Radically Ordinary Hospitality: A Conversation with Rosaria Butterfield

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In the late 90s Rosaria was working on a book on the religious right. As a gay rights activist she wanted to understand why the religious right “hated people like her.” In the process of researching for her book, she met a pastor name Ken Smith and his wife. Considering the Smiths “unpaid research assistants” for her writing, Rosaria accepted an invitation to their home.

For Rosaria the Smith home became a living picture of the Gospel that began to change her.

At the Smith house Rosaria and people from all walks of life frequently gathered for a meal, conversation, arguments, laughter, Psalm singing, and time in the Word of God.

“We talk about pictures of the Gospel in the Lord’s Supper and pictures of the Gospel in the water of baptism. But there’s another picture of the Gospel that people like me really need. And that’s the Christian home.”

Rosaria

After about five hundred meals, Rosaria recalls, the Word of God grew inside her. She began to see examples of Godly womanhood—of a lifegiving marriage, and of God’s design and sovereignty in his creation. Rosaria shares her conversion story in her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith.

After coming to faith, Rosaria met her husband, Kent Butterfield, a Reformed Presbyterian pastor in North Carolina. They have four adopted children, a dog, and a home that they call “an incubator and a hospital for grace.”

From the kitchen to the dining room table to the homeschool table, the Butterfields live with a mission to reach marginalized people—those who are “peeking in through the windows and staying outside” with the message of Christ.

Opening their home to people with a variety of disabilities, the Butterfields have learned to ask people what they need.

“If they need a ramp or a handrail—just make those changes,” says Rosaria.

For the Butterfield family, their home is a mission field and an outpost of their church. Rosaria acknowledges that not all homes can or should try to follow her family’s model. As she says,

“People prepare to go to a mission field. People learn a language and they get certain shots; they prepare their homeschooling materials for a long journey overseas. The Lord prepared us for this. Not every house is prepared for this.”

Still no matter how much preparation gets done and no matter how often a family opens the front door to let people in, the Holy Spirit is the One who does transformational work in people’s lives. 

How is true Christian hospitality different from “entertaining”?

Hospitality is different from entertaining. The difference?

Entertaining is what happens when you look in the calendar and you look in your checkbook and you say, oh, this Saturday would be a great time for a pizza party. And hospitality is when it’s not a convenient time, but the people come anyway,” says Rosaria.

The hardest parts of hospitality for many people are regularity and perfectionism—a need to lower standards (for linens, food, and polished counters) and increase joy.

What makes a good “hospitality home”?

• Both hosts and guests are stakeholders.
• The meal itself is not the point (hotdogs and macaroni will do).
• People can come when the laundry is still on the dining room table (and help shove it back into the dryer!).
• The goal is not to impress but to bless.
• “We’re gonna build this meal together.”
• “We’re gonna build this conversation together.”
• People can bring their needs and their gifts.

Whether at home or in church, relationships, conversations, and events that only flow one way can turn into performances.

A family practicing hospitality will give to the people welcomed in; but true hospitality is a two-way street. People come to receive and to give.

The hosting family should try to have hotdogs on the grill, but if they run out, it’s okay to send a guest to the grocery store for more.

“The Gospel may come with a house key, but it also comes with a chore chart,” says Rosaria.

What are the spiritual benefits of sharing life, and being vulnerable with one another?

Rosaria believes that churches can err on the side of politeness, not wanting to get into people’s business. When difficulties arise, churches tend to have “a program for that,” when a person might actually need a “relationship for that” or a “home for that.

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Hebrews 10:24–25

The practice of hospitality comes with difficulties and awkwardness.

The Butterfields have watched many neighborhood children grow up at their table. They have witnessed transformation in neighbors and friends—mourned the loss of pets, walked with neighbors through battles with addiction, pornography, and life-endangering sin. Through it all they have seen Jesus draw people to himself… even the most unlikely of converts.