Biblical hospitality

Hospitality, when rightly understood, is a time when brothers and sisters will gather around food and table and fellowship for the purpose of spiritual nourishment and spiritual refreshment. And in this sense of hospitality as spiritual work and not just entertainment in the way that we would have a dinner party, we see that hospitality is really being gathered around a strategy table rather than a [party table].

John Piper has done a lot of good work on hospitality. He describes it as wartime hospitality as opposed to entertaining the sheep. In one of his sermons on hospitality he gives this anecdote where he goes to the home of a woman named Alma:

Last Sunday we attended First Baptist Church of Cambridge, and we got invited out to dinner after church by Alma Bjork – all six of us! And Alma is a widow with nobody at home to help her add six extra places (along with the six people already invited). But she is thinking strategically. She has lost her great missionary husband, and so what does she do? Yield to self-pity? Focus on the good old days? No, she starts to think strategically how her kitchen and living-room might be a launching pad for ministry and missions. …

The church needs to re-examine her understanding of hospitality. We need to realize that hospitality is to be purposeful. It is not just entertainment. It is not something where the church of Jesus Christ is called to do hospitality, and [if someone asks], What is the theology behind that? you say, It isn’t theological; it is just for fun. It is not just for fun; it is deeply theological! Hospitality is given to the church so that we would be strategic. So that we would consider how the kingdom of God is to expand. So that we can speak of the beauties of Jesus Christ. So that we can reflect on the way that we are struggling in life and the way that others are struggling in their faith. And this begins, congregation, with first seeing that our homes are not a part of our kingdom, but an extension of His kingdom.¹

Nathan Eshelman