Hospitality

Is your natural inclination to be a host or a guest? We sometimes move back and forth but in the end we live out of one of them (see the work of Max Beerbolm). Resolving that attitude question is crucial work for any congregation that wants to thrive and grow. I've never yet encountered a congregation where the sign outside said "No one Welcome!" But I've encountered only a few that really got hospitality right.

Part of the challenge is that church members often see themselves as guests. And if you are a guest you don't need to be hospitable to other guests. Congregations need to confront the deliberate, conscious and persistently renewed decision to live as hosts and not guests. We are, according to Paul, the "body of Christ." And Jesus, whose body we are, said that he came to serve not to be served. You could use the metaphor of host for his entire earthly ministry. He was a host, not a guest, welcoming others and seeing to their needs. If we, as congregations, believe that the church exists to meet our needs rather than seeing that we are the body of Christ serving the needs of others, then we probably should die.

What might it mean to let that idea challenge our attitudes? We are followers of the Servant and, therefore, called to be life's hosts. The trouble is, most of us live naturally as guests, thinking of our own needs first and, only on occasion, flipping into the host role. We do that, even when we imagine that we are incarnating Jesus and his spirit of servanthood.

Can you name the ways in which you live as host? One way of measuring that is to give and then not really feel that you have given. Think about it again: the host serves but does not really know that they have served. They have just done what comes naturally. We are raised and trained in our society to be guests, generally expecting others to serve us. If we are going to be hosts - in other words, incarnaters of the Servant, it will take intention and decision.