David:     Winter, spring, summer, fall. What’s your favorite time of the year, Karen?

Karen:     Oh, spring. No question about it after those Chicago winters? Spring! Hope comes back again.

David:     Let me stop you, okay. I think my introduction didn’t work because you said spring and our key sentence begins: Think of this fall as an opportune time to blank.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     Let’s start over again.

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.

Karen:     For your sake, David, I’ll just say that autumn is one of my favorite times of year. No question about it, but what’s the rest of your key sentence?

David:     Okay. Thank you for commenting where I am. Key sentence. Okay. Think of this fall or autumn as an opportune time to renew the practice of Christian hospitality.

Karen:     Where we live in the greater Chicagoland area, fall in my mind is from the middle of September through October, November, and then cold weather really starts to creep in. And it’s a great season. It’s almost as good as spring.

David:     Okay. Not quite. Fall is also followed by winter, as you said, and people will stay inside more and probably there will be a spike in the COVID cases again. So, we have to think about that in terms we’re going to talk about hospitality. The time to do it is going to be immediately. And this fall season is when to think of that.

Karen:     Our family’s been battered by COVID. We had COVID. Our son is living with us. And I think we came down with it the same week in February.

David:     Three people in one house.

Karen:     Three people in one house.

David:     Moving at the same time. Yeah. And I think we have this long haul.

Karen:     Yeah, there’s been just never quite been the same since then. We have good days, but there’s a lot of fatigue. Our problem is we have never aged like this. We don’t know if it’s aging or if it’s kind of an impact of the long haul COVID. Someone said to me that sometimes it does take about six months for that to sort of wear off.

David:     So, then our daughter was in Mexico City, where our grandson, her son, they came down with horrible cases.

Karen:     They were really they were both hospitalized out of country.

David:     Melissa is back and that’s so good to have her home again.

Karen:     But she’s not feeling good, you know. So yeah. And so we’re really watching this.

David:     COVID certainly inhibits the practice of hospitality, however. There’s no question about that. So, we’re into this let’s do it now. This is the season fall and we’re trying to practice that even as we preach it, if you please. Romans 12:13, Karen, there are a lot of verses on hospitality. I chose that one because they’re just two words: practice hospitality.

Karen:     The concept of hospitality though is really integral to the Old Testament and to the New Testament. We’re told not to only practice hospitality. We’re told to practice hospitality to one another, ungrudgingly.

I’ve written a book about it and we do practice hospitality and I was from a very hospitable family. I think the reason for that is that it shows so much of the nature of who God is. He’s an invitational God. He wants to be close to these human creations. There’s a welcome for all people no matter what your state of life. And when we practice hospitality, we’re demonstrating something very godly whether we know it or not. The integral part of hospitality is that welcoming, receiving, inviting. It’s not showing off all your wonderful recipes. Although you can have wonderful recipes or your beautiful home or your skills. It’s that inclusion. It’s like putting your arms around a group of people and gathering them close.

David:     We practiced hospitality this last weekend. It wasn’t at our house. We got together with dear friends. We drove three hours a little bit further than Madison, Wisconsin, but there’s a theater.

Karen:     The American Players Theater. It’s an outdoor theater.

David:     Yeah, they’re very good. We’re kind of picky about theater when we go and visit. They put on a production of A Raisin in the Sun.

Karen:     It was an all-black cast.

David:     Yeah, it’s that set in Chicago after World War II.

Karen:     In a black family.

David:     Amazingly current. You know that plays been around for a good while.

Karen:     It was written in 1959, but it wasn’t that prescient.

David:     It’s the struggles of the black community on the south side of Chicago. And the cast was fabulous. The lady who’s kind of the…

Karen:     She’s the mama.

David:     Yeah, she’s the mama. She holds everything together in spite of the terrible things they’re going through. I just wanted to go up and hug her.

Karen:     Oh my gosh, beautiful, beautiful. I mean, she said she was a big African American woman, and she strutted on the stage and you just… You were cheering her on and strutting all that family together and boost the morale and, you know, it was an extraordinary piece of work. So that was a banner evening and one of the beautiful things about it. It was up on a hill and in the daylight when you went up to the theater, it was sort of the end as the evening was approaching, you walked up this gravel walk. It was about four or five feet wide.

And of course, you had to come back on that walk. And I will never forget the theater performance with the cicadas in the background.

David:     Birds flying.

Karen:     Birds flying over. You can see the flies flying across the lights on the stage. But walking back was again part of the highlight because we all walked down that gravel path together in the night.

David:     We’re talking probably 300 people.

Karen:     Yeah, this extraordinary theater experience with people using their cell phones as flashlights. Oh, my goodness. It was just breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking.

David:     We met with wonderful friends. Both couples went out of their way just to get together and be able to catch up and talk about what the Lord is doing in their lives.

This couple is my cousin’s daughter. She has a very responsible position in Minnesota. There in Rochester and one of the campuses of the University of Minnesota is in Rochester where Mayo’s is. And she is, yeah, the chancellor, is very top position. So, she has a huge amount of responsibility. We wanted to find out how she was doing, and they wanted to find out how we are doing.

So, we went to theater. Then the next morning we had over three hours of conversation at the place where we were staying. It was just marvelous. Being able to say, where are you? What are your prayer requests and so on. That was really neat. And her talking about at this point in her life, she had just turned 60. She’s thinking, how do I find my replacement and how do I train that person?

Her husband, Tom, who is older. He is a retired minister and a dear, dear guy. In fact I went up kind of apprehensive because I had some ideas I wanted to see if he would be interested. It wouldn’t take a lot of time, but you know, he’s a busy person.

Karen:     …and participating with you.

David:     Yeah. The ministers, a lot of times they get to Saturday, and they still don’t know what they want to say on Sunday. And if we had kind of a hotline where they could call and say, “Help me work through these mental blocks I have. Would you be open to doing?” “Ooh yeah,” he said, “I don’t know what that’s like.” He was right there all along and I thought, “Wow, what a neat guy.” It was just a very special time talking with them. And they asked us really; what were important questions in our lives as to how we were doing. And so, it was a beautiful, beautiful time.

And then you drive three hours back and have the opportunity to debrief it. Most people wouldn’t think of that as hospitality, but in my mind, it was a definite time of Christian hospitality getting together.

Karen:     They invited us, they paid for it.

David:     That was a treat.

Karen:     So lovely of them. So, if you’re thinking about getting together with Christian friends this fall is a better time to do so than the coming winter. We’ve had a lot of people over, not as many as we usually have, but we’ve used our backyard as our gathering place just so people would not feel uncomfortable being in an enclosed room. We’ve lived in this home for 40 years and I am a passionate gardener and so they have come into their height, their full glorious height this summer. It’s beautiful outside and they go all the way around the house. The gardening process goes all the way from there.

David:     My roses are even doing very well.

Karen:     David has, you’ve gotten captured by the rose garden and that is your rose garden. I let you take care of it, and it just looks absolutely beautiful.

David:     So anyway, Karen, we’re basically saying something very simple, which is if you’re going to move into hospitality before the year is out, this is the time to do it. If you get past the fall season, it’s going to be hard.

Karen:     It may be harder.

David:     And it’s hard when you try to carry on conversation and you’re wearing masks. You know, that’s a very difficult situation. So, this is the time and it’s just this reminder to people. Fall is a beautiful time and it’s a time to be able to say, who are the people who mean a lot to me and how do we talk through where we are spiritually speaking? Think of fall as an opportune time to practice hospitality.

Karen:     So, it’s sort of brainstormed.

David:     I would say substantive conversation.

Karen:     Sometimes what we have are kind of chit-chatty stuff where we talk about the issues of the day or stuff we heard in the news, politics, but we don’t get down to the really meaningful interest areas of our lives. We don’t focus ourselves in a way to do that. And I think that through the years you and I have made this a priority when we are practicing hospitality or when we’re just happening to meet and greet folk, we haven’t had any relationship with. How do you move from that chit-chat level into something where you begin to really feel like you’ve connected, like you’ve invited that person to reveal the things in their heart that are most important?

David:     Or you challenge people in a way, one of the challenging questions that Lord He asked me, he said, “David, I’m looking for this person who I can say I’m grooming this person to take over a responsible position. Are you doing that?”

I’m thinking, “Who am I mentoring now? Who do I want to pass these skills I’ve learned over the years on to?”

It’s a very good question. I’ve started to make it a matter of prayer in my life. Who are those people? Maybe within my own family? Maybe in the church that I can say I’ve learned a lot of lessons? Let me see if this would be a benefit to you.”

Karen:     I mean I think one of the questions that you are so good at doing, but that we often forget to do when we’ve had times when we’ve gotten together, casual times or times of planned entertainment, is how can we pray for you? I mean I just think that’s a wonderful question. It’s rarely asked among Christian folk. I don’t know why but it is one that you ask. And I think it’s one that we just need to remember to make sure we don’t conclude our time together without making that inquiry.

David:     Now you don’t want at the end of such a time for people’s those are neat people. And that’s not your bottom line. Those guys have a sense of humor that I never realized they had you know. That’s all rather surface. The question is: How do we use these times together with dear friends or with strangers to think in terms of Kingdom matters. I don’t know that you can just ask that right off the bat. We have people coming again this weekend on a Saturday morning. It’s an easy time for us, you know. Breakfast is easy to fix for people. So, how do you take strangers that you’ve not met before because you’re new to this church?

Karen:     We said people from our church. So, they’re Christian folk.

David:     We’ve always been in churches that had not been in West Chicago where we live. We’ve been very involved in the city of Chicago, in churches. But now we said in these later years, especially is we think one of us will die one of these times, we would like to have a local church nearby here where we feel like we have been a part. So, we’re kind of in a transition point in our lives and we’ve chosen that church now. We’re trying to get to know the people who are there.

Karen:     And part of the reason we chose that church is this is a mixed community with diversity. And that only 52% of it is non-white. And so, this church has a multi-Hispanic and multiracial.

David:     Multi language too.

Karen:     Yeah. Congregation is small. So, we just thought this was a nice place for us to land. But let’s say that we’re having people over who are not particularly faith-based, or we don’t know them very well. And you and I went ahead and brainstormed, sort of a process of questions that take us to a way that we know one another better and where we are not leaving after that hospitality time and having had a good time. But we don’t really know the substance of who those people are.

David:     Well, how do we get going is that what you’re asking me?

Karen:     Yeah.

David:     I would ask a question like say you’re having just a wonderful day You’re doing what you wanted to you have the time for it and you’re just enjoying yourself immensely. What’s going on? And you’d say I’m gardening.

Karen:     I’m gardening. And I’m a happy lady when I’m muddy. Yeah, there’s some general questions you can start with things that are kind of obvious. Where were you raised? Where did you grow up?

David:     Were you a part of the church?

Karen:     Yeah, were you part of the church life? And if we don’t know them very much at all I thought you’re just sort of meeting and you know kind of a casually those groups that gather and you find yourself standing. Thanks to some you say well, what’s your profession? What do you do?

And you can gather general information. And that’s amazing. How many people don’t ask questions that are general like this? Are you married? Do you have children? Tell us about your family. But another one you can ask is where did you take your training? What college did you go to? What trade school did you go to? Did you learn from a person who was in that particular profession, and they took you under their wing?

David:     Or who’s somebody who you look back on your life and say that person was influential in helping me become who I have become.

Karen:     We often do ask that question Who is there someone who you can think of who mentored you in a way or encouraged you in a way that significantly changed your life.

David:     You’ve been writing Karen, about listening skills. Who’s somebody who listened to you as you were growing up and you look back on them very fondly because of that? There’s just a lot of questions that you may feel awkward at the beginning, but after a while you get pretty good at it.

Karen:     Well, people are happy to have those questions ask of them. I mean, you know, I think it’s really interesting, the response. It opens up their talking capacity. I think is what I’m going for there. And I think that’s because they’re often not asked questions like that. One that I like to hear you ask is: If you could travel anywhere in the world and money was no object, where would you go?

David:     I would like for somebody to ask me that.

Karen:     Where would you go?

David:     I know exactly where I would go.

Karen:     Where will you go?

David:     I’ll go to Ireland. Never been there.

Karen:     Never been there.

David:     Yeah. I’d like to. That’s kind of still in my bucket list. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it. Airplanes are not as exciting to be as they used to be.

Karen:      Not those long trips overseas. Are the things you want to do that you haven’t done yet? I think that’s a wonderful question.

David:     Yeah.

Karen:     And sometimes that takes people time to they pause and think about it a while and then they’ll come up with something. That’s very revealing, you know.

David:     Even if you’re on an airplane Karen, which means that you may be likely talking to a non-believer.

Karen:     or talking to a stranger We’re not total stranger.

David:     Yeah, a question like were you raised with a church background? Which is a very open question and people will say “No, you know, we never went to church and very little part of my life.” Or they’ll say, “Yeah. My mom or my dad used to go to church with me and then we all dropped out and I went to church for a long time.” Whatever, but it helps to know who you are. Maybe I asked those easily because I’m a minister.

Karen:     Well, I think that often those questions are easily asked by you because they’ve said to you, “What do you do?” And you’ll say, “I’m a minister. I am Reverend Dr. David Mains.” And then it’s interesting to me how frequently they want to talk about those things with you. And when you say, “Do you have a faith-based background or something like that?” It’s natural for you to ask that question of them and I think they look at you as

David:     As I need to go to Ireland, that gives me opportunity to ask the question. And then have a long time to hear the response and talk more about Jesus.

Karen:     So, these are some of the approaches we would suggest that people take going from the chit chat to the issues to the “what’s on the news.” There’s more substantive kinds of conversations.

David:     Do you know what you’re good at? I’ve heard you ask this at different times of people who are strangers. “Do you have a church background?” And “Is that a something that’s good in your mind or something that was not good?” And people will talk about where they’ve been heard in the church. This happened, you know, whether it’s 10 years ago or 50 years ago and it’s marked them. And now they have somebody who says maybe you should take a second attempt at this.

Karen:     Well, it’s talk, talk. Tell me about it because this does happen There can be toxic experiences in church which need to be healed and communicated and sympathized with so that’s basically what happens there.

David:     You know, it’s a good conversation when people have been in a conversation for a long time and then you’re able to say at the end “Sshould we pray or would you feel comfortable if I prayed before we finished that kind of thing?”

Karen:     Which is such a remarkable thing. This can happen with Christians or strangers. I had the most enchanting conversation. I was standing in line in Dallas Love Airfield at a gate because my plane was the next plane to leave and we were waiting for the one that was at the gate to leave. And there was adult black woman who was standing beside me. And we started to chit chat. I said, “I’m flying home to Chicago. And she said, “Ooh, yeah, I lived in Chicago for so many years and blah blah blah.” We kept going on like that. I learned this from our son Jeremy. I heard him ask some black ladies, “Are you a church-going lady?” And so I said, “Do you a church-going lady?” And she said, “Ooh, yes, of course, I’m a church-going lady.” We got going on issues of faith. And it was such a sweet encounter and we sort of standing side by side. And so, she said, “Let’s just pray right here. And it doesn’t matter if everyone’s looking at us. We don’t care. Do we?” And I said, “No, we don’t care.” And she put her arm around me, and I put my arm around her. We just prayed together before she got on our airplane. Now, that is one of those chance encounters. Yeah, that is absolutely beautiful.

David:     One more time I’ll say it, Okay? Think of this fall as an opportune time to practice hospitality. As a result of being in this conversation even though you weren’t here with us, you’re here with us in spirit. As a listener, you’re going to say, “I have the rest of August, September, October. If I’m going to be in a hospitable situation, I need to get thinking about that now. And who is it I would like to have come and just spend some time with?” If we’ve accomplished that, I think we’ve accomplished a lot.

Karen:     Accomplished a lot? We’d love to hear about, and Dean will tell you how.

Outro:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2022 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.