Hospitality

by | Apr 20, 2022 | Practices

Resources on the Practice of Hospitality

The Desire of Hospitality

-to be a safe person who offers others the grace, shelter and presence of Jesus

Hospitality creates a safe, open space where a friend or stranger can enter and experience the welcoming spirit of Christ in another.
Romans 15:7
Mark 12:30-31
Hebrews 13:1-2
John 14:1-3
1 Peter 4:8-9
Acts 16:33-34
  • sharing your home, food, resources, car and all that you call your own so that another might experience the reality of God’s welcoming heart.
  • reaching out to and receiving the stranger or the enemy with the hope that he or she might be transformed into a friend.
  • loving, not entertaining, the guest.
  • welcoming others into your clique, group, club, life.
  • spontaneously inviting people for meals.
  • reaching out beyond your nuclear family to include others.
  • hosting exchange students.
  • keeping company with Jesus; offering his welcoming heart to others.
  • displaying God’s welcoming heart to the world (children, foreign students, neighbors, teachers, colleagues).
  • living the truth that all you have belongs to God.
  • providing safe places for people in an unsafe world.
  • loving people rather than impressing them.
  • developing conversational skills that put others at ease.
  • opening your home to others.
  • expressing your love for God through celebrating and honoring others.
“Food is a gift of God given to all creatures for the purposes of life’s nurture, sharing, and celebration. When it is done in the name of God, eating is the earthly realization of God’s eternal communion-building love.”
Norman Wirzba

Food & Faith

Overview of Hospitality

By Adele Ahlberg Calhoun
 

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 Andrew Trocmé was asked why the village responded the way 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.
“Radically ordinary hospitality does not simply flow from the day-to-day interests of the household. You must prepare spiritually. The Bible calls spiritual preparation warfare. Radically ordinary hospitality is indeed spiritual warfare.”
Rosaria Butterfield

The Gospel Comes With A House Key

Secular Comparisons

Entertainment

  • seeks to impress
  • obsesses over what went wrong
  • focuses on self-perception
  • expectation of reciprocation
  • status-seeking

Biblical Hospitality

  • seeks to bless
  • savors what was shared
  • focuses on the needs of others
  • no expectation of reciprocation
  • servanthood seeking

Spiritual Exercises

Remember

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.

Pray

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.

Be Spontaneous

Be spontaneous. Hold a “craving potluck”. Ask everyone to bring something they crave. Don’t try to make it perfect. Focus on the guests.

Invite Help

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?

Angel In Disguise

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 (Hebrews 13:2).

Leftovers Welcomed

Have a leftovers 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!

Ice Breakers

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?

Family Team

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.

Small Space?

For those who live in a small home or apartment, don’t feel that you need to have a large table, decorations that fit the season, or even enough chairs for everyone. A good meal and conversation can be shared on a couch, on the floor, or even standing up near the kitchen counter.

Can't Cook?

For those who don’t have the ability or resources to cook a meal, feel free to order takeout or encourage others to bring a dish for a potluck meal while you handle drinks. Don’t let that excuse exclude you from practicing hospitality.
“The heart of hospitality is about creating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved. It’s about declaring your table a safe zone, a place of warmth and nourishment.”
Shauna Niequist

Bread & Wine

Books on Hospitality

The Gospel Comes With A House Key

Rosaria Butterfield

Butterfield shares her life testimony about how radically ordinary hospitality from a local pastor allowed her to see the real Jesus and come to faith in Him.

A Meal With Jesus

Tim Chester

This book shows how the table – a central part of Jesus’ earthly ministry – is a perfect vehicle for building community.

Bread & Wine

Shauna Niequist

Food & Faith

Normal Wirzba

Open Heart Open Home

Karen Mains
“The table fellowship of Jesus, with its ethic of grace rather than reciprocity, was creating a new countercultural society in the midst of the Empire.”
Tim Chester

A Meal With Jesus

Podcasts on Hospitality

The Art of Practicing Hospitality

Simply Joyful Podcast

Listen Now

Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition

Thrive With Asbury Seminary

Listen Now

Christian Hospitality

Anabaptist Perspectives

Listen Now
“Hospitality, however, seeks to minister. It says, “This home is not mine. It is truly a gift from my Master. I am His servant and I use it as He desires.” Hospitality does not try to impress, but to serve.”
Karen Burton Mains

Open Heart Open Home

Videos on Hospitality

“Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God.”
Rosaria Butterfield

The Gospel Comes With A House Key

Blog Articles on Hospitality

10 Things You Should Know About Christian Hospitality

by Rosaria Butterfield

Read Blog

How to Engage in Biblical Hospitality

by Elizabeth Berry

Read Blog

Christian Hospitality

by Kenneth Berding

Read Blog
“If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health.”
Shauna Niequest

Bread & Wine

Reflection Questions

1. When have you been so deeply received that the welcome touched your soul?
2. When have you been wounded because you were not welcomed and received? How has the welcome of Jesus touched your life and your wounds?
3. How comfortable are you with being the host or hostess?
4. Who models hospitality and welcome for you?
5. How do you feel about having guests come to visit? Where do you struggle with doing everything perfectly?
6. How might Jesus want to use your heart and home as a shelter for others?
Matt Garcia

Matt Garcia

Author

Matt is an apprentice of Jesus, a husband to Jesika, and a father to three children. He and his family lead a house church in San Antonio, TX. Connect with him on instagram @apprenticeofjesus.