Video Transcript: Hospitality Ministry

Henry - Well welcome back. Today we're going to talk about hospitality practice  based on the early church, starting in the New Testament time and even going  through the first few centuries pretty interesting stuff. So, first of all, we see  

Pam - hospitality is in our personal and cultural cultural DNA, given to hospitality, as we discussed  

Henry - earlier, such as distributing to the necessities of the saints and given to  hospitality.  

Pam – Titus 1:7-8, Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be  blameless, not overbearing, not quick tempered, not given to drunkenness, not  violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, given to  hospitality, one who loves what is good, who is self controlled, upright, holy, and  disciplined.  

Henry - What I find interesting is that the DNA of leader, the overseer, the  bishop, elder, whatever, you might call it today, that overseer was given to  hospitality, it was one of the qualifications of being an overseer a leader. And  because that was a qualification of the overseers, it became in the DNA of the  corporate, early church culture. So, thinking about welcoming and welcoming  was so counter-intuitive, counter intuitive, to the Roman mind, that the church  stood out as a place that would be welcoming to babies laid at the side of the  road so that wild animals would not eat them, or babies would not be put into  slavery, in sex trafficking, but that Christians would adopt these female babies  was an example of the hospitality so they would welcome in babies, they didn't  know, they welcome the sick, who, even if they do believe in Christ, they would  have care for them attitude that became powerful and prominent in the early  church. So we're gonna talk about how that cultural DNA was in early  Christianity,  

Pam - right? Out of love, do good to others outside and inside the family of  believers.  

Henry - Galatians 6:10. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all  people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. So hospitality,  in one sense is to strangers. You don't know who they are believer or not  believer. But the early church was also hospitable to Christians or the family of  believers, people they didn't know. But were in Christ. So it wan'ts just a  fellowship they shared, which we talked about earlier in this course, there was a  specific, welcoming to open their homes, for instance, for the work of mission  and this and so forth. Pretty amazing stuff. 

Pam – Build the kingdom through hospitality.  

Henry - here's some interesting ideas. Hebrews 13:12 Or 2, do not forget to  entertain strangers, for by doing, some have some people have entertained  angels without knowing them. And the idea there is they have been hospitable to angels without knowing it. Do you think we ever entertained angels? We  certainly have seen we believe, tangible work of angels. And we certainly have  invited a lot of people. And sometimes some of the people that we had over had  purposes, they were just they vanished. We had no idea we never saw them  again, either. I don't know. But I know that the word is true. Missionaries and  ministers  

Pam – Matthew 10:11, whatever town or village you enter, search for some  worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave.  

Henry - That was so the early church, Jesus calls his disciples. And he basically  said there's a currency of hospitality out there. That's enough with the people of  faith. So don't worry about hotels. And I remember that. I think even years ago,  there was much more of a flavor of that, where Christians were really opening  their homes to missionaries are to other ministers. And there's even more  passages like that . 

Pam – Acts 10:6, he is staying with Simon the tanner who's house is by the sea.  I'm just curious. I don't remember.  

Henry - Everybody, that's a good one to look up. The next one, you go look it up. Okay. Okay, so the next one is Philemon 22. And one more and one more in one thing more, prepare a guest room for me. I hope to restore to you an answer to  your prayers and Romans 16:23, Gaius whose hospitality I and the whole  church enjoy, send you his greetings. So what was, It was Simon, Simon Peter.  the early church, they did not have a lot of money. They didn't have big  accounts. Simon the Tanner was kind of an interesting . I glad that we talked  about this. jog the memory, that the word episcopoi for bishops or the  overseers, that word actually means he visitors. The visitors, so the word means visitation, visitationers so the early overseers were visitors who came to  probably minister's homes, diakonos ministers home. And they would oversee  the work. So they're base was a bunch of Christians who open their homes and  they visited the homes. So we don't even think about like overseer the word is  visitation. But yes, so you can see embedded in the early church was this  concept of hospitality. 

Pam - Build the kingdom through giving. III John 7-8,. It was for the sake of the  name that they went out receiving no help from the pagans. We sought therefore to show hospitality to such men. So that we may work together for the truth  

Henry - What I find is a giving spirit of you know, we're just making this offer. The pagans are not supporting the spread of Christianity. I mean, there's a lot of  foundations out there. And they're not supporting Christian leaders Institute  because they're supporting, you know, some charity, the arts or something like  that. But the Christian, we're supporting the building of the kingdom. And that's  what we're all about.  

Pam - Strangers or outsiders as identity we are not home yet.  

Henry - So, I Peter 2:11 Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the  world to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Understand  how to help people feel welcome. You know what , I find interesting about this is  that whole metaphor or concept, in truth, that we are strangers, ourselves in this  world, right? So we're looking for our home. And we know our home is with the  Lord. But that is enough for us to always appreciate somebody who's an alien,  someone who's a stranger or someone who needs a place to stay in the know  that we ourselves are those people. Let's look at a couple of early church case  studies. First of  

Pam - all, I Timothy 5:9-10, No widow may be put on the list of widows unless  she is over 60 has been faithful to her husband. And it's well known for her good deeds such as bringing up children showing hospitality washing the feet of the  saints, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds.  

Henry - We don't really have a list of widows in most places that I know of in the  world, even Christian leaders and student college in the Alliance serves. But  what do we make of the list of widows? That was an early church program  where there were widows whose husbands were, you know, died younger, and  we don't know all the circumstances but there were a lot more women were  widows in the early church, so the Apostle Paul or Peter or the group of  ministers made a group of widows and I know that when Dr. Carol Osiek posted  talked about early women of the church. That list of widows could have been  ministers. We, there were some case in points where you could be a woman  minister, in some places, if you were on the list of widows and other places that  didn't matter. And this is again, for a large portion of the early Christendom  world. So there was a sense where the early church actually had programmatic  hospitality going on somehow, 

Pam - right? And even these widows to get on the list had to show some  hospitality themselves, yes. Continuing  

Henry - here's another one that's really interesting. In this could have come out  of this seed of what the widows list. New Christian hospitals, early church,  hospitality institutions, like hospitals.  

Pam - There were certainly hospitals and pre Christian societies, such as  Greece, Ireland, Mexico and India. But in the Christian era, early efforts to  establish houses for strangers, which later took on a job of caring for the sick,  were motivated by the gospel, Christ instructed as apostle, apostles to heal the  sick after all.  

Henry - So the healing of people is a ministry of hospitality. So it's pretty  fascinating to think about that. That the Lord when he called to love our neighbor to reach those and he himself was the stranger. And then to do that to the least  of these . We do it to Jesus Christ. Very, very interesting. So the early church  culture was a culture of hospitality. If you pray about ministry today in your  involvement in your efforts, that hospitality welcoming attitude without  capitulating or compromising the truth of the gospel, and those are very  important distinctions to me, but to have a welcoming attitude, seriously, does  change the world.