The Church as a Place of Hospitality
Transcript:
Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.
Hospitality is a discipline of heart, mind, and action. It requires you to have a new mindset—to work at getting outside yourself (your perspective, preferences, hurts, grievances, etc.) into the world of “the other”. It requires being considerate and kind, looking at and appreciating life from another’s perspective (Philippians 2:1-5). For the Christian, this happens first and foremost with one another in the church, and secondly, with those outside (Galatians 6:9-10). It is seeking to accommodate and value one another’s differences, while welcoming all to the same table of faith and repentance through the grace of Christ. It is giving of your time, treasure, talents, and reputation to help others feel the welcome embrace of God in Christ.
Hospitality often involves mixing your nonbelieving friends and neighbors with the people of the church, so that all might have an encounter with Jesus (Luke 5:27-32). It is seeing yourself as an ambassador in your workplace, school, and neighborhood; it is seeing your home as an embassy of gospel shalom. It is seeing our church as an embassy to our community. It is seeing your engagement at church as a diplomatic mission to all present.
As a church, we should expect to be “on display” in our community and thus be mindful of representing the gospel well in our engagement with others (Matthew 5:16; Colossians 4:5-6; Romans 12:9-21). As a church, we are an outpost of the coming kingdom—a city within a city (the polis of God amongst the polis of man). Thus, it is imperative we nurture a community of Christ’s love, of His grace and truth (i.e., love), as this is critical to the effectiveness of our mission of hospitality.
Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.
“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”
~ Philippians 2:1-7 (ESV)