Dan and Linda Jarms share how their faith, backgrounds, and marriage have shaped a life of intentional hospitality, from welcoming strangers and missionaries to cultivating unity in a growing church. They explore the biblical foundations of hospitality: God’s welcome of us in Christ, the role of elders, and the difference between entertaining and true Christ-centered care, while offering practical ideas for practicing hospitality in busy seasons and small spaces. Linda also shares her go-to low-stress pesto pasta recipe as an example of simplifying meals to better focus on people.
Automated Transcription
Jennifer Brandt 0:04 Hello, and welcome back to the Faith Hospitality Highlight Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Pastor Dan and his wife, Linda. In this episode, we'll hear their perspective on why hospitality matters, how it has shaped their marriage and ministry, and what it has looked like for them over the years and thank you both so much for being here. It's our pleasure. Yeah,
Dan Jarms 0:27 very excited about it.
Jennifer Brandt 0:28 To start, we'd love to hear a bit of your story. Dan and Linda, where are you both from? How did you meet? And Dan, can you share how you came to serve as the lead pastor at Faith?
Linda Jarms 0:40 You start, honey.
Dan Jarms 0:41 I grew up in Cheney, so I'm a local boy. I became a believer in 87 and then I transferred to the Masters College, now Masters University, and that's where I met Linda. She was my orientation leader, and so we were both juniors when we met, and she was a home ec major. She was already planning on being hospitable and a homemaker and stay-at-home mom well before we met. So, yeah, we met. We met there, and my favorite thing about her is she was a beautiful girl who loved to talk about Jesus, so like it was just a double whammy for me, so we would just talk about the Lord all the time at our lunch breaks, and eventually it turned to romance, and we got married right out of college, and then we waited two weeks to get pregnant, so Corbin came along the first year, and he just turned 35 so we're almost at 36 years. Yeah, so I grew up just a little time in LA, and then mostly around here, but when we got married, we moved. When we moved to Cheney, we moved back there. That was where my home was. My first job was there, and we started going to Fourth Memorial Church, and actually, a bunch of us went with Faith Bible Church, so we've really been part of Faith Bible Church since we got married. So, it was about 10 or 11 years of working, I went to, I went back and got a degree, then I taught for six years, and all that time the possibilities of training for ministry were alive for both of us, both of us had an opening that we might either want to be missionaries or pastor, and then that opened up in 99 and then I got some training at Faith, a couple of years of an internship, when we got back from seminary, we went down in 2001 We came back in 2003 The church had been going through some turmoil, and while we were gone, and we came back to a fractured eldership, solid biblical foundations, solid doctrine, really good philosophy of ministry, but there were just some issues that had fractured the eldership, and when I came back, I was, I was not part of any of that, so in the end, I think I was recently done with seminary, some changes needed to be made, and the elders asked me to step in and lead at that time, so I was 36 way too young to do what we're doing, but we love the church, and we wanted to serve the church. However, it was.. I was thinking I'd be a family and children's pastor for 10 years, and I guess I was, plus something else. So, and I've.. we've been at that.. it's, I think, 22 years now.
Jennifer Brandt 3:39 We're grateful that you are. We love having you guys. Thank you.
Dan Jarms 3:42 We are grateful that the church is patient.
Jennifer Brandt 3:47 And then Linda, tell us your background and where you're from.
Linda Jarms 3:50 Yeah, okay. So I was born in Naples, Italy. My parents were missionaries in Italy, and minus like a four year furlough, I lived there. Title is 11, and then ended up in Yakima, so Italy to Yakima was quite the change, same Italy, Yakima, they're pretty much in that Yaka Vegas, yep, and then when I was 18 I went to the Masters College, and my junior year I met this tall basketball player named Dan Jarms, and the rest was history, kind of what Dan shared, so yeah,
Jennifer Brandt 4:23 that's really sweet. Okay, well, we're gonna jump into the first question. This one's pretty simple. When you hear the word hospitality, what does it mean to you?
Linda Jarms 4:34 Yeah, I think I don't know why. Somewhere I learned that it means kindness to strangers, so I think of the term strangers, stranger kindness, and I love that term, because I think that might be the most challenging form of hospitality, because it's easy to have your friends over, but somebody maybe you don't really know, it takes a little bit more faith, a little bit more courage. Courage, and so I think of that term, but I looked it up as you, as you had given us these questions. It has the concept of welcome in it, and it has the concept of being fond of your guests. I noticed that was one of the definitions that was in there, so just really enjoying people is kind of what I think of when I think of hospitality.
Dan Jarms 5:25 When I met Linda, she was a home ec major, so already when we were in college, she just talked about and thought about how do I connect with people and do hospitality, so we all did spiritual gifts tests when we were newly believers, and one of her majors was hospitality. She loved to be hospitable to people, so we were newly married, and she was just welcoming people into our home right away, so learning, learning all the ropes of cooking regularly and taking care of a family, so that was just always part of her part of her DNA. And then I was, my family weren't believers at all, but we always had people around. My parents invited people, so we always had guests in our house, and my parents always were very generous with people.
Linda Jarms 6:19 You actually were, he was raised by an Italian mom, stepmom, and an Italian grandma, and so he grew up in a culture of a lot of warm, abundant enjoyment of people, loving to lavish food on people culture, so it's really in, in your DNA too. Yeah, my parents also modeled hospitality, her parents wonderfully
Dan Jarms 6:43 warm and hospitable. Yeah, they just had such an ability to just be disarming and get people laughing really quickly. So, I think of hospitality as in a biblical definition, I think the technical word is a love for strangers, xenophilia, something like that, I can't remember exactly the Greek word for it, so it makes it sound like it's love for strangers or foreigners, but when you look across the New Testament, we're supposed to have hospitality for one another, so Hebrews talks about hospitality within the life of the church, Peter talks about the hospitality and life of the church, so I do think it's kind of everything. Hospitality is really important when missionaries come home from furlough or visiting, like that was kind of the original idea, is to make sure you're caring for people who are Christian workers, but it applies to the whole church, and I think we think maybe if there's any difference between entertaining and hospitality, people can entertain, you can, you can have a big football party, and that's super fun for Christians. There's probably an element of hospitality, because you're caring for somebody practically and spiritually, but the difference is really in hospitality, you're trying to fellowship around the Lord, caring for people's needs, and you're trying to just provide warmth and family, friendship. I think of some of the passages that we've been reading really fit this idea that Jesus welcomes us, and you had a passage that you were gonna look at.
Linda Jarms 8:18 Oh, yeah, let's see, it was Ephesians two, which is kind of fun, because we're getting ready to go through Ephesians 212 kind of all in the, as we were thinking about hospitality, it has to do with welcoming and nearness, looking to how we have been welcomed as the motivation for welcoming others. Ephesians 212 says, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants and promise, having no hope and without God in the world, but now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near by the love by the blood of Christ, so the concept of the gospel having brought us near into fellowship with Christ and with each other is at the core of hospitality, and what's so beautiful about it is that I think we all hate rejection. At least I do. Kids hate feeling rejected when they're little, we hate feeling rejected when we're teenagers. It doesn't matter how old you are. You hate feeling like you're not a part of something. Hate feeling rejected. And in Christ, we have been brought near by His blood, no greater sacrifice. And we then get to mirror that as we bring people near in our homes. In a.. I think your home, too, is the most intimate space that you can bring people into, if you're able, where they can really get to see you for who you are and still accept you as Christ does for us in the ultimate way. So it's a beautiful concept that's it's like ribboned throughout all of Scripture. And it has its core in the gospel, so it's, it's really fun to live that out, try to live it out imperfectly. By the way, we're Dan and I are still very imperfect and awkward in when we try to love on people, but we're compelled to because of what Christ has done for us. We love
Dan Jarms 10:16 people, I'm just not really good with,
Linda Jarms 10:20 so we, yeah, we, we both joke, we both realized that we're actually both kind of awkward people, but we still love people,
Jennifer Brandt 10:27 that's so sweet. There's
Dan Jarms 10:32 a set of elder requirements, and elders are supposed to have the character of hospitality, so in Timothy and Titus, when it lists out what an elder is supposed to be, in the list is hospitable, so in the ancient world usually the man was in charge of the hospitality, and I think in the American world usually the wife is the manager of the home, so you really can't be hospitable as an elder if your wife's not hospitable. So, of course, that really isn't a lot of work, other than just you always want to love people better. So, we never love people as well as we want. We want to love people better, but she is just so naturally suited for it. It's not been a thoughtful, like, oh, we need to, we need to think about my qualifications as an elder being hospitable. I better work on that. I just need to work on loving people. She'll make us hospitable, and that's really, it's really sweet. Like, we will probably have, you know, a question a week, like, Who are we going to get together with this week, who are we going to connect with? So it's just part of part of loving and caring for people. I do think of it a little bit in a sense of new people, so that's where it's really important. Is there may be people new to the church, new to us, new to the neighborhood, and you really want to be open and transparent and invite them into your lives. Not a lot of people are like thrilled when they were invited in their lives, a little boring.
Jennifer Brandt 12:12 How would you say hospitality would look different to non-believers versus believers?
Dan Jarms 12:20 Well, it is interesting to think about the Muslim culture and the Nepali culture. Let's say our own Nepali hospitality is a much more important virtue in many cultures around the world than they are in America, so we think we're being hospitable by having somebody in our home for a couple hours, and I have a Muslim friend who, if you leave it at two hours, he's like, "Well, what did I do to offend you? So lots of cultures are actually more hospitable or more generous than American culture is, and so I think that's just part of the being made in the image of God. God made the world, and He made us to live in His world, and He supplies us everything we need. He made a very hospitable world, and imagine how hospitable it was before the fall. And so, lots of cultures reflect a hospitable attitude. Yeah,
Linda Jarms 13:19 lots of times non-believers do it better than we do. It's good to be humbled by that, but probably the difference would be in Christ we have the Holy Spirit. We seek to do it as unto Him. I love, I think, is Matthew 25 Whatever you've done, the least of these you've done it unto me, and then Jesus is saying, you know, when were we thirsty, when would you, when would we, when were you hungry? So, as a believer, we get to welcome somebody, and, and Jesus says, somehow mysteriously and beautifully, we've done it as it's like we've done it to him, which is really fun to think of as the heart and the core of it, so I think in essence that's the difference between a Christian's hospitality and a non-Christian's hospitality. It's done in his strength as unto him, and how it looks is varied all over the world.
Dan Jarms 14:17 Jesus did have some qualifiers, because there were some aspects of Jewish life that were supposed to be really hospitable, so Jesus said don't invite the people who can invite you back, invite the poor, the needy. So one of the things that should be unique about Christian hospitality is that it seeks to open up life and to welcome, and I think biblical hospitality shares whatever's needed, whoever it is, whatever they need, they need a room to stay, if they need a car to borrow, if they need something, you're sharing what you have in hospitality, but Jesus wants us to make sure that it's not a payback scenario, that was true in the ancient near east, if somebody. Had you in your home. Now we've created, if we're equals, then I need to have you back. If we're not equals, now I have, you know, the person who's superior now has an advantage over the person who's inferior. And Jesus says, actually, you want to serve, you don't want to create a payback mentality, you just want to be generous and give what you have and do it unto the Lord.
Linda Jarms 15:24 I also remember years ago, I think non-Christians and Christians alike can struggle with this, and I can too. There's a difference between entertainment and hospitality, and it's so easy to want to impress with your house and your food being a certain way, and when it's about you and your glory, yeah, that's not genuine hospitality. Hospitality, when it's about just loving people and making them feel warmed and welcome and cared for, that's more what Christ is looking for in us and loving Him and loving others. So that's always a good.. it's like, am I trying to entertain here, or am I trying to just love the person who walks through the door, and that's always what I have to watch out for.
Jennifer Brandt 16:07 How do you see hospitality as connecting to who God
Dan Jarms 16:13 is? Well, one is one of the things she just referred to, as far as what Jesus has done, is welcoming, and it shows up in the New Testament. It shows up in the Old Testament, but I think to start with, in the Old Testament, if this is God's world and He made it enjoyable to live in, God is the ultimate in hospitality. So God is good and sharing, and He shares all He is, and He doesn't need anything in return, and he shares his stuff, his things with us, and he shares himself with us. With sin, we kind of put an arm's length against that, but God still provides for unbelievers and believers. He's so gracious. So you see that all over the Old Testament and New Testament, I think the patriarchs, like Jacob, we were just going through Jacob's story. He told Pharaoh when he finally met Pharaoh, I've been a sojourner in this land, like it doesn't really belong to me, I'm a guest here. And so David will repeat that theme in the Psalms, that we're sojourners here and we're guests, so God shows us this graciousness and this love, and then, and then the New Testament, Jesus welcomes anybody in to the relationship, and he doesn't hold, he welcomes the poor, the unclean, or the leper, or whatever it might be, but that biggest picture is what Jesus has done in the gospel, so God actually was hospitable and is hospitable to his enemies, and that's a really powerful example for
Jennifer Brandt 17:51 us.
Dan Jarms 17:51 So he brought us near by his Jesus brought us near by his blood, so he's a creator and sustainer of all things, and he, he doesn't just give us basic sustenance, he gives us like this pesto pasta, these great things. He's so kind to us. So, yeah, I see. I would see it like theologically that way. And I think that's why elders are to be hospitable, if we're going to represent Jesus, is that God has been this way with us, so we want to be this way with other people.
Linda Jarms 18:22 Yeah, he welcomed into his family not just somebody that knew very well, but enemies by reconciling them by his own death. So I think that's what compels us all.
Jennifer Brandt 18:37 Have you guys ever had a time where you did need to practice hospitality to an enemy, quote unquote, or somebody who is maybe a difficult, more difficult person to love.
Linda Jarms 18:50 Yeah, we have had to have somebody, absolutely. Yeah, we've
Dan Jarms 18:53 had to have, we've had people over who
Linda Jarms 18:57 we've done so many enemies, you wouldn't. We were just
Dan Jarms 19:01 hated by everybody. Actually, we're just usually.. we would say a long time ago, we would say, well, people come to the church, then we have them over to our house, and they realize what we're really like, and then they leave. So, we've done that a lot. So, but yeah, sometimes you do want to do good to all people, and it may get returned well, and it may not. And again, thinking about God, who's welcomed the world in, everybody in, and most of the world still rejects Him. The little bits that we've had have never been.
Linda Jarms 19:39 It is powerful, though, to sit around a table with somebody for the sake of unity and love, so those have actually been great opportunities to bring more unity, maybe in situations where there wasn't, so
Jennifer Brandt 19:59 I. Think, I guess I was thinking more along the lines of if there's been maybe just some hurt feelings or a little bit of bitterness or something that I think everybody has struggled with at some point in their life with somebody, and yeah, how to still do good and be hospitable even when it feels like it's really difficult,
Dan Jarms 20:23 I think there have been times when there has been a strain in a relationship among fellow believers, and Linda's impulse is to get us together around a meal, around food, and then can we talk through whatever those things are, because a family table is the most intimate setting that you have. You don't invite people who are going to hurt you to your family table, that's a special sacred place. So that has very often helped re-energize a relationship or be able to get certain things hash through or work through.
Linda Jarms 21:03 I think God has a perfect plan for our unity through hospitality. It's about so many bigger concepts than we even imagine. It's very powerful.
Dan Jarms 21:12 I think one of the things that from the earliest part, when I did step in, we had a fractured eldership and we had a fractured congregation, and it was mostly over who should be doing what. It wasn't over the Bible, wasn't over a doctrine, it was more over personal preferences. I remember going through the book of Acts, and in Acts chapter two, one of the just core sets of verses for me as a pastor of Faith Bible Church. It says that there were four devotions of the church. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, so the scriptures, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer, and breaking of bread would be the Lord's Supper. So you'd have this supper together as the family of God, and prayer, and then that fellowship is one of the devotions of the church. They're going to share their life together. That passage just continues on, and so day by day they continued in the temple, and from house to house, sharing meals, sharing all things in common, praising God, and having favor with all men. So it really does take time and meeting people's basic needs to produce unity. So it was always really important to us when we started to work hard at that relational unity. So we used to give elder assignments, like we're going to get into each other's homes, so that we know each other well, and, and those were really sweet, those were those were great opportunities to build unity together, and since we all like to eat,
Jennifer Brandt 22:47 it
Dan Jarms 22:48 should be, it should be fun. Yeah,
Jennifer Brandt 22:51 that's a great practical way of just helping difficult or broken relationships. I wouldn't have thought about that being the first step to take, but just inviting people over, that's a really great idea with a busy schedule and full-time ministry for both of you. How do you guys practically incorporate hospitality into your lives,
Linda Jarms 23:14 kind of along the lines what we're talking about? We have like scheduled stuff that we do regularly to promote that love and unity at the elder and staff level at our church, so I've had a staff and elder wives meeting that I do once a month that I've done for the whole year, 22 years, and I try to feed them and I try to make them feel loved and welcome, and that is about so much more than food and whatever we're doing, it's about our unity and about the wives getting together and loving each other. I try to do something with just the pastor wives quarterly, so we have various things that we try to try to do with our with our leadership that involves that this concept of what we're talking about, let's just gather, let's love each other, let's eat some food together, and let's care for one another, because the enemy wants to attack our unity. It's interesting that we're talking about unity in light of hospitality, it's all kind of connected, but then Dan and I, there's a verse in First Peter where it talks about administering God's grace in its various forms, like hospitality can be varied, God's grace is varied in how we administer it to one another. So this past January we had the idea of starting some dinners for eight, where we have a pastor or an elder couple, a couple that's been at our church forever, that we've shame, shame, never had at our house, you know. We started radio lists of, like, these - there's some that have been at Faith Bible Church forever, and they're just core, and we've never had them over. So we're going to get a list, and then a new couple. So we started that, and we did three of those, and that was super fun. And we want to continue that now. Now we're jumping into new members. Desserts, so I don't, we can only do so many events in a month, but that's the hard part, is like you just run out of time, so yeah, we do both stuff that we've done forever, and we think of creative new ways, and we love to have families over, we love sitting around the table with little kids and teenagers, and I love to have young moms over. Dan loves to welcome guys into his shop and show them what he's been working on with his woodworking. I feel like you practice hospitality that way, just hanging out shoulder to shoulder with another guy running a power tool is actually a way to be hospitable. So, I think I just want people to hear that it doesn't have to look one way, and you can be creative about it. Recently, my women's Bible study table decided to all get together, and we found out that Pam Umbaldo does - she used to do a long time ago color theory to find out what color you are, like what colors look good on you? And so I did that with my women's Bible study table here in my home, and we had so much fun. So, yeah, we love Dan, and I both love thinking outside the box. I think we get bored easily, so even with hospitality, we're like, how can we, what can we do now that would be a way to just bring people into our lives, and we try to leave a margin, too, of like spontaneity, and for hospitality too, like somebody wants to get together last minute, he's better at that than I am, I'm a little sometimes more scheduled, but
Dan Jarms 26:41 you're Americans generally run pretty busy schedules, so we want to do things with our kids, we want to do things now our grandkids, so if you don't put it on the calendar, sometimes it doesn't happen, but yeah, we want to be spontaneous when a need emerges, and I think we heard of a family that was moving to the area, and it was a friend of a friend, and suddenly their house wasn't available right away when they moved here, and we just said, well, you can stay with us for a few days. So our house happened to be available at that time. We didn't have anybody visiting, nobody staying in the house, so we were able to share that, so as the Lord helps you be able, you just want to be ready, ready to do that, and I know, like, you know, we're having a little meal here, and she made enough food for an army, so, which is great, because I love leftovers, but she's just always ready for hospitality, but yeah, busy schedule, that's I think just in building relationships with people we love and know at the church who've been around a long time. Sometimes it just takes a couple of months, but just keep at it, just keep, keep at it.
Linda Jarms 27:56 And I feel like if anybody hears that we're doing dinner for eight and we don't get to you, we feel bad, we're sorry, but maybe use that as a spark to start your own dinner for eight and do the same thing,
Dan Jarms 28:09 and you've already interviewed people who do this two times more than we do, so like there are a lot of people at Faith Bible Church who love people time and love events, and
Linda Jarms 28:21 I think that's the heartbreak of the size of our church. I sit in church on Sunday morning, and I'm like, I love these people so much. I love my church. I wish I could get them all in our home. I wish I could be best friends with all of them, and I just can't. And there's people that have been in our church the whole time who've never been in our home, and that's like a heartbreak for me, but I think that's okay too, because there's a lot of other people that probably are more fun and make better food. No, we got to stop with the self-abasing human. Okay? Should we brag now? Okay.
Jennifer Brandt 28:54 No, I under.. I understand what you guys mean. There's more people, more needs than time, and there just has to be prioritizing. It's hard. It's.. I'm with you. It's sweet that we have such a big church. Yeah, and I'm grateful for that, but it.. it is.. it's hard to get around to every, every person that you would want to.
Dan Jarms 29:16 We have thought about it, that there's probably another aspect of hospitality that's probably more important, and that's the what Sunday morning is like. So, the first place any of us will likely do hospitality with a stranger is going to be in the foyer or the auditorium, so to be ready for the new person to look around, Gardner and I are always looking, Walt, like we always talk about, you know. I watched those people just canvas the whole, they're always looking around, and they're always connected to the new people. And if I start with the new person and Walt hasn't seen him before, Walt's going to march up, and and he's going to want to know. O, and connect, so there's a, there's a really important culture of that that the church can take on, so that's why we give away a coffee, or that's why we want people to connect with us, and a lot of people come into church, and it's intimidating, and it's new, and they're not quite ready, so we want to be, we want to recognize that they're maybe testing the waters, but we don't want anybody to leave without somebody saying you're important to us, you're important to God by some way. We show our love and care, so you don't even have to be, you know, if you've got a little apartment and you can't have a couple or a family over, you can certainly be hospitable on Sunday morning, and just make it really easy. We had a really precious time where somebody was hospitable to us when we were on sabbatical in London. We went to and visited a church, just as to check out a particular church, and the lady that we sat next to just was immediately warm and hospitable, and she wanted to find out where we were from. We're from the States. She just kind of hovered around us as soon as the service was over. She took us all around the building, because it was this historic building. She was really, really sweet. It was really great.
Linda Jarms 31:20 And I think, honey, wouldn't you say there's no apartment too small that you can't welcome somebody in, right? To I think we've seen that in different cultures, oh, lots
Dan Jarms 31:29 of cultures, yeah. Even
Linda Jarms 31:30 I love the one you did with the college girls, you know, that they're having people in their home. There's no space that we can't even, when you were in Russia, you would crowd into the smallest spaces and they would cook you the huddle
Dan Jarms 31:42 around a table like this with eight people,
Linda Jarms 31:44 yeah, yeah. We're creating at a pretty small table, so I think hospitality can happen in any space. It's the heart of the host, really, that matters.
Dan Jarms 31:55 Yeah, no, and that's true. To get them into your home is, is you just want to make it doable. We also had a gal who was brand new at hospitality, and she had us come over, and she wasn't a cook, but she just, she just wanted to show us that we were welcome and special. It was, it was a very precious. You talked about
Linda Jarms 32:20 the recent
Dan Jarms 32:21 one that was a bit ago, oh yeah, yeah,
Linda Jarms 32:23 and I was trying to think of really sweet instances of hospitality, yeah, we've had so many,
Dan Jarms 32:29 yeah,
Linda Jarms 32:30 that have warmed our hearts, yeah.
Jennifer Brandt 32:33 Well, thank you guys so much.
Dan Jarms 32:35 We're really encouraged that you're doing this, because this is really something important to us. We think hospitality as a church culture is really important. So, the fact that you're fanning the flame makes our hearts so happy.
Jennifer Brandt 32:48 Well, we have a very hospitable church. We really do. I'm very blessed. There's an endless number of people that we could interview, so keep it up, Faith, because you guys are awesome, you. Linda, real quick, before we go, I want to talk to you about the pestic pasta recipe that you shared. Okay, I want to know why you chose this one to share with the church, and then just a brief step by step how to make it.
Linda Jarms 33:20 Oh, okay, sure. What's fun with hospitality is to have a dish that is just absolutely no stress for me, just, you know, kind of easy. I've done it for so long because I really do want to focus on the people when I'm feeding them, and sometimes if there's something that requires kind of a lot of last-minute prep while people are coming through the door, I want to stay calm and happy when people come through the door as much as I can, or figure out how to enlist people to help me. That can also be a fun, fun aspect of hospitality, but to answer your question, it's kind of a no-brainer. When it's super simple, and I think it's tasty, I think people like it, and it can be adapted to be gluten free and dairy free, which is also another aspect that is sweet in hospitality, trying to make sure that people can eat your food, I guess that's kind of basic, yeah, and then how, how do you make it? What's the quick step? Okay, yes. So I highly recommend you go to Trader Joe's and get their pack of fresh basil leaves. It's cheaper than any place else. And then you stick those in a food processor or blender with four cloves of garlic, about three quarters cup of olive oil, some lemon juice, salt. You can add nuts if you want. I don't. I have in the past, but it seems like it's good either way. You whirl that up, and then I like to cook chicken, and then pasta, and you add it to your hot pasta. You don't really cook it after that. Keep it nice and fresh, don't let it keep. Cooking, so it stays that nice fresh flavor, and I think that's all there is to it. Yeah,
Jennifer Brandt 35:08 very, very simple and easy and versatile. Yeah, yeah, it's delicious. It's been really fun to enjoy this, so I know the rest of the church will enjoy it too.
Linda Jarms 35:16 Good, I hope so.
Jennifer Brandt 35:18 Yeah, thank you so much again. It's been really sweet to hear a pastor and a pastor's wife's perspective on how to be hospitable to the church and non believers alike, and to just have a little more of a theological understanding of hospitality too, has been sweet. So I'm really encouraged by you guys. Appreciate your time.
Linda Jarms 35:39 It's so fun to be here with you today. It's been a blessing for us. Thank you.
Dr. Dan Jarms is lead pastor at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.
Jennifer is the Hospitality Highlight editor for Living Faith magazine. She and her husband Cory have been married since 2018 and serve together in Youth Ministry.
