Gracious Guest

Ed Stetzer post:  Thursday is for Thinkers:  Michael Carpenter

Last week I kicked off a new feature called Thursday is for Thinkers, where I will invite guest bloggers to share every week. Today's guest blogger is Michael Carpenter. Michael is pastor of Matthew's Table, a missional church community in Lebanon, Tennessee. He is sharing today on Stranger-Centered Hospitality.

"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." -Jesus.

When we first moved into our city to plant a church, we were strangers, outsiders. "You ain't from around here" is the most common phrase we heard. But we soon began to settle in and our church purchased a local coffee shop to serve as a hub of mission. We began meeting the regulars and quickly made several friends. We were becoming "acceptable outsiders."

In order to engage the creative community in our city, we discussed hosting a visual art show at the coffee shop. One of our regulars at the coffee shop, Amanda (iced white chocolate mocha with a quad shot of espresso), owns a local tattoo parlor. So I ventured out to her shop one afternoon to see if she and any other of the artists would like to produce some paintings around the theme of redemption. She and some of the others at the shop that day began pulling out their work and we all huddled around and began discussing it. I began telling them how we wanted to have a big opening with live music and a facilitated discussion on the various views of redemption represented by the artists' work. They all seemed interested, so Amanda and I sat down to hammer out some of the details. During the course of our conversation, I began telling Amanda about our church.

What happened next I never would of imagined. Amanda began back peddling while screaming over and over, "I am a pagan!" and demanded that I leave her place of business. Startled and wondering what I said or did I respected her wishes and left. I reviewed the conversation, looked down at my forearms examining my many tattoos, and could not understand what caused that sort of reaction. Needless to say, the art show did not happen. What I soon began to realize is that while we were trying to demonstrate hospitality to Amanda and her tribe of tattoo artists by hosting a show of their work, I lacked the ability to deal with myself as a stranger - an outsider.

My experience that day led me to an exploration of the missional role of hospitality in order to gain a deeper appreciation of the importance of receiving hospitality in Jesus' life as he often found himself as a guest of others. For this reason, I define hospitality as: "the transformation of the unknown traveler into guest, from stranger into one of the circle of friends." In this definition, I tend to view myself and my church community as the stranger, the unknown travelers who are seeking to be invited into the social circles of those who are far from God.

However, we have discovered that many followers of Jesus are unable to be gracious guests. But unless the person who extends hospitality is also able to become the stranger and be received by another, we are merely creating unidirectional lines of power flow - however unintended this may be. Mission has then become something we do to people, rather than something we do with people. Moreover, if we are only extending but not receiving hospitality, mission becomes quite antithetical to the example of Jesus and his habit of being a guest.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus sat at other people's tables as a guest, he was a recipient, and he allowed others to minister to him. Only as we understand Jesus as a wandering stranger can we then begin to understand the missiological implications of entering a (sub) culture that is not our own. That is, to be a stranger and invited in.

We all know that extending hospitality to others is essential to mission, but so is receiving hospitality when you are the stranger arriving on the scene. The mission of the church is not only giving, but also, more importantly, receiving hospitality. Only then can we claim to be engaged in truly mutual relationships.

Surely, since we do not have a "lasting city" (Hebrews 13:14), followers of Christ will always be "strangers and exiles on earth" (Hebrews 11:13). Thus our longing for a better country, a heavenly one, where God has prepared a city for us (Hebrews 11:16) is the locus of missional activity.