"Hoosier Hospitality"

e-HUM Bishop

November 22, 2004

"Hoosier Hospitality"

We have been welcomed. Marsha and I have now attended the Indiana Area Welcome and District Welcome Events in all 18 districts. We have heard beautiful music from choirs, district choirs, children's groups, soloists, and praise teams. We have been fed. We have shaken hands until our hands were tired. We have met literally hundreds and hundreds of United Methodist clergy and laity -- all of whom have been gracious, hospitable, and eager to help us get started. In all of those gatherings I have shared about my own call to ministry, my conviction that God calls all of us (both clergy and lay) to ministry, and I have asked for us to pray for leaders for God's Harvest (both the leaders we have now and also for a new generation of leaders that we need here in Indiana). The response has been enthusiastic, warm, and welcoming.

We have been welcomed. We have experienced Hoosier Hospitality at its finest. We are glad to be here.

Hospitality is not just something to offer a new bishop in Indiana, it is a Biblical mandate for all people. The Old Testament teaches the rule of offering hospitality to strangers, to aliens, to travelers, and to those being persecuted. The New Testament reaffirms this rule of hospitality and even adds this admonition: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels unaware (Hebrews 13:2)."

I pray that all of our United Methodist congregations in Indiana will be places of hospitality, places where newcomers and visitors receive the kind of welcome each of us would want to receive. One of the great dangers we face as active church participants is the danger of being a "friendly church" where we are so busy being friendly with each other that we neglect being friendly to newcomers and visitors and strangers in our midst.

Thank you for the welcome you have given to Marsha and me. Please give that same spirited welcome to all who come our way in the United Methodist Church.

from Bishop Michael J. Coyner

Indiana Area of the United Methodist Church
"Making a Difference ... in Indiana
and around the world"

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