CRAIG HENSEL

A couple weeks ago I spent the week in Chicago for a class titled becoming a missional church. It was a great week. I got to sit in classroom for a week. I’ve been 8 years removed from that setting. In many ways, I felt like a elementary school kid going into junior high. Here are some things that I was refreshed in and reminded of.

1. We serve a sending God.
   1. God sent Abraham to bless and be a blessing. Genesis 12:1-4
   2. Isaiah 6:8 – Isaiah was sent by God and for God
   3. John 1:6 – There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
   4. God sent Jesus into the world to seek and save. Luke 19:10
   5. Jesus The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives and recovery to the blind. Luke 4:18-19.
   6. And finally, Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations. This one reminds us that we are part of the plan.
   7. My friend Kelly put it like this. We are into extraction theology. People come to Christ and go to the shelter and never come out.

In ancient mid-eastern culture, it was common practice to welcome in the traveler, to provide for them to make sure they were cared for. In most cases the guest would have rule of the house. To show love to a stranger was to basically give him the keys to the house. In fact I was talking with talking with a friend in Japan who tells me this is still common practice in the east. He has experienced it.

In regards to my own life, this is how it happened. I am a first generation Christian. My parents didn’t raise me in the church. All the examples in my life starting when I was 6 were Christians inviting me into their lives, for dinner, babysitting, fishing, sleep overs etc. They invited me in, the stranger.

There are places in scripture where hospitality is dealt with in this way.

Job 31:32 says this, “But no stranger had to spend the night in the street for my door has always been open to the traveler.”

Mark 6:8-12 Jesus quite possibly infers it saying, “These were his instructions, take nothing for the journey except a staff-no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic, whenever you enter a house stay there until you leave that town. And if any place not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave as a testimony against them.”

Paul on his missionary journeys constantly praises people for showing hospitality, here is an instance.

Romans 16:23 , “Gaius whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings.”

What gets in the way of this?

Individualism -

Body –

I recently asked some of my friends who grew up in church if their parents had people over who didn’t know Jesus. The overwhelming response was no. This was shocking to me. I have to the conclusion that Hospitality is one of the keys to the mission of Jesus which for us it to make disciples.

Hospitality in Greek is this: love of strangers.

Romans 12:13, “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need, practice hospitality.”

Hebrews 13:1,2 “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

In many ways, we are longing to be like the NT church. We crave the type of fellowship that we see in ACTS.

Hospitality is so important it is a prerequisite for being an elder.

1^st Timothy, “Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self- controlled, respectable, hospitable,

able to teach,”

Points:

1. Start looking at people as travelers. We live in a day where we are more mobile than ever. Welcome people into your lives so Christ name isn’t tarnished. Welcome people into your home.
2. Invite a co-worker to your house.
3. Start a conversation with a neighbor you haven’t spoken with.
4. Invite someone over in this church.
5. Our faith should be distinctively modeled counter culture to what everybody else is doing.
6. You can make the argument that Hospitality was practiced just amongst Christians when they roamed from town to town, or just the apostles, but let’s not forget that we don’t know who God is is drawing in, and as Paul said, we might be serving angels. The point in all of this is to get over our fear, serve people, ask God to develop in our hearts love for strangers.