In This Article
Hospitality and Growth
The season of hospitality has arrived. Many of you will welcome friends, family and maybe even strangers into your homes, churches and lives, to celebrate in gratitude for the abundance of life and well-being.
At Freedom House Ministries, we go to great lengths to extend hospitality to families we serve, volunteers and staff. Collectively we make the atmosphere of the building feel like a clean, inviting and homey space. We have tables in the dining room that make room for intimate conversations or larger gatherings for playing games and doing crafts. The bus stop area has kid friendly furniture and adult-sized seating to accommodate the intermittent arrivals of the school buses each day.
When a new family arrives, we place items in their room that reflect their favorite colors and superheroes of the children, along with handmade quilts and pillows for resting weary heads. One of our staff members, is committed to making a birthday cake for EVERY resident, regardless of age, especially for every child. This cake is tailored to their liking of color or theme, and it is typically enjoyed by many of their closest friends and other kids in the shelter. These small acts of hospitality and kindness are pivotal for all of us to feel connected through the most obvious, basic, common denominator—humanity.
I had the privilege of gathering our team for a really unique half day session of learning and growing together. During this staff summit, we learned about emotional intelligence from Troy Murphy, Senior Pastor at Green Bay Community Church. As he led us through the content and exercise of naming feelings, I was again struck by the simplistic power of spending time to catch up with feelings. It had been another busy week of juggling shelter operations and board meeting preparations. I had put in extra hours to respond to events at shelter and spent extra time making sure spreadsheets and presentations were tidy. I was burning the candle at both ends and my time at home this week, had been mostly just a place to rest.
As we waded through the exercise of naming emotions, I found a strange mix of emotions rising up about the day’s events and my heart was swelling with gratitude for Troy’s presence with my staff. I could sense it was just what we all needed. It was permission to not leave your emotions at the door and how to honor them. You see, in order to be welcoming, caring, loving and serving, we need to get right with our own emotions.
In my own experience, I have found if I don’t catch up to them, they catch me in ways that don’t serve me well. My intention for our time together at the staff summit was to support staff in caring for themselves. This is the kind of care that is required to be able to support the residents on their way to healing and living on their own again. You cannot give to others, what you don’t have for yourself.
It has always been my leadership goal to be an organization that impacts all who interact with us. I strive for all to feel that they are better now than before, because they spent time at Freedom House. This holds true for residents, volunteers and staff. We want to provide a culture for residents to transform into the best version of themselves, so they leave homelessness behind forever. We want volunteers to come here, be moved by the mission and be a change agent in the community. We want our staff, to love their work family as much as their home family and be the most effective in their role in our team.
So for us at Freedom House, during this holiday season, our work family and I will continue to welcome strangers who need a place to be and stay focused on becoming the best version of ourselves. If you would like to join the work family, by becoming a volunteer, please check out our volunteer portal. We would love to get to know you!
