Radical Christian hospitality
The truth about how we're to use our homes
Throughout the Bible we are told that once we become followers of Jesus we are part of God’s family. One family.
But I don’t think we are doing a good job of living like family, at least not here in western countries. And that has a lot to do with us not understanding the crucial role or nature of Christian hospitality.
A love that would be noticed
Loving one another is our primary responsibility when it comes to our fellow believers. And loving one another is also good practice for learning how to love our neighbors and the lost among us, as well.
But first – the lost must see our love for one another. Because as the Apostle John told us:
By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. — John 13:35
So how did the early Church demonstrate this love to the world?
Their practices included gathering together daily for fellowship, meals, prayer and teaching (Acts 2:42-47). That passage illustrates families “doing life together” – to coin a current churchy phrase – but for them that meant daily, communal, self-sacrificial living.
Daily? Communal? Self-sacrificial? Have you ever considered what it might look like if we tried to more closely pattern the early Church in this practice?
Author Rosaria Butterfield certainly has. She is living it, in fact, as she describes in a book she wrote a few years back, The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World.
Radically ordinary hospitality
Most nights at the Butterfield house, more than just immediate family sits around the table. The Butterfields open their home for communal dinners with their fellow church members, and meals include a time in the Word, prayer, and singing. (We’ll talk in a minute about the others who might be at the Butterfield table.) Feeding a dozen or a couple dozen people is not unusual.
Other church members help bring food as well, and sometimes host such gatherings. But the Butterfields have made an ironclad commitment to hospitality and making their church family a real family, with members who are intimately aware of each others’ needs, sorrows, victories, and joys.
Just like a “real” family.
There are some small groups, within churches, that might approximate this kind of commitment to each other, if they meet regularly in each other’s homes – but I think that’s rare.
And in churches where home fellowships are not even encouraged, especially bigger churches, it’s all too easy to pop in and out on any given Sunday without even speaking to another human, much less building a relationship with them.
This is particularly problematic for our single brothers and sisters, who literally have no family to go home to after Sunday services, as Rosaria notes:
Kent and I practice daily hospitality as a way of life because we must. We remember what it is like to be lonely. We remember the odd contradiction: to be told on the Lord’s Day that you are part of the family of God but then to limp along throughout the rest of the week like an orphan begging bread… We believe that the Bible’s high calling for singleness compels us to live communally when we can and to feast nightly on meals and Scripture and prayer with doors wide open. — The Gospel Comes with a House Key
Did I mention this is “radical”?
Yeah, there’s a lot in that passage above. Not only are the Butterfields offering communal dinner most nights, with all the work and expense that entails – but they are also advocating living “communally” as it relates to singles.
If we are family – and in light of how God teaches us to view people like widows and orphans – I think these are fair questions:
Why does anyone go home alone after church, especially singles? For that matter, why do any families go home without a chance to fellowship with another family or two?
Why are we so intent on protecting our privacy and/or independence? Imagine if every Christian who is currently single had the option of renting a room within a Christian family. Or even in a house with other singles! Are we as believers meant to live life day after day alone? (Hint: the answer is no. See Psalm 68:5-6.)
Is all this something our churches should be encouraging and perhaps even facilitating? (Hint: the answer is yes.)
Are these ideas we should all thoughtfully consider how we might implement? (You know the answer.)
What is Christian hospitality?
That’s the real question here. I used to envision opening my home – at carefully selected times entirely of my own choosing and convenience – to people I wished to be closer to, serving a delicious meal on nice dishes and a lovely tablecloth with vases of fresh flowers decorating my perfectly cleaned house, appropriate soft music playing in the background.
Of course this is an “ideal” that gives most of us a severe case of anxiety, and no helpful books of hospitality tips or recipes can really make it less stressful.
But that is not what Christian hospitality is. Not at all, really.
Our homes are not our castles. Indeed, they are not even ours. — The Gospel Comes with a House Key
This is the key point of the book – and the starting place for true Christian hospitality.
Our homes are a gift to be used to love others. Starting with our family – and that means our blood family and our church family. So if our home is always to be used to love our family – why is it not open to all of our family more often?
Why would this only be a once every so often rare occasion requiring superhuman preparation, with exhaustion and relief that’s it over (or is that only me? I am pretty sure that is not only me.)
I would also note that it’s just about impossible to regularly practice biblical hospitality if both dad and mom work outside the home. A full-time homemaker can incorporate hospitality as part of her daily life rhythms. Should we not be opening our homes to each other on the daily, as a practice?
Loving our singles
And along those lines – why are we not encouraging singles in our family to live in our families? God put them put them in our family! Why are we ignoring them or assuming they prefer to live alone in some sterile apartment?
Are we under the mistaken impression that this would adversely affect our children? Surely the opposite is true:
It is good for children to have many Christian adults pouring into their lives, helping them apply faith to the facts of a hard situation. — The Gospel Comes with a House Key
So that’s our bottom line. My house doesn’t belong to me. Your house doesn’t belong to you. Our homes are a gift meant to be shared, first with family, with the caveat that family means more than just our kids. It means our church family, and/or any believer we encounter who might need our hospitality, whether it’s around the table or in the spare bedroom.
That involves sacrifice. You might not be able to walk around the house in your underwear. You might not be able to spend hours binge watching Netflix. You might not both be able to have full-time jobs. It will involve a sacrifice of time, effort and money.
Did I mention that our time and effort and money also don’t belong to us?
Where Rosaria and I don’t see eye to eye
Our home is also a tool in that other critical instruction from our Lord – to love our neighbor (meaning both our brethren and non-believers). But this is where I must take exception to Rosaria’s take on hospitality.
Throughout the book she reiterates that her home is open at virtually all times to everyone – believer and non-believer alike, or as she calls them, “family” and “neighbor.” Her goal is that neighbors will be transformed (by Christ) into family, and that’s a mission with which I agree wholeheartedly.
But I think there are problems with her approach in that she’s got the two categories combined at inappropriate times.
And those who don’t yet know the Lord are summoned for food and fellowship. — The Gospel Comes with a House Key
This statement is part of her description of a nightly communal meal at her house, where church members and neighbors freely mingle (the neighbors know they are welcome to come any time, just like her church family).
But spiritual endeavors are never to be pursued in concert with unbelievers. That is exactly what 2 Corinthians 6:14 is talking about. We can never really fellowship with unbelievers – they are from a different spiritual world.
What’s more, their presence in an environment where believers have gathered to pursue true fellowship – including sharing our most intimate prayer needs – is harmful to the growth of those family relationships. Family fellowship is by definition for family. It is the ultimate “safe place.” It is not where our unbelieving neighbor should be, generally speaking.
So as much as I admire the Butterfields for opening their home to their neighbors – I don’t believe this is a biblical approach to family (meaning our church family) fellowship.
Does our home play a role, then, in loving our neighbor? It sure does. Rosaria is absolutely right about that. And her book gives many examples of how her family is exemplary at loving their neighbors.
She’s also right that our Christian hospitality is not just for our church family – although that is where it should start. Opening our homes to our brethren is an excellent way to begin prying our grasp free of what we may have indeed seen as our sovereign castle.
It’s time to start.
Bonus content
This article argues that our churches maybe shouldn’t be referring to us as “family” until they are serious about helping us live that way (although I think the answer is not to stop calling us family, but to start acting that way).
And this short video explains why our “church family relationships” are so crucial:
The pastor in the above video also offers 7 tips for cultivating deeper relationships at church – I especially love tips 4 through 7.