Hospitality
Hospitality
The world seems to become more dangerous every day. People feel vulnerable in their own homes and on guard in the presence of others. Many environments are competitive, hostile and unsafe. Safe places and safe people are few and far between. True welcome and nurture seem a long-lost dream. Because we have been welcomed into the love of Christ and received as dearly loved children, we can offer the world a place of safety and healing. We can incarnate the welcoming heart of God for the world. God welcomes strangers, inviting them to share his home and get to know his family. During World War II an entire French village risked their lives to welcome and shelter Jews. When pastor Andre Trocmé was asked why the village responded as they did, he replied, “I could not bear to be separated from Jesus.” That is hospitality at its core—offering the welcome of Jesus to any and all.
Hospitality is not about impressing others with well-decorated homes and gourmet cooking. It’s not simply for the gifted or those with clean homes. Neither is it just for women. Hospitality is a way of loving our neighbor in the same way God has loved us. In To Know as We Are Known, Parker Palmer describes hospitality as a way of “receiving each other, our struggles, our newborn ideas with openness and care. It means creating an ethos in which the community of truth can form.”
The early church shaped their life together around the practice of hospitality. “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people” (Acts 2:46-47). Our world desperately needs safe people and safe places. Hospitality is one way we become God’s welcoming arms in a big and often hostile world.
Reflection Questions
- When have you been so deeply received that the welcome touched your soul?
- When have you been wounded because you were not welcomed and received?
How has the welcome of Jesus touched your life and your wounds?
- How comfortable are you with being the host or hostess?
- Who models hospitality and welcome for you?
- How do you feel about having guests come to visit?
Where do you struggle with doing everything perfectly?
- How might Jesus want to use your heart and home as a shelter for others?
Spiritual Exercises
- Remember a time you have been deeply welcomed and received. Recount the circumstances and the way people reached out to you. Picture where Jesus was in this event. Let God touch you again with his welcome and love.
- Develop the practice of praying for the people you invite to your home. Pray for them as you invite them. Pray for them the day they come. Pray for them as they leave your driveway. • How has sharing your home with them given you deeper ways to hold them before the Lord? • Send a note with your prayer to your guests.
- Be spontaneous. Hold a “craving potluck.” Ask everyone to bring something they crave. Don’t try to make it perfect. Focus on the guests.
- Hospitality is not something we do all by ourselves. It invites others in. When you offer hospitality, let your guests help. • If you have trouble letting people help you, make this a matter of prayer. What in you needs to be touched to make you receptive and open?
- When strangers or guests arrive, welcome them with all your heart. Everyone in the home should go to the door to greet the guests. Tell them how glad you are that they have come. • Then when they leave, stay in the driveway until they are gone from view. Treat each guest as though he or she were an angel in disguise, “for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).
- Have a “left-overs” gathering. Invite people to bring what is in their refrigerator. See what kind of meal happens. Tell your guests the main point is just to be together!
- Develop a list of standard conversational questions (other than “What do you do?”) that can open people up to one another. How do the questions you ask bring welcome rather than comparison?
- Help your children grow in understanding God’s hospitable heart. Help them plan a party for their friends. Encourage them to think about what will make each one feel most welcome.
Resources on Hospitality
Open Heart, Open Home by Karen Mains
Opening Our Hearts and Homes by Karen Mains and Adele Calhoun
Making Room by Christine Pohl
“Ask me not where I live and what I like to eat. Ask me what I am living for and what I think is keeping me from living fully for that.” —Thomas Merton
Mentoring
DESIRE | to accompany and encourage others to grow to their God-given potential |
DEFINITION | Mentoring is a relational experience in which one person empowers another by sharing his or her life, experience and God-given resources. A mentor nurtures an apprentice’s personal development, faith and skill. |
SCRIPTURE | “But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him.” (Acts 9:27) “Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience.” (1 Timothy 1:18) “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live. . . . Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure.” (Titus 2:3-5) |
PRACTICE INCLUDES |
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GOD-GIVEN FRUIT |
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