Nanette Sawyer, pastor at Wicker Park Grace, explores the realms in which we extend hospitality. Hospitality starts in our core, as we extend hospitality to God, inviting him to be in relationship with us. Encountering God through this core relationship makes it possible for us to then extend hospitality to our friends and neighbors, to strangers, even to our enemies and nature at large.
Spencer Burke, host of ThinkFwd, interviews Nanette at the Wicker Park Grace?s organic gardens. The gardens, which they inherited from the local Arts Council, are an opportunity to build community. Anyone can come and help with gardening, learn about urban agriculture and simply be together. Nanette sees the gardens are a door into Wicker Park Grace as well as a door from the church into the community?an opportunity to extend hospitality and an authentic welcome.
What is an authentic welcome? It is a welcome that does not apply pressure to achieve sameness. ?We have a center,? says Nanette, ?but not a boundary.? ...
