Your church is more attractive than you think.
It’s not the music or the new sign out front, though these things certainly help. It’s something more fundamental and easy to overlook:
In our increasingly inhospitable world, normal, everyday Christian hospitality looks increasingly radical. And this contrast is attractive.
Called to Contrast
Just like God separated light from darkness in Genesis 1, he separates his people from the nations: “You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26). This differentiation is not a side effect of redemption; it’s a central purpose.
God means for his people to be a bright city set on a hill for others to see (Matthew 5:14-16). He told Israel that, when the nations saw their obedience, they would say, “What great nation is there that has a god so near … that has statutes and rules so righteous” (Deuteronomy 4:6-8). As we align with God’s ways, we will be noticeable, like a spotlight in the darkness.
Christian hospitality gives us the opportunity to shine this spotlight into one of the darkest parts of the modern world: relationships.
Social Suffocation
The world is increasingly inhospitable, and people are feeling it. The social atmosphere is becoming poisonous.
In my community, there seem to be two primary reasons for this: homes and phones.
Homes
Many of the homes you drive past every day are full of tension. Apart from God’s Word, husbands and wives don’t know how to love and submit to one another. Children don’t know how to obey and parents don’t know how to parent. Folks are finding their way by instinct or by copying the imperfect examples around them, and it’s not going well. Broken homes are breaking people.
Phones
Many hoped our advancing technologies would create a social utopia, but we’re getting dystopia instead. We’re experiencing:
Isolation
Algorithmic customization is sealing us off from one another. We’re trapped in bubbles of our own preferences, experiencing life individually rather than communally.
Distraction
It’s hard to listen to one another with headphones on, hard to look at one another with a screen in between.
Alienation
It’s easy to forget even the most basic social graces over social media. Without eye contact, tone of voice and human presence, we’re treating each other inhumanely. Mediated communication is making us mean.
Disconnection
Our social technology has created a perpetual mirage. Meaningful relationships are always just over the horizon. We keep scrolling, but we never get there. We interact with more people more often than ever before in human history, yet we’re lonely.
We’ve created a “howling waste,” a phrase I recently came across in Deuteronomy 32:10. It refers to the post-Exodus wilderness, but I think it captures our social climate well. It’s both loud (howling) and empty (waste). On social media, everyone is screaming nothing at each other all the time.
I know this sounds like just another Christian complaining about the culture, but I’m not complaining. I’m highlighting the opportunity God is giving us. People are suffocating and we have the oxygen they need.
Friending Strangers
Romans 12:13 says, “Seek to show hospitality.” The word “hospitality” comes from ‘philoxenia’ in the Greek, which is two words clicked together: philos (friend) and xenos (stranger). To be hospitable is to friend (read as a verb) strangers. To befriend them.
But notice that the verse doesn’t just tell us to show hospitality. It tells us to “seek to show hospitality.” That word “seek” is aggressive. It’s used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe hunting people down for persecution. Persecutors seek people to harm; we seek people to love. We’re on safari, looking for strangers to befriend.
This is an important concept in the New Testament.
It’s an essential qualification to be an elder, alongside things like monogamy, self-control and the ability to teach (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). An inhospitable man is no more fit to be a pastor than an adulterer, alcoholic or false teacher.
It’s how to prepare for the end times. Because “the end of all things is at hand,” Christians are to “show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:7, 9). If you’re anxious about the apocalypse, don’t make charts and predictions; make friends.
It’s of cosmic importance. Hebrews 13:2 says, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” This is likely referring to occasions when this literally happened in the Old Testament (see Genesis 18-19 and Judges 6). Though this is still possible today, the point isn’t to suspect angels in disguise everywhere. It’s to remember the profound significance of hospitality.
Closely related to hospitality is the concept of welcome. Romans 15:7 says, “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” This means to aggressively receive one another. Like a wide receiver catching a football, we don’t wait for these relationships to fall into our hands, we snatch them out of the air because they are extremely valuable.
In the church, we intentionally seek out opportunities to show Christian love to one another. This is what makes the social atmosphere inside the church so different from the atmosphere outside of it. We’re dedicated to serving, encouraging and blessing one another.
Hospitality is the portal that transports outsiders from the howling waste into our welcoming network of relationships marked by compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience (Colossians 3:12). And it means more to people than you might think.
Rehumanization
Carl Trueman is a Christian theologian, professor and author who has written extensively about modern societal issues. His most recent book, “The Desecration of Man,” has to do with the dehumanizing effects of our current culture.
Christian hospitality is a major part of his suggestion for addressing this situation.
He said this in a recent interview on the subject:
“I can still remember the names of the people who gave me hospitality when I was a student. I’m hard pressed to remember some of the professors’ names, don’t remember any lectures I ever attended in college; but I do remember the houses that I visited on a Sunday for lunch where people I hardly knew opened their most intimate space, their home, for me, and gave me food. They treated me like a human being.”
I can relate to this. During my Bible college years, I had many great teachers, but the only person I keep in touch with more than two decades later is an older classmate who invited me into his home for game nights, movies and dinner. This is where human connection happened.
Don’t underestimate the power of inviting people into your home, especially non-Christians. The humane dynamics of a Christian family are revolutionary to those coming from the dehumanizing culture around us. Many are not used to meals around the table, phone-free conversations and gentle responses to small offenses. A typical evening for Christians can be radically different from many non-Christians’ experience.
This is why a Christian household is a great place for hospitality; but it’s not the only place. It happens in church foyers, coffee shops and workplace hallways too. The point isn’t that you have to have strangers over for dinner this week. It’s that, as a Christian, you have all the resources you need at your disposal to shine the light of hospitality into this dark world.
Natural Resources
Apart from what God has done for us through Christ, we would be trapped in an unloving, unwelcoming, unforgiving, approach to relationships, racking up irreconcilable differences along the way.
But remember what God has done
for us:
Because he loves us, we can love others (John 13:34; 1 John 4:11).
Because he welcomes us, we can welcome others (Romans 15:7).
Because he forgave us, we can forgive others (Ephesians 4:32).
Because he reconciled us, we can carry out the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18).
In our reconciled relationship with God, we have natural resources of hospitality that no one else has. As we mine, refine and use these resources, our contrast with the world will become more dramatic, people will notice and they’ll be drawn toward the light of Christ.
Adorning the Gospel
In Titus 2:9-10, God gives instructions for how Christian bondservants ought to relate to their masters. They were to be submissive, well-pleasing, non-argumentative and honest, “so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.” Our distinct approach to relationships doesn’t replace the gospel; it adorns it.
The good news of Christianity is that Jesus lived sinlessly on our behalf, died in our place, arose from the grave and will return for his church. We don’t want to win people to better relationships; we want to win them to Jesus. Hospitality is a powerful tool toward that end.
The way we relate to people is what makes the gospel visible.
Our love for one another is how people will recognize us as Jesus’ disciples (John 13:34-35).
Our unity is how outsiders will know that Jesus is legitimate (John 17:20-23).
Our conduct toward outsiders is how they will know that God is glorious
(1 Peter 2:11-12).
This is why your church is more attractive than you think. You may not have the best music or signage, but you have healthy relationships, which stand in stark contrast to the relational friction in the world around us. Welcome people into those relationships through hospitality and let them meet Jesus there.
