When we were first married, we were in a really fun ‘young marrieds’ group at church. Our leaders were very generous and very wealthy. They had a huge home with an indoor swimming pool, and they opened it to our group on a weekly basis. We had Bible studies, New Year’s Eve parties, and baby showers there. I was literally in their home dozens of times. It was great.

And it would have been easy to relax with this scenario. We had a tiny house. We didn’t have a lot of extra cash. And our leaders were doing enough hospitality to make up for any lack. But Ken and I decided that if we waited for the perfect circumstances, we might never be hospitable.

So we invited our group over. We told them to bring lawn chairs and their own meat to grill, and gave them our address with a date and time.

You’ll never guess what happened… They came!

I can’t tell you that it went perfectly. Our grill went out and people had to fry their burgers in our kitchen. And our driveway wasn’t exactly a picturesque setting to gather all of our friends (we had no back yard). But I can tell you that we had fun. One girl even sent me a note telling me what a great time they had. She said, “I can’t believe we fit 36 people in your living room!”

And better yet, our little driveway cookout seemed to spawn a whole bunch of front doors opening in the months to come. It made me wonder if being hospitable with little (rather than much) gives others permission to do the same.

Hospitality is about sharing. If you have a pool under your roof, great. But if not, you can still share. So, go ahead–invite some friends over. They might just come.