Since coming to Vancouver, I came hoping for the expectation of being able to show and receive hospitality in the same way that I experienced back in Saskatchewan. Yet, to my surprise, it was extremely difficult to practice and receive that. A great majority of people kept to themselves and I was rarely invited to anyone's home to just hang out or even invited out to coffee. I was really confused of this and thought that the Christian circles would change this, but to my surprise, it didn't. In fact, I felt it was somewhat worse. Also, to throw another challenge into it, SFU is a commuter campus so no one stays around long enough to build community.
After living here for 4 years, I have come to realize that Vancouver (along with the rest of Canada) suffers from hyper individualism and loneliness. In short, the depth of friendship just isn't here. This plays into the fact when I (and others) invite people into deeper community, they tend to say "No" and not for any good particular reason. Most of the reasons are: "It's too far to travel" or "I'm too tired", which I completely understand, but it doesn't help with the loneliness and these excuses are getting a little old. With this in mind about Vancouver, how is it that we as an SFU community can properly witness to our friends when we ourselves are not willing to extend hospitality to others? In my opinion... it is impossible to witness effectively without hospitality.
I had a chance to attend IVCF's GROW Training in Toronto and learned that the pillars of growing a community/fellowship is Vision and Hospitality. I evaluated where the SFU community was and noticed that the vast majority of my students understood the vision, Yet, even though they had vision, that vision was not being put to action because hospitality was not being practised on a regular basis. I knew that the next cultural focus of our community was going to have to be on Radical Hospitality.
For my students though, I have a feeling that this is going to be even tougher than sharing their faith with their friends. The reason is that everything about Vancouver, SFU, and sometimes ethnic culture could go against the Kingdom value of hospitality, especially if it inconveniences them. In the context of scripture, there is an underlying assumption of Jewish culture that has hospitality built right into it. When hospitality is extended, it is very rarely for the benefit of the one hosting. In some cases, it requires great sacrifice, risk, and cost for the host to help and include the guest/stranger as a part of their family. Extending hospitality will most definitely inconvenience us in some way. It is one of the best ways we can be showing the love of Christ to the friends, strangers, family, etc. So as Catherine and I prayed and brainstormed around what this could look like, we realized that it was going to be very difficult because this goes against our very culture and everything seemed to be working against this.
With the help of Servant Partners (http://www.servantpartners.org/), the SFU Core Witness Team have taken leaps and bounds in understanding and practicing Radical Hospitality over these past couple of months. The leaders are now hosting the weekly Core Witness Team events by taking turns hosting and regularly thinking and wrestling with how to be more hospitable with the gifts God has given them. This also challenges the other student leaders to have to travel (and sometimes very long distances) for the sake of the community.
Please continue to be praying for our community as they wrestle with how to be hospitable and how to put the Radical in Radical Hospitality.
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