In this heartfelt episode, Twanna Henderson sits down with Carrie Pankratz to explore how hospitality can be a powerful form of evangelism—regardless of personality, resources, or life stage. With stories, humor, and biblical insight, Carrie reminds us that while hospitality may be messy, it’s a divine invitation to love our neighbor. You don’t need a perfect home—just a willing heart.

Transcript

Twanna Henderson: Welcome to T Time: Spiritual Conversations for, with, and about women. I’m your host, Twanna Henderson, and as always, I want to remind you to like this broadcast and to definitely share it with someone that you know. Well, you know, this year we have been focusing on the topic of building and rebuilding a culture of evangelism.

And with that, I am so excited about our guest for today. Our guest is Carrie, Carrie Pankratz. Carrie and her husband have been serving in ministry together since they married in 2003. In 2009, they uprooted their family to plant a church in Utah, where they continue to serve. Carrie runs a blog titled “Messy Joyful Journey”.

I’ve got to get back to that title and talk about that, where she encourages Christians to love their neighbor well. Through biblical hospitality. She’s passionate about opening her home, sharing meals, and pointing people to Christ in everyday moments. Carrie is also a coach with Alongside Ministry Wives, which is a ministry dedicated to empowering Ministry Wives to be dynamic partners in ministry and embracing the opportunities unique to their God given calling.

Carrie, welcome to T Time.

Carrie Pankratz: Thank you so much for having me.

Twanna Henderson: It’s so good to have you and so good to meet you. And like I said, I want to first ask you about that title: Messy Joyful Journey. Where did that come from?

Carrie Pankratz: Well, it’s funny because it’s been kind of a process, but, I’m in a house full of ADHD people.

So it started just with like, ah, but then just thinking about life and ministry and especially in relationships, relationships are messy and a lot of beautiful things come from the messy. And so that’s kind of where that title came from, that you know, sometimes life is messy. Relationships are messy. And my house is often messy, but there’s joy.

There’s joy in all of that. And God uses all of that.

Twanna Henderson: And I think, you know, that’s so authentic because a lot of times we don’t like to talk about the messy, but you know, it is what it is, you know, it’s life. So, but as I said, you know, earlier, T Time has been focusing on evangelism this year and we’ve just had a wonderful year of just talking about, people, meeting and, and, and knowing and coming to know Jesus.

And I want to talk a little bit about your story and, how God, led you into this area of biblical hospitality.

Carrie Pankratz: Yeah, it’s funny because it started out, I mean, I actually see myself as a little bit domestically challenged. So even though I love people and I mean, to the point where I took the strength finders thing and my top five were all blue.

So, and that’s like the people category and I actually cried about it because I’m like, okay, so the only thing I’m good at is liking people. Like, it really felt like it wasn’t like, it’s not like some great leadership thing. Like I, like all the other things that I thought were better. And then when I look back at my journey and where God placed me, I now can see.

And actually when I did the top 10, it’s actually my top seven are blue. But, but it started way back really with evangelism. My husband and I served in college ministry and we wanted to take our students on, actually, we wanted to take them on an overseas mission trip and we were going to go to Ukraine, but our church was going through a building campaign and you know my like what we can’t take our kids overseas because we’re doing a building campaign and like I did not have the best attitude and really looking back I can see it was absolutely part of God’s plan

 because what we did is because they weren’t telling us we couldn’t go on a mission trip just you it’s Ukraine is too expensive. Like let’s not drain

our resources. And so we did it was during right after Hurricane Katrina. So we did a service trip to do cleanup and then we wanted to do more of a theological trip, so we actually came out to Utah and I would say that was the trip that changed our students and us more than anything.

Because if there is a, a trip that will challenge you to know what you believe in, and why? It’s that because you’re talking to people who know what they believe and they use scripture to defend it. And so it really transformed like, okay, I got to know why I believe what I believe. Like why is christianity true and not some other religion when Jesus says like, I’m the only way.

So let’s, let’s look at this. And, and so we would come to Utah and we actually, I mean, our students would come back without us to just go on trips too, because they loved it so much because the people here are so easy to talk to and they like to talk about faith. And, well, some of them, some of them have been burned and it’s, I mean, there’s two opposite extremes here.

But the population is still less than 2 percent Christian and where we are, it’s probably around one and, but we would come on these trips and someone would, like we’d evangelize and they would become a Christian and then we’d try to get them plugged into a church and realize the nearest church was 45 minutes away.

And we’re like, okay, like this is, you can’t, it’s not just tell people the gospel, it’s make disciples and, and yeah, sometimes it’s like one waters, one plants, one waters, and it’s a process, but there just weren’t Christians here to do that work. There weren’t enough.

And so

our solution was to move here.

So when I moved here, I quickly realized that what we did on mission trips is not what it’s like when you live here. Like you’re not going to be like in people’s faces and it wasn’t in people’s faces. It was very respectful.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah.

Carrie Pankratz: But some of the conversations we have that would put a wall between you and a person in a relationship, like it’s fine with strangers.

And actually, I think it’s important that we have people that do come and say some of the hard things to get them questioning, but it’s hard to continue a relationship with that. So moving here, I found that my biggest ministry was just being real and, I have a couple of stories like early on, we, you know, I had toddlers at the time, and our next door neighbors moved in, like the sweet couple who did not have kids yet, and they came to our house, and I invited them in, and they had to step over toys to get to the table to sit down and, you know, have dessert with us, and but I just opened my door.

And that is not common in this culture. And I think in a lot of cultures, like if someone doesn’t know you’re coming and their house isn’t ready for you, they don’t let you in. And a few years later, when she had kids, I knocked on her door and she invited me in with a pile of laundry on the floor and dishes in the sink.

And I’m like, okay, we have a real friendship. Like that’s where real things can happen. And so early on, I started to notice that, but then, and this is funny because the, the blog posts that you saw, I wrote that kind of realizing I had invited a friend over and the first words out of my mouth were like, Oh, I’m sorry.

It’s not as good over here as this other couple who, we got to a place in our church where it had grown and we had other people that were hosting things and they had so much more than I did and they were better cooks than I was and I started to get really insecure and which I’m like, okay, what is going on with me that

I don’t feel like I can invite people into my home when I had no problem inviting people into a tiny apartment when we had nothing. And, and we actually have more now. Like I don’t, I don’t not have a good place to invite people to, but it was all inside of me. So I wrote a blog post, but then the funny thing about that is, you know, I was so determined I’m going to invite people in more, I’m going to have them for meals.

And immediately it’s like, God’s like, that’s great, but now I’m going to teach you what real biblical hospitality is. I found out right after writing that blog post that I had to have rotator cuff surgery on my dominant shoulder.

Twanna Henderson: Oh my goodness.

Carrie Pankratz: That for sure that recovery puts you completely out of commission for six weeks.

Twanna Henderson: Oh wow.

Carrie Pankratz: You cannot move your shoulder. And I tried to do things left handed and it was really humorous. But what that did is it put us in a place where, our church family had to step in. So I was the recipient of being cared for by my church community. And that was really hard for me because I’m the one who wants to do that.

No, this is what I’m doing.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie Pankratz: So I really feel like God wanted to show me A. That it’s hard to accept from other people and B. That we were blessed by all kinds of different things. Like one of the people, they don’t feel like they can cook. They ordered us pizza to be delivered. Pizza and salad and dessert.

That was my kid’s favorite meal.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah.

Carrie Pankratz: The whole time. And it’s not like she had to make something. And then the friend who made the pretzel dogs and made extra to put in our freezer so that my kind of, my kid who kind of gets anxiety around new foods, knew that there were pretzel dogs in the freezer if he didn’t like what was, what was coming.

And, And so there were just so many things during that, that I’m like, okay, Lord, now I see different. And then I was ready. So I’m getting, I go to the doctor, I get my permission to get out of my sling. And that day we got a phone call that we had been approved to foster. So someone in my family, one of my loved ones had been through an extremely difficult time.

The loss of a spouse and he was just in a position where he could not care for his children anymore. The care that they needed at that point. And so it was one of those eyeopening things where I’m like, this is, this is biblical hospitality. And that’s so we, we got the two, so I had teenagers at the time, and so we got a three year old and a seven year old.

Twanna Henderson: Oh, wow.

Carrie Pankratz: And we had to, you know, it was, it was through the system, so everything has to be a certain way in your home, so my kids had to sacrifice their rooms,

and

it was, it was a lot for our whole family. But what it did is we got to love these kids in a stable environment. We got to show them the Lord.

My husband’s a pastor and the little, the seven year old would sit front and center and he would listen to everything my husband said. And on the way home, he’d be talking about it. And I mean, it was just. It was hard, but it was also just so eye opening that he had never experienced that in his life before.

And, I got the blessing of having a little girl cause I have boys. So that was amazing. And then also being able to love on that family member and show them that like, I’m not judging you in this, because I know that my heart. I mean, we were raised very similarly and my, I could be in the same sort of circumstances.

Like you don’t know what could lead you to that. So it wasn’t a judgment. It was an honest, like, what can I do to help? And the only answer I had was Jesus. And so I was able to, that’s what I, that’s what we were able to share in that. And for me, that was so eye opening because when I was thinking about biblical hospitality, I was thinking, well, I’m going to invite people over for dinner, which it’s, it’s, it is that it’s not less than that.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah.

Carrie Pankratz: It’s also because this was a person in a very hard time that was somebody that I deeply love. It helped me to see, okay, all these other people struggling, they’re image bearers. And they are just like this person that’s struggling. I know his heart. I know that, it’s not like he set out to make bad choices.

It’s, there were very hard things and how can we love people better in that? And it totally changed my view of even just like remembering to see everyone as an image bearer.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah. And I think that’s what we’re called to do. And I think it is hard, it is hard to do that because we, you know, I mean, what you all did is so commendable

and even though it was family members, it’s still hard to be able to do that because for various reasons that we feel like we’re not, we just we’re not the right ones or whatever the case may be. And I want to just give a little context of what you were, you were talking about the blog and some of those listening,

 The blog that, Carrie had about hospitality, biblical hospitality, and that’s when I reached out to her and say, hey, you did this blog. You know, I would love for you to come on T Time and really talk about that and talk about, just how, we can reach people through those different kinds of, avenues.

I know you mentioned about, you know, it’s more than just coming around food, but a food is a huge thing because we all love to eat, of course,

Twanna Henderson: but I love how you talk about how everyday meals and gatherings really become opportunities for a gospel conversation.

Carrie Pankratz: Yeah, 100%. Well, it’s funny because when I was thinking about the people that we’ve seen impacted, when I look back, I was first impacted by that.

When I think about being a 12 year old and my friend’s mom, who would welcome me in when we had, you know, I have some, some fun family dynamics growing up. And my friend’s mom, I know my friend’s mom gave me a safe place and she was a Christian and she would drive me to church and she would make me a baked potato and all those things that just seem like she was just living out her faith.

And that’s the thing is I honestly believe that this is just living out your Christian faith. And, I think about in Utah, one of the things was just, you know, inviting a tired mom neighbor in that I saw, and I said, you want to come have a cup of coffee, which is funny because people here don’t drink coffee. And she was, that’s a part of the predominant religion,

they’re not allowed, but, this neighbor had, she was no longer practicing, but she’d never had coffee before. So. she came over and I made her a cup of coffee and we just started talking. And at first, you know, it’s just, you’re talking about little, just kind of surface things. And then, you know, she came over the next day for a cup of coffee.

And then we got to a point where I was able to share kind of some of the struggles that I had had. And for us, it was a little easier to talk about faith because we moved to Utah to plant a church. So it’s super easy, but in that, It’s more talking about how the Lord has transformed my heart and how I see the world differently and how I love people differently.

And then that brought her to a place where she felt safe to share kind of her faith journey and where she was at. And it’s not like we sat down and I’m like, tell me about what you believe about God, which sometimes can happen. Like sometimes those things are appropriate, but, I found that most of the time it is just honestly getting to know people and being real.

Like, I don’t present myself as a perfect Christian because I’m not. But my heart is to, to walk rightly before the Lord, you know, to, I want to love people well. And when I think about Another neighbor who, and it’s funny because that phase I had young kids. And so in the early phase, those were the people that I would invite in.

And so I remember one of my friends, saying like, nobody talks about how hard it is. Everyone talks about what a blessing it is to have kids and it is, but I’m exhausted. And so I just said, Hey, let’s go get hot chocolate because she doesn’t drink coffee. So I picked her up. We went, we got hot chocolate and we just sat and talked and like, those are where

the, the real relationships happen, but that’s also where you get to talk about truth and the gospel is what cuts to the heart. It’s not my words or my great way of saying anything. It’s when they see the gospel and really understand it, it cuts to the heart. So it’s not my job to make them do that, but,

it is to share the truth. And a lot of that just comes from what’s going on in my own life and my own heart. And so we’ve seen people come to faith here through that, but it takes a long time.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah.

Carrie Pankratz: And like I said before, like, it’s not just you share the gospel and you’re done. We’re called to make disciples and that happens in living everyday life.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, it happens over time. And I can see some people really being, kind of intimidated or feeling Intimidated or unqualified to, to really evangelize that way, or just feel like I don’t have the gift of hospitality, you know, what, what advice would you, would you give someone who, who feels like that?

Who’s listening to this?

Carrie Pankratz: Yeah, well, I think we’re all called to love our neighbor, whether we have the gift of hospitality or not. Like, I think we are all called to that. And, I would say. Use, use what you do have. I mean, I, one of my favorite times is I sat, well, there were two, okay, one, I sat with a woman and we drank ice water.

That was all I had to offer at the moment. And actually it was all she could have because she was, had a procedure coming up and instead of canceling, like let’s drink water and like have a glass of water. It is not about what you do. It is about the relationship. And

Twanna Henderson: Now let me, let me, let me say

this, Carrie.

Now, remember you’re blue, you’re seven blue.

Carrie Pankratz: I am blue. I know. I totally understand.

Twanna Henderson: So what about other people who are not blue?

Carrie Pankratz: No, I get it. I totally get it. Well, and the thing is, obviously I’m going to do this more than other people, but everyone can say to a neighbor and when you’re taking your trash cans out, like, Hey, how are you doing?

Like if you’re out on your porch and someone walks by just saying hello, can start a conversation. It doesn’t have to be a big ordeal. It doesn’t even have to be a long time. It could be little small hellos. I mean, we are in a culture that drives into our garage, closes the garage, and that’s it. And I think we are desperate for true community.

That’s what we were created for. Whether you are people or you’re not, it is in us that we need community and it doesn’t even have to be in your home. I mean, I had So I was having a Bible study with someone kind of doing a discipleship thing at coffee, and a guy walks up and saw that we were doing that and, and asked, like, what are you guys doing?

And here’s where I say, like, you don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to, you don’t have to be great even at knowing apologetics. All we did is, He asked, like, what are you guys studying? And, and I said, Oh, what do you think about this? Like, what, do you have a faith background? That’s all I asked.

So this, this man, he, he pretty much had kind of created his own religion. Like he started talking about what he believed and, but instead of saying that’s ridiculous, all I said. Pretty much over and over. Wow, that’s an interesting idea. I’ve never actually even heard of that before. How did you come to that conclusion?

And then he would kind of go off something else and then he’d have something else. I said, huh, that’s so interesting. What made you think that and and it wasn’t attacking it wasn’t anything and by the end of the conversation He pretty much said, you know, I think I actually just kind of thought of it on my own and created it myself. And I said, oh so it’s like your own religion and he thought about he’s like, yeah But then at the end of that conversation He gave me a hug And he said, it was so nice talking to you. And that for me and that I’ve kind of brought into my home with my neighbors because it wasn’t a contentious conversation.

I was just asking him, Oh, what makes you think that? Why do you believe that? He was the only one who did the talking, and in the end, we did get to share, I said, would you like to hear what we’re studying and why we believe this, and I did get a chance to share with him, but it was just such a beautiful time of, I was honestly finding out

about who he is and and that brings you to a place where like I can see the things that are important to this guy and why he’s hurting and if this was a neighbor that gives me something to talk about Later, and I actually care about this person like it’s not and so The the conversation part it doesn’t have to happen depending on who you are.

It doesn’t actually have to happen in your house. You can have someone on the front porch. It doesn’t have to be. And on my blog, what I started doing is easy. Like if you want to throw something together, grab some cream cheese, throw some caramel and some toffee bits with apples, greatest dessert ever.

Like I have a lot of easy things. If you feel like that’s because food does, it gives us something in common. I absolutely love, I love using food and I’m actually not that good of a cook. I had to, I had to find ideas. I remember being in my twenties and one of my friends literally made me a cookbook of easy recipes I could do because I felt so inadequate.

And here’s the thing. I’m peopley and I do think I have the gift of hospitality, but it doesn’t mean I’m a good cook or I’m a good that I, my house always is decorated beautifully. It means that I welcome, it’s natural for me to welcome the stranger. And if it’s not natural for you to welcome the stranger, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.

That just means you have to be more,

Twanna Henderson: You gotta work hard at it.

Carrie Pankratz: You gotta work hard at how you welcome the stranger. And I want to help with that. I want to help you think through a way that you can’t like, if you don’t have the money for it, you can make a pot of soup very cheaply, or like I said, offer someone some water.

It’s about the relationship and the connection and,

Twanna Henderson: And I think it does require being intentional because we do live in a culture where people do kind of, you know, they roll out their trash can and they kind of wave their hand or whatever, or they, and they keep going. I mean, we just, you know, we have people, you know, a lot of times we don’t know our neighbors or all these different things.

And so, and then people are sort of like suspicious, like. Why are you talking to me almost? And so I think really kind of being intentional about making those connections, because, you know, the key thing you said was, you know, whether we have that gift of hospitality or not. We are called to love our neighbor.

And I think that’s the thing that we really have to think about. I want to talk about, you know, when you do have people in just the boundaries, because with, you know, when you’re balancing that with, serving guests and maintaining healthy boundaries with your family or just with your home, you know, I hope they don’t open that drawer or go in that closet or whatever the case may be.

But how do you, how do you, how do you balance that, that boundaries part?

Carrie Pankratz: Yeah. And a lot of that is communication within my family. Like what my family is going to be comfortable with is going to be totally different. My husband is also very extroverted and it is, he’s actually, which this is interesting, is I actually think I’m an introvert who loves people.

Because I, I’m, it’s, it’s kind of a weird thing because I realized I actually do need to decompress after being around people, but I love people. Where my husband is an extrovert, he could have people all the time around. And it’s, it is funny that this is just in the past few years, I always thought I was an extrovert.

Now I’m right in the middle. Yeah. So I don’t require a ton, but I do sometimes get on people overload where I’m like, I need a little bit of alone time.

So my husband would actually invite people into our home constantly too. So we have to communicate and in different seasons, it looks very different.

This year I am, I was a teacher this year. I’m not teaching to help one of my kids in school. This year I have a lot more freedom. When I was teaching, there was a period where I didn’t even feel like I could, unless it was summer. I didn’t feel like I could invite people in because I had nothing left. So being, I still would, but it wasn’t a twice a week, every week sort of thing.

It was a once a month, we’re going to be intentional about this. And, so I have a friend who is very She has an amazing gift of hospitality. Her husband is an extreme introvert.

And

so she isn’t the one that’s like, Oh yeah, come over to our house. Like if she invites a neighbor over, she’s got to talk to her husband first, like, Hey, will this be good for you?

And if it’s a phase where, Hey, it’s not, she’ll take them to coffee or she’ll go to, she’ll go and bring dinner over to their house or bring a treat over to their house to talk to them. Like you, you really do need to protect the boundaries of your family. And, and even when we were fostering. I am more careful about people I’m allowing into my home in that situation.

We had a small group that supported us that was there every week, but we didn’t, you have to be. You have to be intentional, but also aware of what your, what the rest of your family needs. So I’m not saying everyone has to have an open door every minute of your life, because that’s not, that’s not healthy too.

Now, sometimes God does bring opportunities that you’re not ready for, like we experienced.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, yeah.

Carrie Pankratz: But, so you kind of, prayer is a huge thing too. I should have said that a long time ago. Bring, this isn’t something that Carrie is doing on her own. This is God opening doors. I mean, if I’m on a walk and a new neighbor walks by, I’m going to say hello.

And if God opens that door to start something. And it is really funny the way God will do that too, because I had had a conversation with a friend that, you know, the, the way our world is right now, the conversation was on homosexuality and I walked down the street, there was a neighbor I had never met.

And, walked outside and I meet this new, gay couple that moved in. Well, for me, that’s an opportunity to get to know my neighbor. And in Utah, I mean, the culture here, it is hard. For people who, and I, I don’t know if it’s that way in the South, too, but in California, it was where I’m from, it was a lot, a lot, everything was a lot different, where here, there is a very, you know, the main world view, and then there are a whole bunch of outsiders, and interestingly, Christians are kind of in the outsider category, too.

So, it, it gives a great opportunity to get to know someone who is different from me. But that’s the thing, like, we are all different and we’re coming at things differently, but we are all, again, we are all image bearers and our heart needs the same thing. And we have things in common and our culture right now, I think, is so much us versus them.

And yes, we have an enemy, but it is not my neighbor three doors down.

Twanna Henderson: Oh, wow. That’s good.

That’s good. Let’s know. Let’s let that sink in. Yes. Yeah. I’ve got an enemy, but it’s not my neighbor three door.

Yeah. That’s good.

And what I really, what I really like from this, this is so good. Like we could go on and on and on and on.

It’s going back to you saying that we’re all called to love.

Carrie Pankratz: Yes.

Twanna Henderson: I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s the crust of this. I mean, that’s, that’s it. I mean, that’s the challenge. That’s, that’s, that’s it. I know we, as we’ve got to close and I hate to close, because the time like just flew by, but there are those who are listening, to this podcast, who, who never really thought about evangelizing through biblical hospitality. I mean, it’s just, you know, and that’s why I wanted to have you on here, you know, because this has really opened their eyes and I’ve learned some things too, because, I still got to love my neighbor.

Carrie Pankratz: Well, it’s not always easy.

Twanna Henderson: No, it’s not.

And I’ve got great neighbors. I really do. Can you pray for us that we would be open to, to the Holy Spirit’s prompting about how and when to host others and that we would trust him in the process?

Carrie Pankratz: Yeah, absolutely.

Twanna Henderson: Thank you.

Carrie Pankratz: Father. We are so grateful that you are the one who already won the battle for us, Lord.

We are thankful that you loved us enough to send your son for us. And Father, when we look around us at this hurting world, you did that for those people too, Lord. And there is a brokenness in this world. And I pray for those believers out there who Just don’t feel equipped or don’t know where to start or Lord just honestly don’t know how to do what you ask.

How do we love our neighbor? And I pray Lord that you would just be working on our hearts, open our eyes to see the need to see the need around us and help us to see our neighbors as image bearers that you love desperately. I pray that you would open opportunities as we turn to you, you open up opportunities for us to truly see our neighbors, to get to know them, to see what their, what their hurts are, what their desires are, Lord, and to speak truth into that.

And the way that we do that is just by sharing who you are and what you did for us, because you did that for them too. I pray that you would, give us wisdom, all of us wisdom, in how to do this and when to open our door, who to invite, but also give us courage to do the hard things. and to know that it’s messy, just because it’s messy doesn’t mean you aren’t working.

And sometimes through those hard things, through conflict is where we draw closer to you. And also we can draw closer to those people once we resolve that conflict. So Lord, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be messy. And I pray that you would walk through us, that you would that your spirit would direct us and that you would first help us to seek you Lord and to grow deeper in our relationship with you so that you can pour out through us and love our neighbors and we trust you in this Lord in Jesus name, amen..

Twanna Henderson: Amen.

Well, Carrie, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your gift of, being able to reach others. I mean, it really is a gift. and I, I’m just, I’m excited about how the Lord continues to use you. And I’m looking forward to coming to Utah to have some coffee or something.

Carrie Pankratz: Yes, anytime!

Twanna Henderson: Well, thank you again to all of our listeners.

I’m Twanna Henderson. Be blessed of the Lord.