The Church and Hospitality

In our last email we asked for words/phrases/experiences/ideas about "THE CHURCH." We have received some wonderful emails from many people expressing a wide range of ideas. These emails have been wonderful to read and think about.

More than one of the emails started in the same place I did: "Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and see all of the people. . ."
The replies grew beautiful, broad, and encompassing a wide range of "church." Our collective ideas of church include watching grandchildren serve as acolytes, remembering our grandparent's church we grew up in, the church incarnated among the incarcerated during Kairos weekends, the church sharing knowledge, laughter, pain, prayers during 7am Eucharist, sunrise services on the high school football field, the church that hurts too much to talk about, the church as a trust fall, and the church as what's left when the church burns down.

My own (current) image of church is built around two words: hospitality and honesty. For me, easily the most mind-blowing church moment in the past two years was when the Wednesday morning crew read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. And all of a sudden everyone was talking about the true sin of these cities was their inhospitable treatment of their guests. What!?! Is hospitality really that big of a deal? I mean, at Boston University (my first alma mater), there was a school for "Hospitality Administration" which as far as most people knew, taught people how to bartend for $40,000 a year. How could hospitality be so important?

Fast forward two years to Taiwan. . . hospitality is the beginning of evangelism. In fact, it might even be the key to evangelism. If Jesus' life is about nothing else, it is about the fact that he came to make possible/tangible/by grace the reconciliation of the world to God. Because in the end, God's unfailing, unchanging, burning desire is to welcome all of us home.

Of course, this all sounds peachy-keen until it is tested and put into practice. Welcoming the stranger, living alongside the unknown, disliked, despised has always been hard. Look at The Church. The Church in Taiwan is split into so many parts/factions/histories that the Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and Baptists all have different words for God. There have always been examples of the The Church not being hospitable, rejecting the poor, disabled, colored, women, gays, gentile, jew, slave. So why do we hold onto the church?

Many blogs, websites, and books have been written about a new church. . . some people call it the emerging church, some people simply attempt to leave "the church" behind and go it alone, using "spiritual" as a descriptor. My favorite of these examples is Geez Magazine, a wonderful ad-free Canadian magazine that prides itself in taking on issues of faith and bringing them to the "over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable." This magazine is truly hospitable, it welcomes contributions from all over map of ideology, theology, and sometimes just pure oddity. I also admire it's valiant attempt at reaching those on the margins of "the church."

But I just can't help think that using my image of the church being hospitable and all of your contributions, maybe some re-thinking of The Church is in order. Maybe, hopefully, a third way will present itself. Instead of fighting the same old fights of conservative v. liberal or instead of throwing out the whole CHURCH, perhaps we can return to the message of of the church as the congregation, or the people (the Body) of Christ. When we truly embrace the idea of the church being the two or three gathered in the name of Christ, we can begin to re-think the church from relationship with Christ to relationship with our friends, and even to relationship through Christ with our enemies.

Now this is where my second image comes in: honesty. Let's get real. I'm an idealist, I dream big, I'm young, I'm naive, and I have a bit too much time to think about this stuff. . .

The world is old, nothing is new, we've been fighting over this forever, the church is broken. Yes it is. And that is honest. I struggle with hospitality. I struggle with it with all my might. I want nothing more right now than my prayer room back in order, the guest to leave, and for things to be "normal."

That is honesty. But it also isn't the end. We have the church, which at this point for me involves a steadfast group of family and friends at home, my wife, and a couple of people I barely know in Taiwan. And the truly wonderful thing is, when I remember to love God and love my neighbor, thereby being hospitable, we are able to be honest and open and create a wonderful re-thought image of The Church.

Maybe more people need to hear a deeper version of The Church than "here is the steeple." Would we be so quick to renounce the Church and head into the wilds of being spiritual, or out-churched, or God-forbid "unchurchable" if we truly believed and acted as if The Church is founded upon love, a love that inspires hospitality? And what if in our hospitality and welcoming we also welcome honesty, which promotes healthy growth, self-reflection? Just maybe, The Church (you and me, your grandma, my future grandkids, our houseguests) will someday by able to muster up our courage, step out into faith, and cross the welcome mat into our eternal home.