Engaging the World
For those who lead in mission, service and peace ministries.
Hospitality in the missional church
By Lois Barrett
Many Mennonite congregations have a selfimage of not being welcoming to guests in their midst. In several congregations in which I have done workshops, I have asked people to place their church in one of four quadrants:
- a Sunday-morning church (not very concerned about the life of the congregation or its outreach)
- the quiet in the land (concerned about the life of the congregation, but not doing much outreach)
- the outreach-program church (less concerned about the life and practices of the congregation, but very involved in evangelism or social action)
- the missional church (both concerned about the life of the congregation and involved in outreach)
Most people in this exercise place their congregation in the “quiet in the land” category. They worry that they are not doing enough to reach out to their neighbors.
The point of the exercise is to emphasize that being missional is not just about doing more outreach. Being missional is also about the character of the church. It is not just about inviting a co-worker to worship, but about being the kind of congregation in its life together that will be a sign of God’s reign in the world and a preview of God’s future reign.
Missional congregations are more concerned about practices than programs. A practice is a common activity performed over time by a community of people in such a way that it shapes their character individually and corporately. Such a practice will affect how the congregation implements a program; it is a habit that will affect all activities.
That is nowhere truer than in the practice of hospitality. Hospitality is a way of being in the world that shapes us as people who welcome guests.
Think of the guests welcomed in the Bible. Under the oaks of Mamre, Abraham and Sarah welcomed the angels, messengers from God, who foretold the birth of Isaac (Gen. 18). Jesus both accepted the hospitality of others (Matt. 9:10 and elsewhere) and offered hospitality, as in the feedings of the thousands. He assumed that the disciples he sent out would be given hospitality by someone in the towns they visited (see Luke 10).
The letters of the New Testament give explicit instructions to “extend hospitality” (Rom. 12:13) and “be hospitable to one another without complaining” (1 Pet. 4:9). Hebrews 13:2 even suggests that by providing hospitality to strangers, some people have “entertained angels without knowing it,” perhaps a reference to Genesis 18. Paul expresses concern in 1 Corinthians 14:22–25 about what unbelievers will think if they are in a worship service where there is something going on that they don’t understand (in this case, speaking in tongues). His desire is that the experience will result in the unbelievers exclaiming, “God is really among you!”
The Greek word for hospitality means literally “the love of strangers.” How can we practice loving the stranger not only in our homes, but also in the public space where we worship and learn together? There are plenty of how-to books about specific things to do to be hospitable: it should be clear to guests which door they should enter, greeters should be at the door, there should be signs pointing to the washrooms and nursery, acronyms shouldn’t be used in announcements, members should take loaves of bread to first-time visitors, and so on. But the real issue is developing the habit of hospitality in all that we do.
Missional congregations are more concerned about practices than programs.
Being hospitable means genuinely caring for a person we are meeting for the first time. It means welcoming to our potluck a guest who doesn’t smell very good. It means looking at things from the perspective of the newcomer, who may not know that this congregation prays the Lord’s Prayer using the words debts and debtors—or perhaps has never heard the Lord’s Prayer. It means practicing the kind of nondiscriminatory love that God has demonstrated toward us in Christ. It means learning to be in relationship with people who are different from us.
In some ways hospitality— loving the person we do not know, who may be different from us—is in the same category as loving the enemy, who may be not only different, but hostile to us. Although we are not always in direct contact with our enemies, we have many opportunities to show hospitality to strangers.
God welcomed us when we were strangers to God, separated from God. Now we are sent to welcome other strangers, to be in relationship with them and help them come into relationship with God.
Lois Barrett, of Wichita, Kansas, is director of the Great Plains extension of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and the coauthor or editor of three books on the missional church.