The Hospitality Interruption

 Some people are born with a gift for hospitality. I'm not sure I was born with it — but I was raised in it. Growing up in the 1970s, my family owned a small business, and from an early age I absorbed the culture of that store like a sponge. The customer is always right. Treat everyone with respect. Value every person who walks through the door. Those weren't just business principles — they became the way I saw people. That foundation followed me everywhere. In the mid 1990s, I made a major career pivot and began serving churches as a Business Manager. Over the next 30 years, across four different churches, I kept finding myself in the same role — leading Guest Services. It turned out that everything I had learned about treating customers well translated beautifully into how we welcome church members and first-time guests. My first Guest Services experience was humble by any measure. A small church of about 100 people, a rolling desk in the foyer, and a stack of brochures. ...

Practicing hospitality toward others isn't always easy. Life gets busy, frustrations build, and we find ourselves laser-focused on our own agenda — often missing the people right in front of us. Recently, I was standing in line at Sam's Club making a return when I noticed the woman ahead of me was struggling. The employee helping her was growing frustrated too. The issue? A receipt locked inside an app that kept throwing an error message every time she tried to log in. I stepped in quietly and offered to help. I became the calm go-between, working alongside the employee until we finally got the return processed. Afterward, I high-fived her and said, "Good job." Her face lit up instantly. It's going to happen to all of us. We're on a mission, in a hurry, and something goes sideways. But that day I was reminded that one small interruption — choosing hospitality over frustration — can shift the entire atmosphere of a moment. We don't have to be perfect. ...

  What a chaotic Christmas parade night taught me about grace under pressure It was a last-minute decision. I turned to my wife and said, "Let's go to the Christmas parade." Simple enough. The annual Burleson Christmas Parade in Old Town — what we locals call our downtown area — was the perfect spontaneous plan for a cold winter evening. We parked and made our way toward Old Town central, and that's when it hit us. Miles of people. Kids bundled up in lawn chairs lining the curbs, faces lit with anticipation. Everyone wrapped so thick in coats and scarves they looked like they were headed to the ski slopes, not a Texas street parade. We ducked into the pizza and wings place on the corner. The moment we opened the door — bam. Wall to wall people. A crowd of hungry, cold parade-goers all hovering around the hostess stand, everyone bidding for a table like it was an auction. I squeezed up, put our name on the list, and was told to expect a 20-minute wait. They'd...