as a way of organizing and keeping track of all the moving pieces rather than a linear set of steps that can be taken quickly, one after another.

You and your team are getting ready to embark on an exciting journey. This is a bold initiative, one that will require perseverance, patience, and effective teamwork. Be prepared for conflict along the way—change is hard. Some will catch the vision quicker, others a little slower, and others not at all. Be prepared for discouragement, as some ideas simply will not work the way you envisioned. Be prepared for an amazing spiritual encounter with God personally as you commit yourself to daily prayer and devotion alongside this program, and corporately as a church as you begin once again to live fully into the vision and mission Christ has called your church to.

Jesus and his team of twelve set out together to lead with this kingdom mindset. They experienced conflict, deep discouragement, frustration, and fatigue, but in the end a joy that surpassed anything they had ever known. Together, they launched a movement that literally changed the world.