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Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality (Romans 12:13, ESV).
Francis Schaeffer was the most influential theologian to me in my early years as a believer. Francis and his wife Edith founded L’Abri Fellowship, which translates to “The Shelter.” A shelter it was, as for decades students from all over the world wanting training visited this ministry located in the Swiss Alps.
It wasn’t just intellectual training; it was living together, serving together, reading together, and working together. Francis Schaeffer often said, “Hospitality was his (and Edith’s) literal vehicle for ministry.”
At the One Way House (a ministry that I founded that became Fellowship Church), we didn’t use the word “hospitality” but “community.” At one time our ministry owned three buildings where students and working young people lived, served, and discipled together.
The first law of living in “community” with single men: leave nothing uneaten in the refrigerator!
The Apostle Peter wrote, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9), and honestly there was a lot to grumble about when living in community. When I was single and living with a group of single men, there was one law: leave anything in the refrigerator uneaten, and it would disappear within minutes. Others knew your business, used your stuff, sometimes borrowed it, and constantly interrupted anything you tried to do.
Yet, from that group came one of the most prolific writers living today, an assistant to one of the most influential Christians in the last 50 years, and others faithfully serving business owners, the military, pastors, missionaries, and many nonprofit founders and leaders.
Did the benefits of hospitality outweigh the cost? Yes!
Hospitality through community causes hesitation for many, but in Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster says we can focus on hospitality not as grand gestures, but as a ministry of “small things,” like opening your home to guests, preparing meals, and helping others.
Let’s be challenged by the verses in Hebrews 13:1-2…
Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
When my wife and I were building a house, I came on site one morning and began talking to the contractor about our stand-alone garage. He was a believer, and I spontaneously asked, “I wonder if it would be possible to put a guest house in the space above the garage.” He answered, “Of course.” And we made a “middle of construction” change to our house. Since building that house, we have had people living in the guest house for at least a cumulative 10 years, including a leader of one of the world’s largest mission organizations, one of the most influential leaders of the civil rights movement, missionaries from many foreign countries, pastors, staff members, people in need from the community, and recently a Haitian couple.
My wife and I appreciate the impact “community” has had on our children. One time my oldest daughter came home and said, “Dad, Joel (not his real name) is in the guest house; he doesn’t have a place to live, and I told him that he could live with us until he graduates from high school.”
Like Mom and Dad, like daughter!