Hospitality
Posted by tom | Jun 29, 2007I just couldn't refrain from commenting on Hospitality: Now and Then. I confess that the thoughts I share are true blog comments, i.e., basically the typing out of verbal processing. But I'd encourage you to take some time to read through McKnight's post and the other comments. This quote from Peggy led me to prayer and affirmed our family's commitment to walk alongside young families seeking direction/encouragement/support:
Hospitality, in the era of the nuclear family, is almost impossible when your children are young and you have no family nearby. All my time is taken up in surviving … there is little left over for ministry at church, much less hospitality. More to share, but it will have to be later as our families are in the midst of hosting.
Note: I focus on Arlene Miller's Called to Care: A Christian Worldview for Nursing in my first comment and also check out the related post at Women Authors: Christine Pohl. Note: To not loose the material I have cut-and-pasted the comments below.
Comment 1:
A year or two ago I shared a significant amount of Pohl’s Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as Christian Tradition at an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) Graduate Student Area Conference. I highlighted the unique opportunity for servanthood, lived out Gospel witness which graduate students have in the rich, diverse setting of higher education. A snapshot of hospitality which was not lost on young and old at our annual Faculty Conference/Family Camp was seeing faculty and IVCF staff (including those in leadership) joke and chat while washing dishes and setting tables — a tradition of shared ministry which extends back for a long time.
En route back from the week at the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Lancaster County, PA, our family made a return visit to Pittsburgh, where we had served for just over a decade. On Friday night, our family of 5 was hosted by an IVCF friend from college and then on Saturday we were hosted by an IVCF alum family from the 1950s in Pittsburgh. On Sunday we had an afternoon ‘potluck’ social w/several generations of brothers-and-sisters in Christ connected with IVCF. Adults and kids spilled over from the adult education room into the hallway and gym as conversation and games went on and on.
On Sunday night we returned home to check out the basement family room of our new house. The room was finished by our neighbors (my wife’s parents), who were striving to help us complete this large space in time to help share the hosting of their other daughter and her 3 boys who were arriving on Tuesday. When my wife’s parents got on the road Tuesday morning to pick up their daughter’s family from the airport, their van had difficulties and we loaned them ours.
We’re not “rural Hutterites,” but it may come close as our families mix with one-another for the next 6 weeks as they cross from yard to yard, house to house and make regular trips up/down the road to visit other relatives. Around the breakfast table I take my 7 year old twin girls through Sinclair Ferguson’s “The Big Book of Questions & Answers: A Family Devotional Guide to the Christian Faith,” after our lesson I set them loose to walk their journey of faith with us . . . by God’s grace some taught, some caught.
3 quotes from Pohl which I underlined:
- “My journey into hospitality began twenty years ago as I worked with refugees and poor people in my local church. Even before then, however, I had felt specially drawn to people with disabilities and to those troubled folks who simply needed a friend. I noticed how they were frequently overlooked in the busyness of everyday life and sensed that their invisibility was a loss to everyone. Often, as my life intertwined with theirs, I found myself enriched and changed. During those years I did not have access to the vocabularly of hospitality, but I knew intuitvely that I had touched on something very important” (ix). — note: particularly moving to our family as we have a child with a brain bleed leading to numerous developmental delays and I have had various issues related to cancer treatment; God has carried us through, the grace offered through the care of His People has been immense
- Guests [in L'Abri households] learn about the Christian life by living alongside families in the daily give and take of caring for one another. Edith Schaeffer, cofounder of L’Abri, observed, “For some young people, L’Abri homes are the first really happy homes they have ever seen . . . You can’t imagine what the opportunity of eating, doing dishes, helping peel potatoes, being a part of conversation and family prayers in such a variety of homes does, which any amount of lecturing and ‘talking about home life could never do” (p.155).
- “Many people who practice the kind of hospitality enjoined in the gospel describe it as ‘the best and hardest thing’ they ever done. In their experience, its difficulty and its joys lie close together. They find it to be the ‘best thing’ because they sense God’s presence so frequently in the practice. As practitioners see small miracles every day, Scripture and prayer come alive. Hospitality is wonderful because it is filled with unexpected blessings, beacuse it is fun, and because of the opportunities it providees to become friends with so many different kingds of people” (p.170, Chapter 9 “The Spiritual Rhytms of Hospitality” is powerful).
Bonus: Read An Outpost of God’s Kingdom: Making a Christian home, a review of Kim Peterson’s "Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life" by Lauren F. Winner in the newest Books and Culture.
Comment 2:
I’m in the process of reading Called to Care: A Christian Worldview for Nursing (IVP, 2006). Early in the book, the Judith Shelly and Arlene Miller argue:
Western medicine developed out of a Greek, and later Cartesian, body-mind dualism that viewed the body as object. The role of the nurse, however, grew out of a Christian understanding of the human person as created in the image of God and viewed the body as a living unity and the ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’ (I Cor 3:16). Medicine has traditionally focused on the scientific dimension of the human body, relegating the spiritual and psychosocial dimensions to religion and pyschology. The uniqueness of nursing is its emphasis on caring for the whole person as embodied. It is defined as both an art and a science . . .
The impetus for this movement came when the first-century Christians began to teach that all believers were ministers who were to care for the poor, the sick and the disenfranchised (e.g., Mt 25:31-46; Heb 13:1-3; Jas 1:27). As the churches grew, they appointed deacons to care for the needy within the church. Eventually, more men and women were added to the roll of deacons, and their designated responsibilites grew to include caring for the sick. Phoebe, the deacon mentioned in Romans 16:1-2, is often considered the first visiting nurse. By the third century, organized groups of deaconesses were caring for the sick, insane and lepers in the community. In the fourth century the church began establing hospitals. Most of these hospitals did not have a physician, they were staffed by nurses . . . ‘The age-old custom of hospitality . . . was practiced with religious fervor by the early Christians . . . Their houses were opened wide to every afflicted applicant and, not satisfied with receiving needy ones, the deacons, men an dwomen alike, went out to search and bring them in’ (Lavinia Dock and Isabel Stewart, ‘A Short History of Nursing, From the Earlies Times to the Present Day,’ Putnam, 1931, p.51)” (p.16-19).
More to say regarding ‘reproducing the likeness of Jesus in our world as the People of God’ in another comment, but I’ll wrap-up this one with Shelley and Miller’s definition of nursing: “a ministry of compassionate care for the whole person, in response to God’s grace toward a sinful world, which aims to foster optimum health (shalom) and bring comfort in suffering and death for anyone in need” (p.17-18).
Comment 3:
The various issues which we’ve faced over the past decade has underscored the reality that each day, each minute, each second (all of life) is a gift of God. One of the means of grace by which He has carried us through is the light of Christ’s hospitality through the Body of Christ in the midst of a dark world. While in Pittsburgh, we were welcomed into the homes of others and others came into our home to make our place more hospitable to live in through cleaning, cooking, watching our kids, mowing the grass, etc 
During our transition back to where we were raised, the local congregation which we left helped pack and fill our truck. In addition one of its members helped us drive out while the congregation with which we were connecting provided volunteers to unload our truck (and I’ve had the opportunity help another member pack-up) after we spent 1 month at my parents house and 5 months at my wife’s parents house.
At our new local congregation, a helpful welcome center provided valuable information, the children’s ministries helped our kids make a smooth transition into their work (giving our youngest the attention she needed with her developmental delays), several pastors and a deacon met with us in follow-up to a Sunday afternoon ‘newcomers meal’ and passed along pictoral/address directories so we could ‘be at home,’ one of the pastors helped us with our basement projects, and a small group welcomed us into their home for Bible study, food, and friendship. Our fellowship group (an age/life-situation based time for weekly prayer/deaconal support separate from the time of worship and Sunday school) provides meals, childcare, various means of support for those in challenging life situations. In addition, my wife has once again found a gathering through which to provide support group for young moms (note: ‘Mom’s Night Out’ is currently taking advantage of a local donut shop as I’m home with the kids). The monthly practice of the Lord’s Supper is enriched by nearly monthly gatherings for the whole congregation (picnics, socials, lawn parties) and an annual footwashing service which serves as a rich reminder of our mutual servanthood.
In a few weeks, we’ll host the 3rd conversation in a developing ‘shared resources’ program for our local congregation. Highlights include:
- Bulletin board for listing items that are wanted or are free for the taking (no items for sale)
- Lending binder in a pocket on or near the bulletin board (this binder could start with items and services the folks in the group and the church have to loan)
- Opportunities/tools to share more about who we are and what we have to offer in the area of our gifts and talents, possibly a church yellow pages or a “getting to know each other” guide that would include gifts, skills, interests, hobbies . . .
Just getting started and the stories of how we have seen/experienced/given hospitality in our local congregation continue to multiply. Praise be to God!
My own hospitality skills are pretty weak, being a true introvert -- i.e. one who loves the company of other people but usually finds it draining, rather than energizing. However, I can offer a few comments on hospitality and young families based on both experience and observation.
The first thing that strikes me is the idea that this is the "era of the nuclear family." Yes, most of us no longer have extended family close, which is a terrible loss, but families but today "nuclear" when applied to families means less "nucleus" and more "nuclear explosion." A HUGE area of hospitality potential for young families is to their children's friends, who often have little experience with a loving family, mother and father married to each other, children welcomed and respected, all having fun together and supporting one another.
As you well know, the Daleys manage to practice hospitality frequently despite small children, and I doubt that will change as their family grows. They can't do as others we both know, who have large houses and can invite large groups -- but hospitality isn't just a matter of size.
One caveat, a piece of advice from a friend who practiced extreme hospitality and learned the hard way: Some forms of ministry are flat-out not appropriate for families. Any situation that leaves vulnerable children alone in the company of badly wounded people is fraught with danger and has high potential for horrific and lasting damage.
Posted by sursumcorda, Jun 29 2007, 10:12