Our Home As A Place of Ministry

I finished a great book the other day.  Many of you may have already read it because I have seen the links to her ministry on your blogs.  It is Kisses From Katie by Katie Davis, a missionary in Uganda.   Katie moved to Uganda as an 18 year old and over just a few years adopted 14 girls.  She now runs a ministry that feeds hundreds of Ugandan children and pays for their education. 

The book is great on many levels.  It is a well written, honest picture of this young ladies' journey to follow Christ while sacrificing the things that would make her comfortable and then finding that God’s plan is always greater than our own.  I think that if 10 of us read it, we could all potentially walk away challenged in a different way. 

I expected to read it and and then have a desire to either go to Uganda or bring a child home from there.  I walked away though with something quite different.  Katie's example really challenged me to stop viewing my home as a place of refuge for our family and start viewing it as a place for outreach and ministry.  When we first moved here I felt very strongly that as the pastors family I needed to provide a safe home environment where we could all come to for recharging and family centered focus.   I remember once being volunteered for a fundraiser where people bid for the right to eat dinner at our house to raise money for youth camp.  This idea was terrifying to me because I felt like my family was always being evaluated outside these doors so why on earth would I open up my home for someone to pay for the right to come in and no doubt form opinions.   Can you tell I was pretty passionate and let's go ahead and say it, insecure about this?

Well Katie's view and example are much different.  I was shocked to read about this mother who moved in perfect strangers for weeks at a time so she could take care of their wounds and illnesses.  Not only that but she also opens up her home to hundreds of kids to come to eat and take a bath.  You know what the coolest part of all of this was?  Her girls started to do the same.  They learned what it meant to use their home as a place to bless others and this became a natural thing for them. I love that!

Okay so I am not quite ready to say I was completely wrong to want to use my home as a place of refuge, but I am definitely challenged now to ask how God might want to use my home to bless others and to teach my children how to live out the Gospel.