Hospitality 3

Hospitality has been a significant theme for me - even though I don't think I practice it very well at times. I've blogged about it before (here). I really do feel that it is one of the missing dimensions to true church and the lack of it in our society harms us. Brian Brisko at Missional Church Network blogs a number of posts on hospitality. I've quoted a few lines here.

“We always treat guests as angels — just in case.” – Brother Jeremiah

“Hospitality begins at the gate, in the doorway, on the bridges between public and private space. Finding and creating threshold places is important for contemporary expressions of hospitality.” – Christine D. Pohl

“If there is room in the heart, there is room in the house.” – Danish Proverb

“If you have a hospitable disposition, you own the entire treasure chest of hospitality, even if you possess only a single coin. But if you are a hater of humanity and a hater of strangers, even if you are vested with every material possession, the house for you is cramped by the presence of guests.” — Chrysostom

“Fear is a thief. It will steal our peace of mind and that’s a lot to lose. But it also hijacks relationships, keeping us sealed up in our plastic world with a fragile sense of security. Being a people who fear the stranger, we have drained the life juices out of hospitality. The hospitality we explore here is not the same kind you will learn about from Martha Stewart. Benedictine hospitality is not about sipping tea and making bland talk with people who live next door or work with you. Hospitality is a lively, courageous, and convivial way of living that challenges our compulsion either to turn away or to turn inward and disconnect ourselves from others.” – Homan and Pratt in Radical Hospitality

Hospitality should be understood as a way of life rather than as a task or strategy. It is easy to slip into viewing hospitality as a strategy for reaching migrants and refugees, or for that matter, for reaching postmodern youth or homeless people. But such an approach misunderstands the basic orientation of hospitality. Hospitality is not a means to an end; it is a way of life infused by the gospel. – Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl

Answers to Loneliness

A rather interesting post at A Place for the God-Hungry.. Interesting because I have been continuing to wonder how to express the significance and importance of community and hospitality as I've been continuing my thoughts about my DMin thesis. First the post ...

Many, many people feel isolated and alone.

- Many men in their more honest moments will speak of feeling alone or friendless.
- Many ministers speak of feeling very alone in their ministries. One often hears the phrase "isolated and alone" when ministers are being very honest.
- Many people speak of how hard it is to make friends in their church. Some will point to a time, place, or church when they had close friends. However, they have never been able to have those same kinds of experiences again.

Some people admit they have few if any friends but will then say that they really have no time to invest in new friendships.
Why is the sense of being alone or friendless so common? What are some of the contributing factors? What can be done (either by individuals or by a church) to help remedy this?

A blog reader posted a comment ...

We can't help [but] acknowledge that many of our lives are so frenetic that we do not have room or time for relationship. You can almost see eyes roll when you begin speaking about real community and what it takes. People are thinking how idealistic that is and they question how they can possibly fit it into their lives between work, kids activities, chores etc. This same overly extended generation of people can hardly fathom the spiritual practice of hospitality in order to cultivate relationships.

As a church I don't think there is a cure all for this. Certainly we can position ourselves and our entry points to facilitate people getting into smaller groups of one kind or another in order to make connections with others. I think the greater challenge is trying to form a culture that prioritizes hospitality, service, confession, sharing and mentoring. Perhaps when Christians are being honest about their lives, testifying and praying over each other in public ways, the temptation to remain in a lonely place of guilt or shame will be less likely.
Sorry this comment is so long. You really have me thinking.

My comments ...

It is sad to think that this obviously intelligent person who makes the comment thinks the church has no cure. The church fundamentally is the cure - but not the church we see around us. Isn't Christian loneliness a symptom of the failure of "typical" church? I continue to wonder what the God answer is. How do we create faith communities that actually do alleviate loneliness and enhance community? I think we may each need to personally think back to times when we were experiencing what we felt was meaningful community and list some of the elements that made it so. Then each one of us must take responsibility for ensuring that our current communities reflect those characteristics. It will no longer be done for us - except by accident.

I'm really only thinking out loud here. I continue to speak to people about what this looked like for them and so far I have no consistent answers - just some clues that keep leading me deeper. I will stay in touch.

Living Well In The Emerging Milieu 3 (DMin)

The question of the previous DMin posts was "How Shall We Then Live?" We looked at living incarnationally and simplifying our lives. The third response is hospitality.

3. Hospitality.

Hospitality was such a key concept in the first century church and should be today as well. When looked at closely, the hospitality aspect of the first century really captures the imagination. Hospitality is sometimes spoken of in our churches as if it is something optional, that we would be hospitable if it were our passion or gift. But the whole New Testament makes little sense without hospitality at the core of how the church developed. The ministry of Jesus was dependent on the hospitality of those around Him (Mary and Martha, Peter's mother-in-law, etc.).

The church was dependent on the hospitality of those in whose homes the church actually met. Hospitality is not an extra but the strategic central concept of the first two hundred years of the church. The household was where the church was embodied and it was actually the medium of the early church growth. We need to challenge the reluctance to show hospitality, or to show only the hospitality that is limited to family and friends, or the marginalization of household hospitality in favor of mega church programs and fellowship.

Shane Claibourne says it this way: “…as congregations build larger buildings, gyms and food courts, we find ourselves less likely to meet in homes, and kitchens, and around dinner tables. We end up centralizing worship on corporate space or on (a church) campus. Hospitality becomes less of a necessity and more of an optional matter – a convenient privilege. On the other hand as members open their homes and yards and share vehicles and recreations spaces less and less corporate property is necessary.”

In many ways this is counter-cultural teaching, but Christians need to excel in this virtue and transform it into a distinctly Christian principle. We are called to a higher level of living than the society around us and so must live as relational people. A commitment to hospitality confronts our society's rampant individualism and it actually protects our life together as the people of God. The challenge remains: can we break out of the individualistic culture around us (and deeply ingrained in us) in order actually practice what is commanded?

The New Monasticism

I have been reading Shane Claiborne's book "The Irresistible Revolution" and it makes some great points, provides some great quotes and seriously challenges our North American style of Christianity. He (that's his picture to the right - a little crazy looking don't your agree? But that's his "promo" picture off his website!) lives in "community" in a reclaimed abandoned house in a very poor area of North Philadelphia. His community life would be like life on a commune (for those of you older than about 40) except with only 6 or 7 living in the house. They share their resources, grow their own food (or as much of it as possible) and live among the poor. The term "New Monasticism" would be the phrase that best describes what they are doing there and it is happening in many places across North America.

Now a few quotes:

I gave up Christianity in order to follow Jesus. What does it really look like to follow Jesus? Quotes Soren Kierkegaard: "The Bible is very easy to understand,. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly … Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close."

Catholic Bishop Dom Helder Camara: “When I fed the hungry they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.”

Charity wins awards and applause, but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them. 129

Community is what we are created for. We are made in the image of a God who is community – a plurality of oneness. Jesus lived and modeled community with his little band of disciples. He always sent them out in pairs and the early church is the story of a people who were together and were of one heart and mind sharing all in common. The story ends with a vision of the new community in the book of revelation where the city of God is dressed beautifully for her lover this community called the New Jerusalem.
But that doesn’t mean community is easy – for everything in this world tries to pull us away from community. Pushes us to choose ourselves over others to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together. 135

Hospitality 2

As I was preparing to talk about hospitality in the early church at Hills on Sunday, I was amazed at how much I had looked at the book of Acts through the eyes of my late 20th century church eyes. You know, the church that has 3 or 4 hundred people in a nice church auditorium used a couple of times a week with everyone sitting in rows and facing the front listening to one person drone on and on and afterwards trying to find someone to go out to eat with so you could practice the hospitality you were shown by someone else last week.

Now (with my 21st century eyes) I am seeing stuff in the book of Acts I never realized was there. I am seeing that the house churches were the embodiment of biblical and Christian hospitality. These house churches were not preacing points but places where dialogue happened. (Preaching was primarily for the proclamation of the glad tidings to people who had not yet experienced the reality of the risen Christ.)

In my life the theological aspects of hospitality had been left unstudied. If I had ever heard a message on it, the main ideas were neighbourliness or inviting someone home for dinner after church. I never saw that the core of Christianity and the success of the movement revolved around hospitality. Hospitality resulted in household salvation and was the medium of the growth of Christianity

In many ways this is counter cultural teaching but Christians need to excel in this virtue and transform it into a distinctly Christian principle. We are called to a higher level of living than the society around us and so must live as relational people. A commitment to hospitality confronts our society's rampant individualism and it actually protects our life together as the people of God.

A few Scriptures ... Hospitality is our duty and the duty of elders Titus 1:8; it is a spiritual gift Rom 12:13; practice hospitality without grumbling 1 Peter 4:9; by hospitality we may entertain strangers Heb 13:2; in the gospels, the very success of the mission depended on hospitality – finding a man of peace and being welcomed into homes Mt 10:5-42; Mk 6:7-11; Lk 9:2-5; 10:1-16.

The challenge remains: can we break out of the individualistic culture around us (and deeply ingrained in us) in order actually practice what is commanded? I know it is challenging me because hospitality is exercised as a household and everyone in the household needs to cooperate - or at least comply - in order to make hospitality effective. The last post about the role of women in hospitality neglected to mention that it is a combined role requiring husband and wife (and often children and extended family) to participate together "without grumbling!"

Hospitality 1

This morning at church we talked about the significance of hospitality and I might post a few times on this topic. A number of weeks ago Scott Mcknight posted a comment on his blog concerning the role that hospitality plays in the advancement of the kingdom of God. I've quoted three paragraphs of his post and made a few comments afterward.

"Today I want to suggest that women took common places and converted them into sacred spaces, and I want to suggest further that women developed “missional centers” in earliest Christianity. And I want to contend that any suggestion that the hospitality women offered in the 1st Century was simply cooking for others or making life easy for others greatly devalues the kind of hospitality women created."

"Martha and Mary illustrate the kind of benefaction women offered Jesus and the Twelve and the kingdom ministers (Luke 8:1-3). Martha and Mary illustrate how to use one’s goods and money for the sake of the kingdom; Jesus criticized the rich and offered consolation to the poor — and called those who followed him to surrender their goods (Mark 10:17-31). These women were illustrations of how to do that: they used their goods for the kingdom."

"One needs to note that women were so much a part of offering hospitality in the early churches that churches got connected to them — notice Acts 12:12; 16:13-15; 16:40; Rom 16:1-5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col. 4:15 and 2 John 1. If the hospitality that is being offered here is truly Jesus-shaped, it is a hospitality that engaged one another in fellowship, in instruction, in learning, and in shaping the kind of kingdom ministry in those communities.
Now, let me make this clear: women did more than this, but this they did in the earliest churches: they converted common places into sacred spaces."

The hospitality aspect really captures my imagination here. We speak of it as almost something optional as if we would be hospitable if we (male or female) were willing or gifted. But the whole New Testament makes little sense without hospitality at the core of how the church developed.

The ministry of Jesus was dependent on the hospitality of those around Him (Mary and Martha, Peter's mother-in-law, etc.). The church was dependent on the hospitality of those in whose homes the church actually met. Hospitality is not an extra but the strategic central concept of the first three hundred years of the church. The household church was where hospitality was embodied and it was the medium of the early church growth.

Our reluctance to show hospitality, or the hospitality that is limited to family and friends, or the marginalization of household hospitality in favour of mega church programs and fellowship suppers is hopefully one of the things being challenged by the emerging church movement.

I think some of those embracing new monasticism (Shane Claiborne and others) have captured some of the essence of biblical hospitality and it challenges me deeply.

Breakfast of Champions

Ahhhh! The smell of bacon in the morning (and the afternoon because it clings to your clothes and tells the whole world what you've had for breakfast). You'll notice the eggs and bacon and sausages on the stove just about ready to be consumed

And in the second picture those ready to consume (Christian, me, Dan, Jared, Phil and Alan - Norm's taking the picture and Ken, Glen and Tom have not yet arrived). We actually had a few more show up after our photo shoot to help us with the abundance of food. You can actually see the smoke from the cooking of the bacon as it catches the early morning sun streaming in through the window.

For the last four years or so Norm has been hosting a breakfast for the men who hang around Hills and their friends. We call it the Breakfast of Champions because we don't pray enough to call it a men's prayer breakfast. But we do talk! Sometimes the talk is silly - but most of the time the talk is about what's going on with us or with our world or with the whole world. We talked a bit about the Leafs and why they are not in the playoffs. We talked some politics this morning (why is Belinda Stronach in the news again?) But mostly we talked about our testimonies (or Tom did anyways). He told us how God interrupted his life and in the "cone of silence" showed Himself to be real and alive.

I am so amazed of the repeated stories of how God moves in people's lives and how much of it is very similar from person to person. As we look back we can see the amazing way God has been faithful and with us every step of the way - even though in the middle of the journey He can seem kind of far away.

Thanks for your story Tom.
And thanks to you Norm, you really know how to show hospitality (and thanks Marika - because although Norm had the house before he was married and he still does most of the cooking, I know you make the place look nice and you still so graciously put up with our banter, and our mess!) Thanks for letting us be the church in your house!

Pool Mom

I just read this from the Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional and thought it was great. Kind of captures the heartbeat of Hills. If you want to see more from their archives of devotionals check it out here.

Pool mom
by John Fischer


I met a man once who served on the missions committee at his church. He told me how he was most proud of a certain former member of the committee – a woman who had put a promising career aside when ... she and her husband decided to adopt three children from Lithuania. Figuring that these children who had grown up at great risk would demand her full-time attention, she committed herself to that very thing. She did enjoy volunteering at the church, however, and ended up serving on the missions committee and teaching Sunday school.

Then suddenly, as abruptly as she had begun serving her church, she informed my friend that she was resigning from the missions committee and giving up her Sunday school class as well. He asked her what was wrong, and she said that everything was fine – God had just spoken to her, and she was going to follow his lead.

“I spent most of the summer being a ‘pool mom,’” she told him, “taking my kids to the pool four to five days a week. I became friendly with several other pool moms, and we all had a lot of time to talk together. As August was winding down and the pool was about to close, one of them said to me, ‘It has been a real pleasure getting to know you this summer. The rest of us have been friends all our lives. We went to the same schools, the same summer camps, and the same temple. We were at each other’s bat-mitzvahs, and we attended each other’s weddings, but we’ve never gotten to know anybody like you. Maybe we could keep in touch.’

“So what could be a clearer direction from God than that?” She concluded. “I’ve decided to spend the next year completely focused on being a friend to this group of young Jewish ladies. I am going to practice friendship first and let evangelism take its natural course. And I don’t want to be distracted by the demands of church activities. If I don’t give them up, I’ll have a very hard time fitting my friends into my schedule. This next year is for them! After that, who knows?”

Think of that: She got off the missions committee to perform a mission – a mission of being a friend. Not that we should disband worship committees or that it will always take our full-time attention to be a friend, but this woman’s priorities are something we all need to pay attention to. Being a friend is a mission in and of itself, and connecting to those around us who are outside the church is more important than being on a host of committees.