Editor’s note: This article is the final entry of a four-part series. Access the full series here.
In this final entry in this series, I wish to note the strategic value of pastoral hospitality for the contemporary local church. I suggest that the pastoral ministry of hospitality has excellent potential for improving the local church’s health. My argument here rests on my analysis of New Testament passages in the previous post and my personal experience as a pastor and seminary professor. I have served as the teaching pastor at The Master’s Community Church (SBC) for 25 years. I have taught New Testament and Greek at Midwestern Seminary for nearly a decade, serving as Dean of Graduate Studies for five years. From my vantage point, pastoral hospitality is strategic for enhancing the local church’s health for at least three reasons.
Pastoral Hospitality to the Needy Models God’s Benevolence and Defends the Gospel
Hospitality is love for strangers and outsiders, of whom the contemporary world is not short on supply. Wars and family crises have resulted in no small increase in the number of refugees and displaced children. A healthy local church knows that the world needs to see us caring for the vulnerable. It is hard to imagine a more at-risk demographic than children in the foster care system, many of whom await adoption. I know of no more difficult ministry. I likewise know of no ministry that more acutely objectifies God’s care for the needy and shuts the mouths of those who accuse the Church of selfishness and hypocrisy.
But orphans are not the only demographic the pastor might host. God is drawing many refugees in the United States to Himself, and pastors have the unique position to disciple and train them for church planting. One of the most invigorating ministries my church and Midwestern Seminary students have engaged in over the last three years has been with Afghan refugees who have been placed in Kansas City. We have cooperated to serve these families in job placement, language learning, medical assistance, driving lessons, and the gospel. Some of the families were believers when they arrived. I have had the great joy of hosting them and being in their homes for ministry planning and leadership development.
Pastoral Hospitality Cultivates Fellowship and Leadership Development
One metric for gauging a local church’s health is how diverse demographics in the church interact with one another. When my wife and I host, I try to gather people who are not naturally connected. I invite new attendees or church members to join us and include more seasoned members in the invitation. If we are hosting students, I ask non-students, even retirees, to join us as well. Pastoral hospitality creates a natural structure for Paul’s directive that older believers should teach younger ones and younger ones should learn from those more mature in the faith (Titus 2:1–5). I hope never to forget when I was hosting an age-diverse small group and overheard an older couple offer to rent a large home and property at a very reduced price to a younger couple so the young couple could leave their small apartment and begin doing foster care ministry, or when a retiree shared over brunch how a younger couple could participate in the children’s ministry of our church.
Pastoral hospitality also provides a relational environment to develop leaders for ministry. This was true for me. A pastor asked my wife and me to join him and his wife for dinner one cold January evening in 1997. While I was employed as an elementary teacher in a local school, my evenings and weekends were busy with church ministry, leading a small group and a Sunday School class. We had just sat down to dinner when the pastor asked if I had ever sensed a call to pastoral ministry. When we got up to leave, my life had changed. I have used that same practice of asking deeper-level, calling kinds of questions while my wife and I host potential leaders and students, casting vision for ministry as the conversation unfolds.
Pastoral Hospitality Allows the Pastor to Model Christian Family Life and Family Worship
Authenticity is a buzzword in contemporary ministry. Church health is displayed by gospel authenticity in relationships. When pastors are hospitable, people see God’s glory in the everyday stuff of our lives. If people are in my home long enough, usually not very long, they will see foibles and failures and hear apologies. At some point, they will see a husband loving his wife like Christ does the Church and a wife submitting to her husband as the Church does to Christ. They will see parents training their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. They will hear issues of the day discussed from a Christian worldview.
As we serve dessert, guests will be invited to join us as we read Scripture, pray, and sing. I have found that most men in my church and students in my classes do not learn how to lead family worship by reading books about it but by seeing me lead my family as we enjoy brownie sundaes and coffee. When meeting with that man individually after having his family in my home, I can follow up and fill in the gaps.
Pastoral Hospitality as Preventive Medicine
People will often ask me, “How’s your church?” After 25 years of serving in the same congregation, one would think that I could have a better answer. “I hope things are going well…” I often quip. Truth is, even the most hospitable and relational pastor knows only a portion of what God is doing in his flock. And those who have been in ministry for a season or two know how rapidly a church can change. God allows cancer, sin, economic pressures, and a host of other situations upon His people, and pastors are called to guide God’s people through them. Pastoral hospitality deepens relational roots so that when storms come upon the flock, the needy and vulnerable sheep will have every reason to heed the voice of their undershepherds. The devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour weak sheep (1 Pet. 5:8). Pastoral hospitality establishes relational structures that prevent the devil from succeeding.