Hi, My Name Is ____, and I'll Be Your Host

At my first meeting in my new presbytery, there was a time before the actual meeting for break-out groups on different topics. I went to one on hospitality led by Henry Brinton, pastor at Fairfax Presbyterian. He has a new book entitled The Welcoming Congregation: Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality.  During his presentation he said something along these lines. "Members must start to think of themselves as hosts rather than guests."

I have yet to meet the church congregation that did not describe itself as "warm and friendly," but that warmth and friendliness is often difficult for an "outsider" to encounter.  In every church I've been a member or served I've heard people share their experience of attending worship and standing around in a fellowship time afterwards while nary a soul speaks to or even acknowledges them. In a day when it was somewhat safe to assume that most people were church goers, this may have had little impact other than to turn away a potential member. But in a day when larger and larger percentages of our population have little or no church experience, such a lack of hospitality may well be how that person meets Christ. And even though our congregation may speak of a Christ who embraces the outsider, the outcast, and the marginalized, a guest in our worship may find scant evidence of that.

Brinton's comment about church members understanding themselves as hosts rather than guests, goes to the heart of what Christian hospitality is.  It is less about warmth and friendliness and more about realizing that each of us is called to be Christ to others. But all too often, the consumerist mindset of our culture has transformed the church. We go to get something, to be served. Staff and leaders are hosts who are supposed to wait on and care for those who come.

Today's reading from the letter to the Ephesian church has a famous line where the writer says the Jesus gifts each of us "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ." ("Saints" refers to all believers, not a select few.) The work of ministry is a communal task. Some of this work requires special gifts, but Christian hospitality is not one of them. Some of us are more outgoing than others, some of us can strike up a conversation with a stranger easier than others, but I dare say there is hardly a one of us who does not understand how to be a good host.

The problem of hospitality - or the lack of it - in many churches is not a lack of skills, it is a problem of perspective. If you are a churchgoer, when you head to your local congregation on a Sunday, do you understand yourself as going, at least in part, to engage in the work of ministry?

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