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.