Christian Hospitality

Sadly, there is no Nashville Napkin this month.  I contacted someone but have yet to receive a response.  I will continue working on it for you.  So, drum roll please, we are going to dive into a series of entries on Christian hospitality. 

I am not talking about entertaining but about the hospitality we see practiced in the Bible.  Christians took shelter with other Christians when they traveled about.  Organizations like hotels and hospitals originated out of the practice of hospitality shown by Christians. 

Often hospitality meant the difference between life and death in that culture.  Just think about the hospitality shown by Abraham in Genesis 18 and Lot in just the next chapter.  Today, we have many more options for shelter; however, hospitality in our culture can still have a huge impact on the vigor of our spiritual lives.

When I felt that the Lord was leading me away from the choir at church, my director asked me what do you think the Lord is calling you to.  I did not have an answer.  That was back in December.  Now, I have a answer.  He has replaced my Wednesday night choir practice with a class on hospitality.

We are reading books on Christian hospitality.  The first was Making Room:  Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl.  It is a survey book looking back at the pattern of hospitality in the Bible and in historical practice plus our modern variances of the principle. 

My favorite statement in the whole book was that through this research the author hoped to add credibility to what some have been doing intuitively in their homes for years.  The other critical factor she brings up is that people need to be home to host hospitality.  We are, oh so, busy today. 

Yet, some have made the decision to open their homes as a means to help others.  And, oh so, many years ago, I benefited from an in-home ministry.  A retired couple hosted a weekly covered dish supper in their home.  We listened to a brief teaching, worshiped, and then had time for personal ministry.  They also offered individual counseling in their home as a team.  I grew so much spiritually under that mentoring relationship.

One of the ministries Pohl highlighted in her book interested me.  This lead to reading book number two, L'Abri by Edith Schaeffer.  It chronicles the building of a ministry in Switzerland by an American family beginning in the late 1950s.  L'Abri is the French word for shelter.  The family chose to live by faith to show that God is real.  Their home was open to "any in need of spiritual help - especially those seeking the answers to basic philosophical problems ... (p.13)." 

She describes what God did like this. "A family of six, two of them sick children, move into a beat up chalet in a tiny mountain village without even a living room ... and pray that God will send them the people to talk to! (p.227)"  And that he did.  In eleven years the work grew to include a complex of chalets, a chapel and locations in other countries.

How does this apply to C Square Ministries, Inc.?  Read on next week.