13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
Hospitality can be used as a conversation starter for bringing the unconverted into the church. Hospitality can be a means for beginning to plan for church planting. Hospitality can be used as a biblical strategy for church growth. This is the means that Jesus Christ has used (we read that in the Gospels). But we know that doesn't necessarily mean that that is our experience. Something as simple as a pot of coffee has the ability to be a catalyst for the advancement of the kingdom. Can you imagine that? In heaven we may see people and share stories and testimonies that a pot of coffee may be the catalyst that brought someone to church to hear the Gospel and be saved! It is something simple. We need to be strategic as a church in our hospitality. And that strategy, as far as I understand this, is something that the deacons and the session would work on together, so that we may consider seeing homes used as extensions of the church and homes used as extensions of the kingdom. We understand that strategic hospitality is not just content having the same friends over again and again. But it strategizes, and it thinks, “How can we reach new places as we express hospitality?”1
Nathan Eshelman
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.