David:     Our title for this visit is “The Pandemic No One’s Talking About.” Can you guess what that is?

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     Are you thinking about the question I asked? What’s the pandemic no one’s talking about? Come on you say, David, I thought this visit was going to be part two of three visits on the subject of hospitality.

Karen:     And that indeed it is.

David:     You just hold on… a little while. Ok.

Karen:     But first we need to look at this loneliness epidemic.

David:     Loneliness.

Karen:     And the statistics are growing so fast that we I think could really call it a pandemic. Cigna is a health insurance company, and they took a survey of 20,000 people. And in that survey, they discovered that some 46% of those 20,000 reported that they often felt alone.

David:     Okay, that’s almost half the people. And these are not street people.

Karen:     No.

David:     So, when you’re talking loneliness, you’re talking…

Karen:     …general population.

David:     General population who have some kind of insurance, I assume.

Karen:     Or they wouldn’t be on Cigna’s list, right? So that was 46% felt that they often felt alone overlooked or left out. And in that same survey some 13% said there were zero people who knew them well. So, let’s move up a little bit to 2019. And in the issue of the magazine, The Week, former US surgeon, Attorney General Vivek Murthy is quoted as saying, during my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes. It was loneliness.

David:     Wow, very fascinating. So, these are not necessarily church people. This is the general public.

Karen:     Yes.

David:     Would you call yourself lonely?

Karen:     Well, I have been lonely in the past. But so, I know what it feels like. And…

David:     Ok, I don’t think of myself as a lonely person at all. Maybe…

Karen:     Maybe after this. Yeah.

So, the article attempts to define the concept of loneliness. And it says it’s the emotional state created when people have fewer contexts and fewer meaningful relations than they would like. Relationships that make them feel known and understood.

David:     Okay, so I always think church people. I could identify some people I think would agree with that. I’m not sure that the statistics would be as high. Maybe I just don’t know.

Karen:     Yeah, we don’t have, I haven’t found any breakdowns like that. If it is the same, then we have real problems, right? The article goes, this is the article in This Week, goes on to make the following points, between 1985 and 2009, the average American social network shrank by more than one third. Now that was 11 years ago. And this was defined by the number of close confidences. So that shrunk more than one third.

David:     So that’s saying people who didn’t feel that way before are now feeling more that way. I wonder why that is.

Karen:     Well, one of the reasons is the aging subset of baby boomers had fewer children and more divorces than the generations before them, leaving many of them without companions in their old age.

David:     Okay, that’s interesting.

Karen:     So, about one in 10 Americans age, 50 and older, don’t have a spouse, romantic partner, or living child. And that’s roughly eight million lonely people. One in six boomers live alone.

David:     Okay, I’m processing all of this. That still is not up to that 50% of people feeling lonely, so keep going.

Karen:     Now, the migrations in our mobile society, as people move from one place to another, disrupt community and neighborliness and having friends or casual sorts of relationships.

David:     Yeah, we’re not in that category because we’ve been in the same place…

Karen:     …for a long time now. Social networks in new communities of choice are not easily reestablished as the acquaintances that they had in the past.

David:     So, the mobility of the country feeds into this.

Karen:     Now this is really surprising. This was taken a while back, this survey. So, we’ll move up closer to where we are now. But most surprisingly young people are actually most at risk of feeling alone in contemporary society. It’s exactly the opposite of what we would think. In the Cigna study, generation Z, now those are members ages 18 to 22.

David:     So, these are young adults. They’re not okay. They’re not children.

Karen:     No.

David:     They’re young adults. Okay.

Karen:     And millennials, the next step up, ages 23 and 27, scored the highest for feeling lonely.

David:     Oh really? That’s really something, isn’t it?

Karen:     And so, this article concludes if you are feeling lonely, you are lonely. Okay? A good symptomatic sign. If you feel lonely, you are lonely. Now the results of the societal alienation are often tragic.

David:     I just, before you go to that, just want to say that that is pandemic. I mean, you’re talking huge.

Karen:     Yeah, 50%. Yeah. Right.

David:     Not quite 46%.

Karen:     Well, again, these are old stats. So okay. The result of the societal alienation are often tragic. So, a 2010 study by Brigham Young University found that loneliness shortens individual lives by 15 years. And that’s roughly equivalent to the same impact caused by the habit of smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being obese.

David:     Wow, we…

Karen:     Other studies have found… You want to process?

David:     It’s going so fast. Okay. So, the same effect of 15 cigarettes a day is what loneliness… yeah… being lonely, feeling it intensely to the degree you identify it, it shortens life that much.

Karen:     It shortens life. Other studies have found connections between loneliness and a wide range of health problems. And those problems would be increased risk for heart attacks, for stroke, and for cancer. Lonely people are more likely to suffer from insomnia, depression, and drug abuse. They are more likely to suffer from more rapid cognitive decline as they age.

David:     Okay. Are you going to continue giving very alarming?

Karen:     Yeah, because where we’re headed is even more alarming.

David:     Okay. Where the country is headed.

Karen:     Yes. With this high population of loneliness.

David:     Hopefully not where the two of us are headed in our conversation. We’re going to try to give us some of the solution.

Karen:     Well, the country where we’re part of that in some way, even if we not, these don’t describe us, but we need to feel about it. In addition, and without a doubt in my mind, the result of loneliness is the increasing an alarming incidence of suicide in the general population and in the college age segment of society.

David:     So, it’s saying, wow…

Karen:     Loneliness is resulting in suicide.

David:     Wow, okay. That’s getting very serious.

Karen:     Yes, according to statistics reported by the National Institute of Mental Health, that’s NIMH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death among adults in the United States. Each year, it claims the lives of nearly 45,000 people at suicide. With unsuccessful suicide attempts ranging around 250,000 people.

David:     Okay, so this is a big country.

Karen:     It’s a cry for help, right?

David:     So, there are small numbers, but there are significant numbers.

Karen:     No, significant numbers. Suicide was the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10 to 34, second leading cause of death. and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 35 and 54. Now, in relationship to the yearly total of homicides in the United States, where someone kills someone else, that’s about 20,000 people. These statistics reveal that there were twice as many suicides as homicides.

David:     Twice as many suicides as homicides. Twice as many people taking their lives or somebody else taking their lives.

Karen:     Yes.

David:     Yeah, let’s stop all of this, okay? Basically, you’ve made your point.

Karen:     Right.

David:     So, I’ll leave it there. Now we’re ready. Anything more you want to add, or can we shift the discussion?

Karen:     Well… when we have that kind of situation in the States, in fact, in England, there was such a high loneliness epidemic that the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, created a cabinet post and it was the Minister for Loneliness.

David:     Wow.

Karen:     So, we need them.

David:     It’s not just America.

Karen:     Yeah, I don’t know what the stats are worldwide, but I’m saying that the Western countries, I think are particularly probably affected by this. Many of them are. So, then our response to that kind of knowledge, now that we hear about it and it’s been studied by credentialed, respectable institutions, our response is, what do we do for this? And this, of course, is where the hospitality discussion picks up again.

David:     Okay, I’ll put into a sentence what it is we’re wanting to say. If you don’t mind, can we go to that?

Karen:     Yes, do that.

David:     Okay. Today’s loneliness epidemic should be a signal to the church to call out the spiritual gift of hospitality. I’ll run it by one more time.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     Today’s loneliness epidemic should be a signal to the church to call out the spiritual gift of hospitality. So, at least we do know where we’re headed with all of it.

Karen:     Well, we know that there’s a cure for this, but the church is not really good in these days of practicing hospitality with its own members or challenging its own members to reach out into their communities, earn to their workplaces with this gift of hospitality.

David:     We have just introduced now another whole topic as gift of the Holy Spirit or gifts of the Holy Spirit. One of which we would say is hospitality, which is now another revolutionary thought because for the most part, when churches teach about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, no one mentions hospitality.

Karen:     Well, not only that. I think I remember we have a lot of pastors who are friends and in past years we worked with hundreds of them. But I remember one of our friends who was a pastor saying he couldn’t think of two sermons he could give on hospitality. I could have done a whole year on it.

David:     You know, just hit your hot button.

Karen:     Yeah. Well, yeah, but it’s because scripture is just filled with admonitions on hospitality. I mean, to neglect it or to ignore it is really to be, you’re in a state of disobedience as far as I’m concerned, of spiritual disobedience, because you haven’t paid attention to the word of God.

David:     Okay, let’s go after that little phrase you used, hospitality being a gift of the Holy Spirit, because that would not be so in a lot of ministers’ minds. Let me talk just a little bit about gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Karen:     I am bowing to the theologian in this family. You’ve often heard me say one theologian per family is enough.

David:     We should have this on video. That would be wonderful. There are four passages that are key on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. One of them would be 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Let me just read here.

Karen:     Let me repeat it again, because I forget it. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. In fact, if they want to study this, just put in hospitality, and pull the scriptures that come up. But you’re pointing to the scriptures that talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

David:     Yes, right. Okay. Paul says there are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit. So, he’s named his topic and he says the same spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. So, he’s made a statement. He said it again, and then he said it again, but he’s changed his words. He’s talking about the same spirit, the same Lord, the same God. Those are synonyms. You could parse them, but he’s saying the same thing.

Karen:     He means the same thing.

David:     And the same is true for the earlier words he used. He says there are different kinds of gifts, different kinds of service, different kinds of working. So, gifts relate to serving. They relate to what are you doing working on behalf of the Lord. To each are the manifestation given for the common good. So, when you’re talking about gifts of the Holy Spirit, you’re talking about what you’re doing on behalf of the Lord. You’re talking about serving him.

Karen:     Building up the body of Christ is what I hear.

David:     So, that’s what gifts are about. Yes. Now in the passages there are different gifts that are listed. I’ll give you just an example.

This is from Romans 12. “Just as each of us has one body with many members and these members don’t all have the same function. So, in Christ, we, who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given us”, and then he lists the number of them. “Prophecy, serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing, leadership, governing, mercy.” So, when you talk about gifts of the Holy Spirit, again, you’re talking about serving on behalf of the Lord, and these are in my mind, illustrative.

Karen:     Okay. So, in a way, illustrative means examples and not a final tally.

David:     Because the same writer and other writers will attack this topic, and they will give different illustrations.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     Now, the average way ministers will work at this is to list all of those things that are given in Scripture, and that becomes an exhaustive list. In other words, we’ve said everything you could say about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but I don’t agree with that.

Again, they’re illustrations, or they would all use the identical list, or Paul would say in both passages, the identical examples, which he does not do.

Karen:     That makes sense, doesn’t it? Yeah.

David:     So, I’m saying these are illustrations of what the gifts are like. Now, this is from 1 Peter, a different writer, and he says, “…each one should use whatever gift (or gifts) he has received to serve others.”

There’s that same thought. It’s service. “Faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks”… here’s how he should do it. “He should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”

So, anyway, he’s got the same topic here. So, I’m saying these are illustrations. Because, Karen, some of the huge things that are talked about in the way people serve aren’t even listed in these New Testament passages. An example would be musicians. I think musicians serve the Lord in a wonderful way…

Karen:     Worship leaders.

David:     …but they’re not listed. Music is not listed as a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     Now, I’m going to get back into where your passion is. Ok?

The sentence before he starts talking about gifts and the very same paragraph, here’s what he says. “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should receive whatever gift he has received to serve others.”

So, what does he say? He says, “hospitality is a gift.”

Karen:     Hospitality is a gift

David:     Yes, are you ready to clap? But somehow hospitality never gets listed in those sermons. Which doesn’t make sense?

Karen:     No, it doesn’t make any sense at all. I think a lot of this is because in male leadership, which we’ve had in the past almost exclusively in many of our religious communities, that’s changing, and I think it’s a good thing that it’s changing. Hospitality was considered as a woman’s thing.

David:     That’s pretty funny.

Karen:      It’s not what scripture teaches at all.

David:     No, it doesn’t. It says the deacons should be given to hospitality and so on. It’s a huge topic, but basically what we’re saying is again today’s loneliness epidemic should be a signal to the church to call out the spiritual gift of hospitality. I just want to say real quickly what’s using gifts is like. It seems like some of the gifts are supernatural. For example, who has the natural ability to pull off a miracle?

Karen:     Or healing, gift of healing.

David:     Yes. But all of them are supernatural.

Karen:     We should consider the fact that all of them are supernatural and have effect in other people’s lives beyond our human capacity. Is that what you’re meaning?

David:     Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I think these are questions and I could go to scripture again, but for the sake of time I won’t. I have various gifts. You have various gifts. What we do is to say to the Lord, “This that you have given me, I’m willing to use in service or in ministry on behalf of the Lord.” This is if you say you’re given the gift of music, I won’t just use it to make a living and become popular.

Karen:     Oh! It’s okay to make a living with it, but what you’re saying?

David:     No problem at all. I won’t just do that. I will also use it in service to the Lord. So, in terms of the ability to organize or to speak, this is a gift I will give to you to use in ministry because you know, though I’ve had a part in developing the gift, it’s really a gift from you and I accepted that way. Then I think a second question is very important. Say in my preaching…

Karen:     What was the first question again?

David:      Will I use this ability I have in terms of ministry?

Karen:     Ok.

David:     So, I would say one of the gifts I have is speaking.

Karen:     Okay, let’s invite our listeners to tally with us as we’re doing this. So are you willing to use…

David:     Are you willing to use it in ministry on behalf of the church? It’s nothing wrong with organizing a business. That’s a leadership role. Will you use that leadership role in the church as well?

Karen:     But you could use it as a spiritual gift in your business as well.

David:     Of course, you could. That’s a really good point. Thank you for bringing it up. The second question is, does sin in my life in any way inhibit the use of that gift?

Karen:     Okay, let’s do a sin check out there. Little silence for a minute for our listeners. Is there a sin you’re holding on to? If you can’t think of anything right away, ask the Lord to reveal something to you.

David:     And if you can’t, Praise the Lord!

Karen:     Then keep walking that way, yeah.

David:     Yeah. But when I am preparing a sermon, which again has those religious overtones, I say to myself, “Am I sure that my relationship with the Lord is what it should be? Because that’s a big part of spiritual gifts being effective.” Okay? And then the last question is, Do I sense a need for the Lord to empower that so that it’s not just my talent, but a gift to the Holy Spirit? So, if we talk hospitality, “Lord, this is something I’ve learned since I was little. It’s a part of my DNA, if you please. I think I’m walking not perfectly, but righteously. And I confess those sins, which are not what they should be. I want to use hospitality as a ministry aspect of my life, but I’m not sure I can do it on my own. Help me to know those who are lonely, so I can invite them in. Help me to prepare time so that when people leave, they don’t see that’s a nice person. Or while they did something beautifully for me, but where they leave saying, I sense the presence of the Lord.”

Karen:     And one of the things we often hear of that was kind of puzzling when we open our home up to people. Sometimes when they just walked in the door, “Oh, there’s so much peace that I feel here.” So, that would be an indicator to me that there’s something going on other than my preparations or my open heart.

David:     Yes, and you take that as a compliment to you, which is meant to be, but you also say, “Lord, I was really no good at this until you began to touch my life. So, I’m passing along to you.” It’s kind of the Cory Ten Boom. She was that way. “I receive it, but I give the compliment to the Lord.”

Karen:     Let me add a scripture in there, because you mentioned that we look for the lonely. And sometimes the loneliest people are the most gifted people we know.

David:     Could be, yes.

Karen:     Because people feel like they can’t be friends with people on such high pedestal. So, Jesus talks in Luke. He says, “when you make a dinner or supper or give a banquet, don’t give it for your friends. Don’t invite your friends or your brethren or your kinsmen or your rich neighbors.”

David:     Does he actually say that? I think he does.

Karen:     Yes, He does.

David:     Yeah, your rich neighbors.

Karen:     In the concept, I think he is saying in his words as this verse goes on, so you’ll get something in return. But invite the poor, the lame, the blind, because they cannot repay you and you will be blessed.

Now sometimes I think we think of a blessing coming from God, but I think just having those kinds of people and seeing the struggle of their life, seeing their valiant, sometimes they’re just the most valiant people. Sometimes they’re the happiest people. Some of the people I know who are in other countries who have nothing, have community, and have happiness. So, the blessing comes from seeing these people we thought of as outcasts. Realizing they have extraordinary individual personality traits or capacities or an endurance factor in their lives. So, they bless us in ways we weren’t expecting. And I love that teaching, yeah.

David:     Let’s go back to that sentence because… I don’t think that sentence is being lived out in the church. Scripture teaches this loneliness epidemic should be a signal to the church to call on the spiritual gift of hospitality. So, do you think the church is going to do that?

Karen:     I think the church needs some prodding. We’re working at it. Sort of a national program of some kind yet to be defined where we begin to put tools into the hands of the local church that help them change their DNA, their church DNA, from being our church and us and only to one that trains their members to be hospitable with one another of course but to the larger community on the outside of the church doors.

David:     Yeah, that’s a good sequence because I believe there are numbers of these people maybe not 46% like we said at the beginning but numbers of lonely people.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:     And even if you have a church supper which I ‘m applauding I think that’s wonderful. Many times, the people who aren’t lonely don’t know how to reach out to the ones who are lonely. And those lonely people tend to leave the church supper just as lonely.

Karen:     Sometimes that doesn’t happen but one of the things …

David:     I praise the Lord sometimes it doesn’t happen.

Karen:     One of the things I think we need to kick around is what is the felt need in the communities where we live outside of the life of the church. And I think one of the things that people puzzle with these days is how do I raise my children in this digital context? How do I compete with the screens? How do I…

David:     Where people sit around the table at dinner but they’re all looking at their own phones.

Karen:     Oh, their own phones. It’s extraordinary. How do I as a parent or a friend present something so attractive that there’s a screen discipline that begins to develop? But I think the felt need in the community is among parents who are asking this question. And one of the things the church could do as an outreach or an invitation to those parents is to provide parental forms. How do we raise children in a digital age? In an age where our values, our moral values are continually derided by the media. So those are huge questions.

David:     So, you’re saying don’t invite neighbors to a service where there’s an evangelism message but invite them where there’s an expert who comes and says “This is how to build a feeling of belonging in a situation where there’s a lot of alienation.”

Karen:     Well, I wouldn’t say don’t invite them to an evangelism function. I would say go ahead and do that if you think it’s appropriate. You may sense hunger and that spiritual hunger and some of those people but do the other as well. Discover what the felt need is in the general audience. You could probably even design something that talks about are you lonely? How do we defeat loneliness?

David:     Could you think of maybe inviting an expert from a university who’s not a believer to come and talk on that topic?

Karen:     Absolutely. Absolutely.

David:     And then what would you do?

Karen:     Well, then I’d have a lot of couples from the church. You divide up in small groups with you know…

David:     To discuss…

Karen:     To discuss what was being talked about by the expert. And then you have two or three couples from the church in that group and you make connections, and you make relationships. And hopefully people will say, “Well let’s get together and talk about this more” and “Oh I didn’t know you do that?.” You know “How about having a cup of coffee together”?

That’s where hospitality starts beginning when we have those kinds of connections.

David:     How do you think individuals in a church would respond if a pastor, talking on hospitality, made that suggestion?

Karen:     I think they’d be fabulous. I think they would be fabulous. I think sometimes we need… we know better, but we need permissions from time to time.

David:     Do you think pastors could come up with… I mean you talked about a minister said “Do sermons like that thing anymore”? Do you think they could come up with more from the scripture on hospitality if somehow, they just got the idea of different idea to approach things?

Karen:     I think they would be overwhelmed by how many scriptures there are in hospitality. But you, David Mains, had a brilliant idea when you were in pastoring. You would invite the lay people of your congregation to sit down with you. Brainstorm the sermon. Come up with the illustrations. And then the how-to’s that people would take home with them. So, that’s what I think would be the most impacting…

David:     Repeat that part. Repeat that part about me and the brilliant idea. Ok?

Karen:     Well, I’ve just never seen. I’m sure there are pastors who do this. But your resource for pastors, the resources the lay people of their church. And I think that’s the most underused energy force in the local church is the lay people. Sometimes staffs think that the lay people exist to help them do their job. I think staffs exist to help and empower the lay people to do their job. There’s a much bigger number that you’re working with there.

David:     Well, I do think that the life of the average minister is very different from the life of his or her parish member. So, the more you’re able to talk and get feedback from the people in the pew, I mean, they don’t even have pews anymore in a lot of churches.

Karen:     Yeah, right. Chairs.

David:     The better off you are in terms of understanding our present world, and I need to bring our discussion to a close, because one of the aspects of our present world is that it’s filled, in this country and around the world, with a lot of people who are lonely. And we need to learn how to address that need. We’ll never do it totally without hearing from what these people are thinking and feeling.

Karen:     Right.

David:     But we have one more time to get together on hospitality. You know, we’re headed?

Karen:     Yes, we’re going to talk about how we create a hospitable church.

David:     Perfect.

Karen:     How we make it a part of the very DNA of the local church.

David:     Okay, and you’re going to do all the talking or I get to contribute a little?

Karen:     Oh, I imagine you’ll contribute a little. So, we say to our listeners what? You may be lonely. One of the things they can do is invite other people into your home. You’re going to hit on some other lonely people given the statistics. Or start exercising the gift of hospitality. Or find people who have that gift.

David:     A church I’m a part of said, “We talked to the people about maybe where we should be headed in the next year and couldn’t come up with any ideas. Maybe we just need to move deeper into the Lord.”

If you’re one who’s listening to us and you feel strongly about what we’re saying, raise your hands and talk about hospitality. Talk about hospitality and how we can reach out to others because there are a lot of lovely people in the world.

Karen:     Start a blitz campaign with your elders and your church staff. I’m all for that.

David:     Thanks for sharing with this, friend.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries Post Office Box 30 Wheaton, Illinois 60187.