Aarti Sequeira, winner of “The Next Food Network Star” and judge on the television show “Cooks vs. Cons,” does not believe hospitality is optional for Christians. She believes it is foundational.
“Jesus sat at tables that were radical. He broke bread with people who wouldn’t even make eye contact with each other today,” the 47-year-old cook told The Christian Post.
In a cultural moment marked by isolation and anxiety, Sequeira wants to reinforce the notion that opening one’s home, no matter how imperfect or unpolished, is a biblical practice and a way of loving neighbors well.
“Being hospitable should flow out of the heart of a believer, because the heart of a believer is a generous heart,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to look like much. When you look at the spine of our faith, Jesus did so many miracles, and the fact that one of them was to feed people, should inform us that that is important to Him, that there is a message that is communicated that goes deeper than just, ‘I’m going to feed your belly.’”
Sequeira’s new series, “Made to Share,” a six-episode YouTube series, launched just in time for the holidays, in partnership with Compassion International, drives that truth home. Each episode pairs approachable recipes with storytelling and reflection, inviting viewers, particularly moms and young adults, to rethink hosting as presence and a ministry.
“As Christians, practicing hospitality sets us apart from other people, especially right now,” the Food Network personality said.
“I think everyone’s so lonely and so isolated. When we invite people over, it’s a defiant fist in the air, saying, ‘We’re not buying into this nonsense that we need to be isolated and sitting around bed rotting or doom scrolling. We’re built different.’ The Bible says you will know we are Christians by our love. One of the ways that you can show that love is by opening up your dinner table to people.”
According to Sequeira, food has always been her family’s love language. Born in India, raised in Dubai, educated in a British school, Sequeira grew up as what she dubbed a “third culture kid,” constantly navigating overlapping identities that never quite settled.
“Food helped us connect with people who were far from home,” she said. “But it also helped my parents say, ‘This is where you come from. Don’t forget it.’”
Though Sequeira now describes herself as a non-denominational Protestant, her family belongs to a historically Christian Catholic community in India, with specific foods tied to specific holy days, with meals marked celebration, grief, affection and belonging. Long before she articulated it in spiritual terms, food communicated meaning, she said.
“It was never just fuel,” she recalled. “It was identity.”
When it comes to hosting, Sequeira said she hears the same objections repeatedly from friends who love to cook but avoid hosting: “My house isn’t clean.” “What if the dish doesn’t turn out?” “It’s too small.”
Social media, she lamented, has amplified the anxiety. Every food video is beautifully styled and lit, reinforcing the idea that food must look a certain way to be worthy of sharing. Even Sequeira, she admitted, sometimes feels the pressure.
“I’ll catch myself thinking I have to make something fancy,” she said. “Because I’m ‘a Food Network person.’ But when Jesus fed people, it didn’t take much,” she says, referencing the loaves and fishes. “And yet it became a feast.”
But hospitality, she contended, is not about proving competence but about practicing generosity. It doesn’t have to be fancy, she added, as boxed mac and cheese can be elevated, for example, with scallions, sour cream, frozen peas and breadcrumbs.
“Nobody needs to know,” she said. “But they’ll feel cared for. It doesn’t have to look like much. It’s that someone opened the door.”
For the chef, her partnership with Compassion International grew out of her heart for caring for the “least of these.”
As a mother of two, Sequeira says feeding took on new meaning when children entered her life. And when she learned more about Compassion’s work — providing food, education and spiritual care to children living in poverty — she was drawn to the ministry.
“They feed kids in every sense of the word,” she said. “And that’s where my calling starts.”
Having grown up moving between “extraordinary wealth and extreme poverty,” with Dubai one year and rural India the next, Sequeira said she’s always had an awareness of the global spectrum of childhood. Sponsoring a child through Compassion has been part of her family’s life for years.
In “Made to Share,” food becomes the connective thread between donors and children they may never meet. Cooking a dish from another culture, Sequeira explained, creates a form of empathy and an “intangible connection” that bridges distance.
“You can understand a culture’s geography, history, even personality just by cooking their food,” she says. “It’s kind of amazing.”
Through her platform, the cook said she wants to encourage viewers to see hosting as a way to practice generosity, build genuine community, and reflect Christ’s love through everyday acts of welcome. Communion, she noted, is a meal, the central act of remembrance in Christian worship.
“It has been my experience that when I have a meal with someone who believes completely different things than I do, it’s actually so much easier for me to care about them and to love them and see them as a three-dimensional person,” she said.
“It doesn’t necessarily change my opinion,” she added. “It might soften it a little bit. It might help me understand them and help them understand me. It’s not a new concept, but I think it’s more vital than ever.”
Watch “Made to Share” on YouTube.
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
