Top Ten Quotes: The Gospel Comes with a House Key

I’ve shared with you before that while I am a firm believer of corporate hospitality, I struggle like crazy with personal hospitality. I’m not against it, mind you, I’m just really terrible at carving out time for it.

That’s why I have a love/hate relationship with Rosaria Butterfield’s newest book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World. Love, because I know her message is right and true and needed. Hate, because it’s so deeply, deeply convicting. Hate, because I know these aren’t just words on a page. Rosaria lives five minutes down the road from me, so I know the things she writes are the things she does. I see her at Costco, I know personally some of the lives she’s impacted, and I know how radically ordinary her hospitality is. Hate, because I know these things can be done and should be done, and sometimes doing is the hard part for terminally self-centered people like me.

So getting through the book was less a walk in the park and more a kick in the head with a golf shoe. But I needed it. And I’d suspect you do, too.

Here are my top ten favorite quotes:

• We practice radically ordinary hospitality by bearing sacrifices of obedience that God’s people are called to offer.
• Who else but Bible-believing Christians can make redemptive sense out of tragedy? Who can see hope in the promises of God when the real, lived circumstances look dire? Who else knows that the sin that will undo me is my own, not my neighbor’s, no matter how big my neighbor’s sins appear?
• I know I can’t save anyone. Jesus alone saves, and all I do is show up.
• Having strong words and a weak relationship with your neighbor is violent. It captures the violent carelessness of our social media-infused age…Bridge building and remaking friendships cannot be rushed.
• …we are always one or the other – we are either hosts, or we are guests.
• Practicing radically ordinary hospitality is your street credibility to your post-Christian neighbors.
• Invest in your neighbors for the long haul, the hundreds of conversations that make up a neighborhood, and stop thinking of conversations with neighbors as sneaky evangelistic raids into their sinful lives.
• We live in a post-Christian world that is sick and tired of hearing from Christians. But who could argue with mercy-driven hospitality?
• Christian hospitality cares for the things that our neighbors care about.

• A hospitality house speaks for itself. Look at all the cars parked outside. Look at the lights on. Look at the kids playing on the tire swing. Look at the neighbors already gathering. Look at the open door. It’s here for all to see.

Order The Gospel Comes with a House Key.

See all posts in the Top Ten Quotes series.

See all the Top Ten Quotes books on Amazon:

Disclaimer: FTC watchdogs will probably want you to know that the authors represented did not ask for this endorsement, nor did they provide me with free swag in order to do so (unless specifically mentioned otherwise on the particular page). I’m just a really satisfied customer who wants to let you know where you can get some great products. So there. Further, if you order a resource from a link on any “Top Ten Quotes” page, I may receive a small affiliate commission from Amazon. If that bugs you, feel free to bypass my link and buy from a vendor of your choice. But still: buy it. I only promote books that have benefitted me and that I believe will benefit you.