A CHURCH IN YOUR HOME

Hospitality means Love

Paul often wrote to people “and the church that meets in [their] home” because it was commonplace for the Christians of that time to meet from house to house, rather than gathering together in a holy edifice as we do today. I wonder if meeting in homes would change the way we “do church” today? Consider the word “hospitality” which is a combination of the wordphilos for “friend” and xenos for “stranger.” The word itself is an oxymoron as “friend” and “stranger” are as distant from one another as “love” and “hate” and yet we are commanded to “entertain strangers” and “show hospitality” just as we are ordered to die to live and to serve to lead.

To be hospitable at home costs money: it requires more food than your fridge contains, more beds than you own, more water, trash bags, chairs, video game controllers, carpet cleaning, parking spaces, spousal patience, child care, and anything else you already use multiplied tenfold. But going to a hospitable church costs you nothing but a “hello” and a tenth of your earnings. Besides the money, there’s probably other reasons people are unwilling to have church in their home.

Have you noticed that you could go to the same church for two years and yet still be strangers to those who share your pews? But if a few of those same people weekly shared the couch in your home it’d be hard not to call them “friend.” I know I need to invite more people home from church in order to have real Church in my home. How about you?