(Live) Bonus Episode: What Mister Rogers Can Teach Us About Hospitality

Welcome to The Neighborhood, a Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. I'm your host, Rick Lee James, of rickleejames.com, and I run the Mr. Rogers Quotes Twitter account found @MrRogersSay. As we again walk into this podcast neighborhood, I want you to know that no matter where you are from, you are welcome here. I'm glad to be your neighbor. Every daughter, every son, every tribe, every tongue, in the spirit of Fred Rogers and the life of welcome that he lived, welcome to the neighborhood. This is another bonus episode of the show. It's not part of our regular season, but we're tacking it on to season 1. This is something that I did a few weeks ago. I was in Cedarville, Ohio, and was invited to speak at a conference. I think there was around 1,000 Christian ministers there. So right away, I want to let you know that this was a workshop I did called Welcome to the Neighborhood: What Mr. Rogers Can Teach Us About Hospitality in Worship. Now, like Fred Rogers, I am a minister, and I want you to know that this is not intended for those of you who are not Christians that listen to this show, because we have all kinds of people that listen to this show. The intention of today's show is not to proselytize you or evangelize you or anything like that. That will never be the purpose of this show. This is a Fred Rogers Rogers Tribute Podcast. And basically the reason that I am sharing this is because my whole workshop was really a tribute to Fred Rogers and what he can teach those of us— when I say us, I mean people like me who lead music or who pastor in churches and who can find ways of being hospitable. Religion has gotten a bad rap, especially in these days that we live in, where Christianity especially seems to be associated with so many things that Christianity should not be associated with. And it was my goal that hopefully as I was talking to this room full of ministers at this conference, that I could present some ways that we could, in the spirit of what Fred Rogers did in his life and an example and the way that he lived his life, be people of hospitality. Whether that was the way that Fred got up each morning and dedicated certain moments of his life to prayer and letter writing and exercise and things like that. So things that we can do to actually welcome our communities in. So understand that as we go in. I know that some of you that listen, you have different beliefs, and that's okay. And we're not trying to necessarily change your beliefs on this show, but that's the context of where I was, and that's what I am presenting to you today as it was. There's a lot about Fred Rogers and his life, and maybe you'll be able to pick up some new information you didn't know about. So I hope you enjoy today's episode. Thank you for being here as always and listening to Welcome to the Neighborhood. I'm glad to be your neighbor, and I'm glad that you're here with us today.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor.

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine? As a neighborly way in this beautiful neighborhood, neighborly way for beauty, would you be mine? Would you be mine? I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you. So let's make the most of this beautiful day. Since we're together, might as well say, Would you be mine? Should you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor? Won't you please? Won't you please? Please won't you be my neighbor?

Okay, stop this before the next video strikes up.

So that is a— Stop!

Sorry everybody. So that's where we're going today. Welcome to the neighborhood, everybody. It's good to have you here with us today. I am Rick Lee James. Just to tell you a little bit about myself, some of you have stopped by my booth and have said hello. I'm a singer and songwriter and worship leader by trade. I actually— they— it was nice that they put my booth right next to LifeWay Worship because most of my music is published through LifeWay Worship. So when people stop by the booth and go, "What kind of music? Where can I get it?" And I go, "There." So it's a lot of fun to do that. But it's always a great thrill for me to get to come to Worship 424. Over the past couple of years, something changed in my life. It's to where I'm not just a worship leader anymore and not just a singer-songwriter anymore. I'm actually doing a lot more in the neighborhood these days. It was about 3 years ago, maybe just a little less than that, I started a Twitter account that you see up here. It's just called @MrRogersSay. I wanted to call it Mr. Rogers Says, but I ran out of letters, so it just stuck. I did nothing to promote this Twitter account in any way. Great in any way at all. I just kind of wanted to do something because I was just kind of feeling depressed about the state of the world, you know. Everybody was so divided. Not like now where everybody loves each other and we're in full unity. Everybody in politics is just hugging each other and it's wonderful. But no, I was just kind of feeling downhearted and I had In the last, I don't know, probably 6 years ago, I had read a really wonderful book called The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers by Amy Hollingsworth. If you ever are looking for a really good book, Amy Hollingsworth, The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers. I had read this book and like probably many of you, I'm just curious, how many of you grew up watching The Neighborhood? Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. So a lot of us in here have grown up with it. If you're like me, I grew up watching it, but then kind of grew up and stopped thinking about it, you know, too much. Just wasn't something that as an adult that's really on your radar too much anymore. And especially after Fred Rogers passed, you know, I'd see something about him every now and then, and I thought, oh, that's sweet, that's nice. But when I read this book, The Simple Faith of Mr. Rogers, I realized like there was so much more to him than what I had even realized. I knew he was a minister. I knew he did the show for a long time, but that was about all I had known. But what I didn't know was that he was gonna end up becoming one of my spiritual heroes in life. And like learning about him, the— how intentional he was to be even more Mr. Rogers off-screen than he was on-screen. You know, that he intentionally cultivated this type of life. So that brings me to this time. I just kind of find myself in a place like I just needed some kindness. And Twitter, if you're on Twitter, is a place that's super kind all the time. It's not. So I simply started this Twitter account and I just started putting quotes by Mr. Rogers. On there. And at first I had like 2 followers, 3 followers, and nothing big at all. One day I opened up the account and I realized, wow, we had like 100 more followers today. And then the next day, wow, we had like 500 followers today. And then we had like— it just kept really growing. And it grew so much. And again, all I was doing was just posting these quotes. By the way, let me show you an example if you're not on Twitter. If you don't follow the account at all. It's literally just stuff like this. Today I put this because I was letting people know I was going to be doing this workshop. But it's usually just stuff like, I don't believe that children when they are very young need to be told about all the troubles of this world, or different quotes. And so I literally just will post Mr. Rogers-related stuff on there. It grew and it grew. And every day I would get messages from people. And I would get messages that I would have never expected. I got messages like— and these are private messages, they weren't public— people would say, "I was about to end my life tonight. And I came across this quote. And for whatever reason, I stopped." I would hear things like, "You don't know what this means to me." my marriage is just about over, and I didn't know what I was gonna do. And somehow this quote made me stop and reevaluate some things in life. And I was getting them like every week, sometimes every day, just these little messages. And I wasn't doing anything as me, I was just posting Fred Rogers quotes, okay? So what makes that so interesting is when you dive into the life of Fred Rogers, you see that that kind of stuff happened to Him all the time. And he was so prayerful about his life, and he was so prayerful about cultivating this type of lifestyle, that he would say to people when they would say things like that to him, if they heard something that he didn't even necessarily say, like on a television show, there was a lot of different times when somebody would say, "I was in a hotel room and I was strung out on drugs, I was about the end of my life." for whatever reason you came on the TV and it pulled me out of it. And I haven't gone back to drugs since. Like, there's stories like that. And Fred would say to them— sorry, I should call him Mr. Rogers, I don't know him personally, but I often call him Fred because it feels like such a— he would want me to, you know. And he would say to them something like this, he'd say, well, that was the Holy Spirit taking my words and giving to you what you needed to hear in that moment. And he would usually talk with them, sometimes he would pray with them if it was a personal conversation. He'd sometimes reply that way in letters, but he was always so quick to turn it back to who God was and what God was doing in those moments. So, um, not long ago, a few months ago, Sony Pictures reached out to me and they asked if I would help them with promoting the new movie through the Twitter site. Plus, I started hosting this podcast because this Twitter feed went so big. I host this podcast called Welcome to the Neighborhood, a Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. And we do different things. And so, on the course of the show so far, season 1, it was just me and my co-host just interviewing people. But then, because of Sony Pictures' involvement, we then brought on Tom Junod, who is who the movie was based on, the journalist who wrote the story. It was great to sit down with him and just be able to have a conversation about what he learned about life, about following God, about all kinds of things. Just the way that his life turned around from having relationship and the hospitality that Fred Rogers showed to him. I got to have musicians come on my show, like, and I'm blanking on all of them now, John Secada, Jackie Velasquez, Lee Greenwood, Tom Bergeron, who hosts Dancing with the Stars. And like all these people have come on the show. I've just had a great time talking with them. And I found this, everybody who like grew up in some way with Mr. Rogers, everybody seems to have a Fred Rogers story. You know, like in some way that he connected with them. In some way. So a lot of what I do is I just sit down with people and I ask them, so what's your Mr. Rogers story? You know. And they all have them, you know, and suddenly it takes you back to this place. So needless to say, this was something— of all the promoting that I tried to do in my life as a songwriter, what you are constantly trying to do is, you know, well, I need to find a place to play next week. I need to, you know, I'm pitching a song and I'm trying to do this. All the things I try to do, I have never had the response to something that I didn't try to do like this. I started feeling like pretty quick this was a God thing that was going on. So I started replying to these people that were writing to me, and I tried to say something similar to what Fred Rogers would say, just because I'm trying to be true to his spirit. And I'll try to tell people, "Thank you for sharing that with me, and I really truly believe that was the Holy Spirit working to try and speak to you what you needed to hear." And I've encountered so many people. I meet people who are believers, I meet people who are not believers, I meet people who are lapsed believers, I meet people who are atheists, and all of us, we're able to find some sort of a connection together, partially through the kindness and the grace that God used in this man, you know, Fred Rogers. It's kind of fascinating when you come about it. So I'm gonna talk a little bit today about some things that I think in worship we can find and use in the hospitality that we see exhibited through like Fred Rogers. So here we go. It's not gonna be like a ton of notes. If you want to take a note here and then, that's great. I'll try to give you some different points. But mostly I just want us to kinda maybe learn and even discuss some stuff together today, okay? So I already got a great response about who watches the show. If I had time, I'd love to get like everybody's Mr. Rogers story because you probably all have like a unique way of some way that he touched you or something that you can think about like that you have this memory or just maybe a feeling that's associated with it. It's a very special thing. But when you think about one thing that's very special to me, one thing I focused in on in the first season of Welcome to the The Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers Tribute Podcast. Every episode, I didn't tell people we were doing this because it's not an overtly religious show, okay? I'm trying to be true to the spirit of Fred Rogers and what he did. I'm not there to necessarily evangelize or proselytize. I'm talking about different things that were true about his life and things that were true about him. So what me and my co-host did, we had this idea of every week in the first season, for 9 weeks we were gonna look at a different fruit of the Spirit. And I didn't tell people we were doing this till the very end. But we started out with joy, and we started, that episode was the joy of Fred Rogers, and we talked about joy and different things that were exhibited. Because the thing that's so true about him is if you go through all the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, if you know them you can say them with me, peace, patience, kindness, Goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. All these things are exhibited. They're not always talked about, but they're always there. They're always shown. They're always seen throughout these shows that he would do. So hospitality, number one, that I think we can do in our worship services and in our worship and in our churches. This is the first thing that I want us to think about. About together today. The first thing we can do and learn from Fred Rogers is this: to cultivate a holy life through prayer. It sounds simple, but it's a hard one. To cultivate a holy life through prayer. The thing that I've learned that is so interesting about him is this Fred Rogers persona on television really did mirror his real life image. And the more people I've met that knew him over the years, they all tell me the exact same thing. He was more Mr. Rogers off screen than he was on screen. Like he was even more that kind of kind and gentle and gracious person. So his real image, R-E-E-L, being on the reel, was the same as the real, R-E-A-L, A-L. So listen to some of the ways that first he cultivated this life of faithfulness. These are some things that we can do behind the scenes before we even walk in the doors of our churches, okay? This was sort of his daily routine. 5 o'clock in the morning. Some of you are already going, "Uh-uh." It doesn't have to be this way for everybody, but this is what he did. 5 o'clock in the morning, he would wake up for at least 1 hour of Bible study and prayer. He intentionally woke up every morning for that reason. Had famously long lists of people he would pray for. Famously might not be a good word, but he definitely had long lists of people. Have any of you seen the new film that came out that Tom Hanks was in? There's a brief scene in the movie, I wish they would have focused on a little bit more, but there is a brief scene in the movie where he's kneeling at a bed and he's praying and he's and he's calling out names. Sorry, I get a little emotional. I probably will throughout. Sorry, I'm a big weenie. But the idea that you're calling out somebody's name in prayer, I mean, that's a powerful thing. Sometimes we say, "Oh, I'll pray for you," and that's about the end of it for a lot of us. But to think that someone actually took the time to write down your name to sit down. And it was an especially poignant moment in the film to me just to hear names being called out, you know, like, like, like, I'm specifically praying for this person. Like, he didn't just say he was gonna pray, he really did it. So at 5 AM, that was his routine. He would read, he would study the Bible, sometimes he would reply to fan mail, and then he would go from there, he would go to where he swam and he would swim laps every day. He made a promise to himself he was gonna do that. And even that was a prayerful act for him. He was good friends with Henry Nouwen. If you've ever read any books by Henry Nouwen, and Henry's death was a very traumatic thing for Fred. He was very close to him. And Henry Nouwen taught him a prayer from the Taizé community, Jubilate Deo, Jubilate Deo. Hallelujah. He would sing that every morning, and that means rejoice in the Lord, rejoice in the Lord, hallelujah. So before he would dive into that pool every morning, he would sing it out loud. He would do it quietly, but he would sing every morning, Jubilate Deo, Jubilate Deo, hallelujah, and he'd dive into the pool. I really wanted them to put that in the movie. Of course they didn't, but wouldn't that have been cool? So even swimming turned into an act of prayer. For him. And he would get out and dry off, and I've heard some writers say it was like he was wet as if he had gotten out renewed and refreshed from a renewal of his baptism each day whenever he got out of the pool. He didn't drink and he didn't smoke. He didn't eat meat because he didn't want to eat anything that had a mother. True story. And he would weigh in daily. You probably know this because it's gotten to be such a, like, big fact, but he weighed 143. And he took a lot of pride in that because 143 to him— one, there's one word, or one letter in the word "I." There's four letters in the word "love," L-O-V-E. And three, "you," Y-O-U. So 143, his weight, even what he weighed, meant "I love you" to Fred Rogers. So, and he would often use that number. He would write in notes to people, 143, and it was just this code. If you saw 143— little trivia fact, because this has become such a big part of my life, my most recent album that I made is called Thunder, and I had it printed in vinyl, and on the vinyl they give you the option of having something engraved as far as a number. I said, do I get to put 'Can I pick the number?' And they said, 'Yeah.' I said, 'Let's do 143.' So if you look really, really close in the vinyl, like in the wax, it says RLJ, Rick Lee James, -143, just because of the association with Mr. Rogers. So that number is kind of like— I've given up on weighing 143. That's just not gonna happen. But the idea that I like, that idea that we could cultivate, you know, sort of that in our life. So anyway, he would get out of the pool, he would weigh in, And almost every day it was 1:43. He kind of prided himself on that. And then he would go to the studio and the praying would continue because every day before he walked into the studio he said this, he says, "When I walk in the studio door each day, I say, 'Dear God, let some word that is heard be yours.'" I have started praying that prayer before I walk out on the platform on Sunday morning.

Morning.

Dear God, let some word that is heard be yours. You know, we like to fill the silence, but wouldn't it be great if we could focus our prayers in that way when we come to worship and we just say, Lord, I don't care if every guitar string breaks today, if the piano is out of tune, if the pastor does a terrible sermon. "It doesn't matter if the Holy Spirit is working. And Lord, please, just let some word that's heard be yours today." I love that. It's one of my favorite things that I ever learned about Fred. And his spoken words on television, they were a focus of prayer in the way that he was showing, if not telling all the time. He was showing different things about the kingdom of God. In fact, he was the first televangelist as far as I can find. Because he was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church. Still to this day the only one they've ever commissioned with a ministry as an evangelist to children and families through television. Ironically, they never supported him with any money. He was actually asked a few times, "Could you help support the show?" And the church was like, "No, but you're one of ours, so go on." So it was interesting. He had to raise all of his his own funding and do all that himself. But when you think about it, he was probably the first and maybe the best televangelist we've ever had when it comes down to displaying what it means to live out the Kingdom of God. And one thing that he would also do, continuing with this idea of cultivating a life of prayer, he would often ask people to pray for him too. Anybody else have trouble with that sometimes? I just had surgery on my arm, which is why— I didn't get burnt or something. I actually had surgery on my arm about a week ago, so I've had this wrap on my arm. And the hardest thing for me to do before that was to be like, "Will you pray for me?" I don't know why it's so hard. But he was not shy about it. He would often go to people who, there's a very great story if you ever get to read Can You Say Hero, the story that Tom Junod wrote. There's a story in there of a boy that had a very serious affliction. I think it might have been a severe form of autism. I'd have to look up to read what it was. But it just seemed like he could not calm down. He had a problem like he had to kind of communicate over a computer because he couldn't talk right. He just had multiple afflictions. And for some reason Fred was able to kind of calm him down. And one way that he calmed him down was he came in and he asked him to pray for him. This little boy who had so many ailments and so many afflictions, nobody ever thought to actually ask him to pray, to do something, because he was always being cared for. And so Tom Junod, who wrote the article, as they walked it was obvious this boy was amazed that he asked was asked by Fred Rogers, "Will you pray for me?" And Tom said to Fred, said, "How did you know that was going to calm him down?" And he said, "Oh, I didn't do it for him. I did it for me." He said, "I figured that anybody who is facing that much in their life must be awfully close to God. And I think I need their prayers." And they would do that. They show a little bit of that in the movie. In the film, they have a lot of different characters that are not the actual story that happened, but it's something that did happen to someone. To somebody along the way. So you see some of that in the film too. So he cultivated this life of prayer. And the last thing I wanted to focus in on before I get to the next hospitality point, like he would invite when he would go to speak at commencement ceremonies, and he did a lot of them throughout his lifetime. He would go and speak at graduations and he would often start out by just inviting the students to sing along with him. So the he might get up and they would start singing, you know, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood," and before you knew it the whole place was singing, you know, which was kind of funny. But then he would go in and he would say something like this. He would have these written prayers that he planned out in advance. By the way, he planned a lot. Like, he did everything very intentionally whenever he came together. It seemed very off the cuff, but he wrote everything and was very meticulous. So he— this is one instance of a prayer that he said at one of these graduations. He said, Dear God, please inspire our hearts to come ever closer to you. We pray for those people who know us and accept us as we are, those people who encourage us to see what's really fine in life. We pray for all those people of your world, our sisters and our brothers whose names we may not know but whose lives are ultimately precious in your sight. With all our hearts, we pray for all your children everywhere. Yes, everywhere. And he, he emphatically stressed that last word, everywhere. And finally, we offer our strengths and our weaknesses, our joys and our sorrows to your never-ending care. Help us to remember all through our lives that we never need to do difficult things alone. That your presence is simply for the asking, and our ultimate future is assured by your unselfish love. In our deepest gratitude, we offer this prayer. Amen. You know, it's pretty powerful prayers, you know, when he would pray them together. So that was the first thing. Cultivate a holy life through prayer. And that's one of the One of the best things I think we can do for our congregations— I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to learn how to do it more and more. As I read more about Fred Rogers' life, I mean, he was almost like John Wesley, like in the way that he would go to bed early and wake up— or go to bed early and wake up early so he could have time to pray, and he would write, not sermons necessarily, but it was kind of like that. So I think we can do a lot. So think about maybe some ways you can do that. And when I say cultivate a life of prayer, I do mean that it's something we have to work at, right? Doesn't it seem like it should be the easiest thing in the world to do, to just pray? But how easy is it really? Like, you really do almost have to carve it out in your calendar. Like, today I'm going to wake up, this will be my time, and I'll start praying. I'll start it, you know, I'm gonna do it today. So that's just one suggestion. We may take some time later if we have time at the end. I think all of you in here probably have some good suggestions for how to cultivate these things. I'm guessing in a room like this some of you could probably teach this a lot better than I could, especially when we talk about prayer. So if we have time later, I might just ask for some suggestions from some of you. Say, "Give us some tips. How do we become better in our prayer life?" But I want to move on for now, so be thinking about those things for later. Hospitality number 2: relationship. Being in relationship with people. The essence really of prayer is relationship, isn't it? I mean, one leads into the next. Our relationship with God, our relationship with people, they all are part of the same relationship really. It really is that way. There was a 6-year-old viewer of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood named Amy Meeder, and at 6 years old she sent a drawing to Mr. Rogers and for him with a letter that promised that she was going to heaven. She wrote in the letter, she wanted Mr. Rogers to know that, that she had asked Jesus in her heart and she was going to heaven. And this is what Mr. Rogers wrote back to her. He said, "You told me that you have accepted Jesus as your Savior. It means a lot to me to know that. And I appreciate the scripture verse that you sent. I am an ordained Presbyterian minister and I want you to know that Jesus is important to me too. I hope that God's love and peace come through my work on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. And this is the thing. He always wrote back to the people that wrote to him. He tried in some way to have a connection to everybody. He had thousands of letters.

Okay?

Again, this is part of the life that he cultivated. I'm bad about getting an email back to people sometimes. He had to take the time, often on a typewriter, to type these things out. In the research that I've done and that other people have done, we have never found a case of anyone that he did not reply back to. Everybody, as far as we know, got a reply if they wrote to Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers, that relationship meant that much to him, he wrote them back. You know, that's, if that was the only thing he ever did, like they ought to give him a stamp for that. You know, I mean, that's amazing. But he always wrote back. And the show really was about relationships. And it was sometimes about difficult relationships. I don't know if we realize that. If you're an adult and you look back, you can realize some of these things he was building into the show. Think about just a few of the relationships that he had on the show. There was Officer Clemmons, who was a black police officer in a time when that actually was very controversial, even to have him on the show at that time. There had been some riots that had been going on. There had been some— if you watch some of the documentaries or the movie, you'll see some of this. But I had Francois Clemmons on my podcast, and he just messaged me last week, and he has a new book coming out, and we might get to talk about it a little bit more. But he didn't— Officer Clemmons, Francois Clemmons, the actor, he did not want to play a police officer on the show because to him, he grew up in a neighborhood where the police were not nice. And he said, I was offended that he would ask me to want to be a police police officer on that show. But the more that he talked to him about it, he realized this was Fred's way of, we're going to deal with this race problem on the show, and we're going to do it in a way that's loving, and I'm going to be putting my feet in the same pool with him, and I'm going to dry his feet. And if you look back at some of those shows, like, this relationship that was there was almost like Fred Rogers was doing a foot washing. You know, on that show. It's amazing if you look back at some of the footage. So we had people like that. So the people and the relationships on the show, there was characters like Officer Clemens, there was characters like Handyman Negri, who by the way was a great jazz guitarist. He only retired from playing jazz recently. And he talks about how he doesn't know the first thing about being a handyman in real life. But he was a great, is a great guitarist. There was Chuck Aber, Neighbor Aber as they would call him. There was Lady Aberlin who was on the show, Chef Brockett. There's an actor who's pretty famous, Keith David, who was on the show. There was Mayor Maggie Stewart who was not just the first female mayor on TV, but the first female black mayor. Not just on TV, but anywhere. In real life, even. There was Mr. McFeely, who was named after Fred's grandfather. Fred Rogers' name was Fred McFeely Rogers. So Mr. McFeely was always on there. And so relationships were always like part of this show too. There's one great episode where Mr. McFeely is coming in and rushing Mr. Rogers. And Mr. Rogers is trying to put this thing together so he can send it off with Mr. Mr. McFeely. And the whole episode is about dealing with frustrations and when people are making you mad and angry. And so Mr. McFeely comes in and he's like, "Speedy delivery!

Gotta go!

Gotta go! Gotta go!" You know, he's just pressuring Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rogers is getting frustrated and he can't put this thing together. And he has to send it off with Mr. McFeely because he's in such a rush. And at some point in the show he has to tell Mr. McFeely, "You made me frustrated." You know, "I was angry." at this. And there were so many times throughout the show that he would actually deal with not just like, hey, you're my friend, and it's this friendly neighborhood. We have this picture of like, oh, it's just this child-friendly, wonderful place. But like, he dealt with like actual relationship problems that you would come in contact with on the show. Sometimes they were— I mean, they were always to be viewed through a child because he especially focused on preschool children, but he was dealing with like relationships in church. In church we have these kind of things, don't we? Like there's times we have to actually deal with conflict. I know some of us feel like all we do is deal with conflict when we're in church. But there are healthy ways to deal with that, and I don't think we can do it properly unless we actually have relationship with the people that we're with. How many of us in here— just curiosity— how many of us lead music or are part of the music team in some way on Sunday morning at your church? Most of us in here. It's hard sometimes to get to the people, isn't it? Like, I find it is sometimes because we're so busy on the platform. Excuse me. For me on a Sunday morning, it's like, well, I gotta get the guitars back in the cases, I gotta move this and there, and then before service we're in there before everybody else starts. So you have to like make an extra effort sometimes to actually have relationships in the church, don't you? Sometimes we think our relationships are only the ones that are on the platform with us. But we're really supposed to be the body of Christ. And there are times that, like, they're gonna need us in the hospital room as much as they're gonna need us on the platform, if not more. They're gonna need us in those situations. And if we don't have relationships deeply with our people, good, bad, whatever, it's hard to be there for them in times when they really are going to need us. Or also when we're going to need them. Getting back to, "Will you pray for me?" There's times that we, those of us in ministry, we need that from them as well. So these relationships were so important. So that's maybe another one we could talk about if we had more time later, suggestions on keeping relationships. Fresh. But I want to get into the third hospitality before we run out of time. Do we have until 3:15? Is that when we—

3 o'clock.

3 o'clock, okay, 3:15 is the last session. Okay, I'll move along quickly. So hospitality 3, this is something that I think is very interesting, routine and responsibility. Okay, I'm just going to lump them together, routine and responsibility.

Responsibility.

Those two things, routine and responsibility, they were foundational for Fred Rogers' ministry and his show. And I'm gonna call it a ministry because he considered it that. Every day, Mr. Rogers on the show, he entered the house and he did the same thing. We watched it at the beginning, remember? He came in And he sang a peppy song when he started and then the show went on. Let me show you how consistent he was with what he did from the start to the finish of that show. If you've never seen this, it's fascinating. Notice how little changes on the set of this show. This is the first time and the last time that he came into the neighborhood on the show throughout the course of the, I think, what was it, 45 or 50 years that the show was on. TV. I can't remember exactly. But here we go. Look at how little the set changes, how little anything changes from the first one to the last one.

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood. A beautiful day for a neighbor would Could you be mine? Could you be mine? It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood. A neighborly day for a beauty. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you. So let's make the most of it. Of this beautiful day. Since we're together, we might as well say, would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor? Won't you please, won't you please, please won't you be my neighbor? Hi, glad to see you today. I shall button my buttons on the sweater, change my shoes, and get ready to have some time with you in this very special studio of ours. Do you ever change your shoes when you come home from someplace? Home or school or even work or—

get ready to play?

How are you doing with your tying? Took me a long time to learn how to make that knot. And that into a bow. But I kept practicing and practicing and practicing and finally learned quickly. It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? It's a neighborly day in this neighborhood, a neighborly day for beauty. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.

Like you.

I've always wanted to live in the neighborhood with you, so let's make the most of this beautiful day, beautiful day. Since we're together, we might as well say, would you be mine, would you be mine?

Won't you be my neighbor?

Won't you Please, won't you please, please won't you be my neighbor.

It is a beautiful day. Doesn't matter what it's like outside, can be a beautiful day inside. All right, so did you notice on there just, um, a few things changed? I mean, the set changes a little bit. The sweater was a button-up at first, it was a zipper later. Those are not huge changes when it comes to it. He was not afraid to put in the takes that didn't work quite right. I like on that last one how the zipper didn't quite— beautiful day, beautiful day. And he would leave those things in there. By the way, if you want some encouragement in your ministry and you use Instagram, Instagram, this is totally not Mr. Rogers, but go to Worship Fails, @worshipfails by the way. You'll see a bunch of really funny things done in very good-natured fun because you'll see like huge churches, small churches, medium-sized churches, all of us have things that go wrong from time to time, alright? And it's just kind of good for the soul to laugh sometimes at things that happen. Well, he was good about that. And he was consistent. Throughout the show there was a number of things that it didn't always go right. And he would just leave it in. He'd say, "It's okay. Kids need to understand that sometimes the things we plan don't happen the way we planned them to go, and it's okay." So, but he was routine, you know. He had this consistency about him. It was very important that people saw him as being consistent. So he came in and he would sing this peppy song every time when he came in, when he started. He put on his cardigan, whether it was a button-up or a zip-up. It started out he was in a trench coat, you know, in the beginning, and then it kind of turned from a suit coat into whatever. He would usually feed the fish at some part of the show. There was just a number of routines. He'd change his shoes, which by the way, if you've ever tried to sing and change your shoes at the same time, you know, I considered it for like a half a second, like maybe I should do that to start. I'll change my shoes and, you know, sing. And no way. I would— I couldn't do it, it's hard to do while you're doing that. But routines are something that are comforting to children and he knew that. And so he wanted it to be something that children, especially the young children he worked with, could find comfort in. And maintaining a daily routine was something that for him was very important. We talked about this consistency in his life, of cultivating that kind of life of prayer, but that consistency consistency went in all of his life. I think it's something that in our churches and in our worship services and things, we may not understand this because we're always wanting to try to find the next big thing and kind of the next thing to really draw people in and bring us about. And I think that's okay. It's okay to be innovative and to try some new things, but it's also helpful to remember that the routine sometimes of our services is also what can bring some comfort and help to people, like when it becomes familiar. Sometimes even helping people become familiar with it in ways that they don't realize it's becoming something new. There was a couple great things that happened last night. It was like the perfect way to talk about this. Remember when Travis last night, he said, "Gonna teach you a new song tonight." So he didn't just start out singing the song and all of a sudden you're into it and expected to follow along. First what he did was he caught us that chorus first, right? And he had already created such a hospitable atmosphere in the room, you kind of felt like you were all family sitting in the living room, right? I mean, it's a rare thing that you can find someone that can be that way in a crowd of people, but it kind of felt that way, didn't it? Or you're kind of in your small church. So he started even teaching this new song in a very hospitable way that helped everybody get comfortable with it first, you know, so that by the time we actually sang the song, without realizing it, we knew it already, you know, when we dove into it. There's something about like the routine of what we do on a given Sunday. I'm not saying we should never change anything. I think it's okay to be innovative, but realize that Sometimes those things that we do on a consistent manner, those really do help us when we come to worship. Sometimes people get lost when things are changing too much and too rapidly all the time. Sometimes I think it would be a little bit more helpful if we're gonna use like the children's show metaphor, if we're a little bit more Mr. Rogers and a little less Sesame Street. You know what I mean? And I love Sesame Street too, but Sesame Street was like constantly going and here's the next thing and flip to that one and go to that one and go to that one. And there's something about the routine that is actually— it's a challenge to keep that routine going, but it's something that can actually help us in the long run if we can find like these essential things that we need to hold on to in the course of a worship service especially. There are some things that we really are a benefit to us and I think a benefit to our people. And there's a sense of responsibility that he called us to, like in this Rick Lee James' television show, and there was these things like feeding the fish, for example, throughout the show. He needed to— he was using that as kind of a way to show like, "Hey, if you have a pet, you have a responsibility. You gotta feed the pet. It's part of what we do." He would take time on the show to teach about brushing teeth and this responsibility and all the things that all of us need to know at some point, and they seem very basic, but there was a sense of like the show was not just doing routine, but it was also a giving of responsibility. That's part of what we do as ministers, as people who are doing anything in a ministry capacity. We're sharing that responsibility too. And sometimes one of the most hospitable things we can do if we're gonna do something new is to kinda, again, teach them before what it is that we're gonna do, take them along with us and then kind of pass those things along to kind of teach the language of what we're doing. Has anyone in here ever been a part of a Taizé service before? You ever heard of Taizé? Taizé is a place in France and it's kind of a monastic community and they have this really beautiful music. Usually it's like a one-word phrase from a psalm that will be sung. And so in our community we have these Taisei services that several of our churches from different denominations come together. The songs are literally like, "Hear my prayer, O Lord," and we might sing that like 5 times through. It will be something that simple, or "Bless the Lord my soul, bless His holy name," and we will sing that together. Then we stop and we take like 5 minutes of silence and prayer, and then someone will get up and read a responsive reading. It turns out to be like really beautiful services, but if you've never been in a service before, you're kind of wondering, like, is somebody gonna say something? Like, it's been 5 minutes and there's literally been nothing happen. And I was on the planning committee for these services, and when I first came on, I was new to it the first time I went into that service, and I was just playing guitar along, and I didn't know what was gonna come next. And nobody explained it in the service, like what was going to happen. Even if somebody just got up and said, "Hey, tonight we're going to do this and it may be unfamiliar to you, so let me help you understand what's going on here. There's going to be some long periods of silence." That's okay because we want to focus in on what God might be speaking to us. So we're going to find by candlelight tonight, we're going to sing a prayerful song and then we're going to sit in silence for 5 minutes, which is an eternity if you've never done that before. So I made that suggestion and we did that in the next service and it was amazing how freeing that was to people when they just understood what was expected of them. Because they didn't wonder, like, well, how long is this service and are we going to ever talk again and things like that that go on. So all that is to say it's hospitable if we can set up those expectations And if we're teaching something new, try to help bring our people along with us. These are things I'm sure you all know, but just some things that I get from Mr. Rogers. And then the way that we pass on responsibility. Okay, hospitality number 4, I'm gonna keep going. This is maybe the most important one. I don't know quite how Mr. Rogers did this. But he really used silence in a way that was unique. And he used silence in such a way that when he was speaking to you on the screen, you felt like you were being listened to. Think about that. If you ever just sit down and watch that show again, you almost get the sense that even though he's talking and you're watching his show, that he's listening to you as well. Because he comes in and he's asking these questions, you know, like he might come in one week and say, "Hey, you know what I have with me this week?" And it might be inside of a box or something and say, "Have you ever seen one of those before?" For those listening to the audio, I'm holding up the audio recorder right now. And then, "See, let's take a look at it." And then he'd say, "This is a digital recorder," which they didn't have, I don't think, while his show was on. But if he did, he'd go into it and then he'd say, "Do you know what this button does? Have you ever thought about that before?" And before you knew it, 'Cause I've seen it with my son who's 7 now. He doesn't watch it quite as much as he did. But my son will respond to it like, "Yeah, I've seen that. I've got that." Or things like that. It's a very interesting style of communication in the way that he would use the silent moments to not just be heard but to make those that were listening feel like they were being heard too. You know, again, last night I feel like was a wonderful way, like when Travis Cottrell gave us a moment in that service last night to, for one thing, would you call out who God has been to you? You know, this way, do you remember that last night? And people just started, like the one word that really stood out to me is somebody said reconciler and, you know, healer. The giver of grace, I mean, just whatever the words were. There was a way in that moment that the congregation got to really participate. Not just in a singing way, but we were sharing our experiences and they were being listened to. I think that's a rare thing in a worship service. I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was great. That we would get that together last night. And it felt like we were in a— even though we were in a big room with lots of people, it felt like we were in a small place. Well, one thing that Fred Rogers intentionally did was when he would talk on the show, in his mind he was talking to one person. He would always talk about he just had one person in mind so he didn't feel like he had to address like a whole room. And he could talk to that one person. And in a sense, everybody felt like they were being talked to. In that way, and even listen to and help to express. So I think last night was maybe a good example of the way that we can use silence and the way that, you know, he would bring something to share. So whether it would be like I just showed you with that tape recorder, he'd bring something in in those moments to share too with the congregation. And I say congregation in our context, but he would share with the audience, you know. He would sometimes share about the food he was eating and he'd take time to really let you be a part of his life and really kind of draw you in and bring you in there. So a good thing for us maybe to think about is how does, how do our churches encourage silence, you know? And how do we utilize silence in the best possible ways, not only so that we can hear each other but so we can hear from God together. Again, it's the greatest thing to be at this conference because last night was just a great way to point to it and say, "Here's a good example of how you can do this, of how we can do it together." But I just think we would be so wise if we could think about ways to get some silence back into our worship. I think we have we've so dominated every quiet moment with something. I used to get told whenever I was being trained in ministry, "No dead space. We don't want dead space here. We don't want it to be gone." And maybe that's true on some level, but man, some intentional, really good silence put to good use, boy, it could be transformational. Maybe if we would stop talking, we would be able to hear from God sometimes. Times, you know. So do with that what you will, but silence was a tool that was very unique that Fred Rogers would use. And I think it's something we could use a lot too in our times together. Giving the church an opportunity to be heard from as well as just being talked to or sung to. And one of my favorite Fred Rogers quotes says this: Every human being has value What a privilege to be able to look for the good in our neighbor. And I think that's a good time sometimes in our services to realize we can look at each other as we are looking to God together. Okay, I'm gonna do one more hospitality and we're probably gonna be out of time. Sorry if it's all run out. I hope you're getting some good things from this today. Hospitality 5: Being real and facing hard things. Hard things together. We've talked about some of these a little bit, but being real and facing hard things together. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, according to Mr. Rogers himself, it was not meant to be seen as a utopia or a Pollyanna-ish state. Those are his words. He used the show to address death, He talked about assassination. He talked about divorce. He talked about fear and what fear can do to us. And he talked about racism. He talked about jealousy. I mean, these are not things you would think a kids' show would broach. But like his very first episode was a topic about war. Like the very first one. Back in that black and white. And what it would mean to him. He was trying to show out, "What's it mean to live out the kingdom of God and especially to express what it means to love our neighbor as ourself?" How do we live this out? How do we not preach about it? How do we just show it? And that was something he could do on public television. So how are hard topics addressed in our churches? And that's just kind of a thinking question for us. How are these hard things addressed in our churches? Are there anything that in our churches we're scared to approach because we're scared of being too real? You know. There are some hard things in our world. And I think the church is a place that people are Whether they want to admit it or not, I think they're listening for answers, but I think sometimes they're not getting them. Or they're not getting adequate answers, you know, in those times. And sometimes they're not even just getting the honesty of us going sometimes saying, "I gotta be honest, I just don't know. But I want to seek it out together, I want to find it together, and I want God to help us do that." So this idea of it being a hospitality this mentality to be real and to face the hard things together. It kind of flows into this idea of silence and living a prayerful life, this idea of facing these hard things and being real together. But does anybody have a Bible that really quick they could read John chapter 8, verses 1 through 11, just real fast? If you have it, if you don't, that's fine. I can sum it up real quick. Quick, but I wanted to have us maybe hear that together. Okay, would you mind reading it? It's John chapter 8, verses 1 through 11.

Okay, that's a long reading.

Yeah.

And everyone went to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Is that right?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Now early in the morning, he came again to the to the temple, and all the people came to him. And he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had her, when they had set her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do you say? This they said, testing him, that they might have something of which to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger, as though he did not hear. So when they continued asking him, he raised himself up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last, and Jesus was left alone. And the the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, he said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." Thank you.

Alright. I want us to, as we close today, have that scripture passage in mind. Because it hits a lot of these points at the same time. We first have Jesus who has been off praying, okay. He didn't just get out of bed and go start teaching. At the beginning of the story, Jesus is praying. He goes into the temple and as he's teaching, you know, you don't expect this when you're doing your sermon on Sunday morning. If somebody drags in this adulterous woman, I don't know where the man is, it doesn't seem to be important to the story, but they bring the woman in, they start accusing her, and they say, "What are we gonna do?" This is gonna happen at some point, maybe not literally in the middle of your church service, but something like this is gonna come up. And it's important, first of all, hopefully that we have become people who have cultivated a life of prayers so that our immediate reaction is not, "Well, let's do this, the law says that." You know, 'cause that's what they were doing. The law says to do this. Are we gonna get to it or not? And Jesus is so wise in that quiet moment, in being very real and dealing with this very hard thing. What's he do? He stoops down and he just starts to scribble in the sand. We don't know what he wrote. Don't know if he was drawing a picture. I don't know if he was writing actual words. Different scholars and theologians have different ideas in mind. But he used that time to take back the moment through that silence. And the tension, you can hear it in that story. They're waiting on that answer. They wanna know what he's gonna say. And Jesus just keeps on scribbling. And I don't know if, I don't know, who am I to know the mind of God? What was going through Jesus' mind at that moment? How was he formulating what he was gonna say? But in that time when it comes back, "Let those of you without sin cast the first stone," that's a pretty creative and amazing thing to say. And pastorally speaking, Brilliant. And I love how in the story it says, "And then the elders were the first to drop their rocks." It's like those who had some wisdom and experience, they kind of went, "Oh yeah, he's right." They were the example, and then the younger ones then dropped, and then they all went. And then there was a point where some reconciliation and some forgiveness could happen. Who condemns you? No one. Well, neither do I. Go and sin no more. It's a beautiful story, and I feel like it's one of the best examples I can think of, of really using the silence and this prayerful life that's been cultivated to come into these hard moments and allowing God to work through it and just use that moment and use that time I want to always be conscious of this because a lot of times, because I run this Twitter feed and people are constantly saying things, "Boy, like we really need Fred Rogers today." And, "I wish we had him now." "What would he do?" And, "What would he say?" And I always just want to reply like, "Let's make sure not to make a god out of this man." You know? Like he's not a saint. He was a person. And I don't want us to think that this isn't attainable to any of us because he worked so hard to become this type of person in his life. He worked so hard to become the man that he was. And it's something that we're all supposed to strive for. We should maybe do less of like, "Boy, I wish we had him today," and do more like, "Boy, I wish I could live and become that kind of life today and live that out into our world." You know what I mean? And I think he would tell us that same thing too. Fred Rogers' source of strength was the same source of strength that we all need to pull from. Okay, so I want us to make sure we're not making like a god out of him. But I wanna close with this one last phrase and then we'll be out of time. We probably already are. This is one of my favorite quotes from Fred Rogers. It's a good one for us to think about. It says, "When I think about heaven, it is a state in which we are so greatly loved that there is no fear and doubt and disillusionment and anxiety. It is where people really do look at you with the eyes of Jesus. One of my favorite Fred Rogers quotes. So the question for today: how is your church helping people look at all people who walk through the doors through the eyes of Jesus, with the eyes of eternity? How do we look in that way? So, um, that's about all I have time for today. If you have a chance and want to stop by my booth before we're gone, I'd love to talk to you some more. If you'd like to go to my website sometime, Rick Lee James is where you can find me. Thanks so much. I'm sorry we didn't have more time for interaction. I can stay around and chat for a few minutes if anybody wants to, but thanks for coming and have a great rest of the time at the conference and be very safe in your travel home. God bless you all. Well, thank you for joining us here again this week in the neighborhood. Music featured on today's podcast was Nouvelle Noël by Kevin MacLeod. And "Won't You Be My Neighbor" by Fred Rogers himself. Special thanks to the community @MrRogersSay on Twitter. I'm so glad to be your neighbor, and I'm so glad that you travel this journey with me every day. I am your host, Rick Lee James. My personal Twitter account is @RickLeeJames if you'd like to follow me there. My website is rickleejames.com, and I do host another podcast called Voices in My Head: The Rick Lee James Podcast, which is mostly an interview show that I do with people I find interesting. And I look forward to being with you again next time. So until we meet again, remember, you make each day a special day. You know how? By just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you, and people can like you exactly as you are.