When I was a child, there was almost always someone I didn’t know at our Thanksgiving table. We regularly hosted students from the college where my dad taught, especially those who were far from home.
I never questioned the author of Hebrews’ instructions: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2 NRSVue). My childhood experiences of hospitality were safe, predictable gatherings that included a greater-than-average chance for dessert, if I was lucky. Entertaining strangers who might be angels seemed like a no-brainer.
While I am grateful for this early exposure to one form of hospitality, my view of the practice widened in divinity school when our ethics professor challenged us to consider the angelic encounters described in Scripture. Far removed from the strangers-turned-friends I had pleasant table conversations with growing up, the angels in Scripture may appear with flaming swords, such as those stationed east of Eden in Genesis 3, or with drawn swords, as the prophet Balaam recounts in Numbers 22.
The more I read, the more difficult and dangerous entertaining angels sounded. It was clear why angels begin so many conversations with “do not fear.”
In Genesis, I read how Abraham’s afternoon plans and the family budget went out the window after three visitors appeared and dinner preparations began by finding a calf in the field (18:1-15). Lot faces danger to his family and the loss of his home (19:1-29), while Jacob’s encounter ends with a permanent limp (32:24-31).
Similar stories in the New Testament recount Mary surrendering her bodily autonomy (Luke 1:26-38) and Zechariah losing his ability to speak (Luke 1:8-22).
The Christian practice of hospitality is about so much more than sharing a meal with people like ourselves. Entertaining strangers as angels in disguise involves risk, vulnerability and encounters with those unlike us. Some level of discomfort is essential. Yet extending hospitality is also a space of discovery and transformation, as our biblical predecessors experienced through their angelic encounters.
Theologian Thomas Ogletree writes: “To offer hospitality to a stranger is to welcome something new, unfamiliar, and unknown into our life-world. … Strangers have stories to tell which we have never heard before, stories which can redirect our seeing and stimulate our imaginations.”
We live in a moment where such connection and transformation are urgently needed. It is also harder and riskier to encounter those unlike us. Christine Pohl explains that as households have become more secluded and private, the risk to host and guest alike has increased.
Institutions play an increasingly important role in creating “third places” where people can connect. These social spaces, distinct from both home and workplace, are harder and harder to find, further limiting opportunities for transformative encounters with strangers.
Some places cannot safely open their doors to strangers in our current moment. The Christian practice of discernment must accompany extending hospitality in communities where particular vulnerable identities are being targeted. Yet in places where this is not the case, creating sacred space for encounter may be exactly what the church is being called to in “such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).
One of the gifts of my work is that I regularly bump into stories of congregations across the country that are doing the hard, messy, scary work of welcoming strangers. I hear more and more stories of churches that are designing third places and drawing on their spiritual resources to create belonging, offer support and remind the world — and themselves — that our value is not in what we produce but in who we are.
The results are as different as the congregations that create them. Members of Mack Avenue Community Church in Detroit asked their neighbors what they needed and, in response, created a community space with a cafe and laundromat. The pastor of Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in the small town of Folkston, Georgia, took the church outside, worshipping in parks, hosting community days and training cyclists in the town’s national wildlife refuge.
Holy Family Episcopal Church in Houston took an old a meat-packing warehouse and redesigned it to be a worship space that doubles as an art gallery, supporting local artists and welcoming community members all week long. North Decatur Presbyterian Church in suburban Atlanta hosted a community gathering after a government agency 3 miles away laid off a large number of staff. Congregation members made room for people to tell their stories and share resources. They also helped people find a sense of belonging and held their suffering in the larger story that the church tells.
I doubt any of these congregations would say this work is easy or that they’ve been trained to do it. They will likely name failures, lengthy timelines, fears and moments of discomfort as just some of the challenge they faced while deepening their practice of hospitality. Yet they continue to hold open this space. The transformative encounter is simply too important, too beautiful for them to stop.
On the day of Pentecost, the disciples were thrust outside the safety of the house and into a space thronged with strangers. Fire, wind, languages from across the globe and accusations of drunkenness swirled around them. And in that moment, the church was transformed forever.
Amazed and astonished, each one in the multinational crowd heard the good news in the language they spoke at home. Thousands were cut to the heart and received the promise of God for themselves. And the church did what it does best: it welcomed them in, shared its spiritual resources and affirmed their belonging and belovedness.
The Christian practice of hospitality is about so much more than sharing a meal with people like ourselves.
In a season of seemingly endless tumult, faith leaders can learn about building welcoming, diverse communities through the miracle of Pentecost. The evangelist Luke’s account of this event in Acts provides a vivid picture of how to translate godly deeds into languages that strengthen faith, hope and belonging within congregations.
Nine days after the ascension of Jesus, Luke writes, many were gathered in one place.
“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? … [I]n our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’” (Acts 2:2-8, 11b NRSVue)
Hearing in our own language
The discipline of linguistics shows how language influences the social, cultural and spiritual dynamics of human life. I agree with the belief that holds a strong correlation between being able to commune with God in one’s native language and the deepening of personal faith. And I don’t find it surprising at all that the events of Pentecost included a multilingual miracle that catalyzed the birth of the church.
In April, Barna reported that belief in Jesus is on the rise in America after hitting a low point in 2021 and 2022. The research firm invited Christian leaders to adopt the language of openness and hospitality in the face of a 21st-century culture of skepticism, writing: “For pastors and ministry leaders, this is a moment both to celebrate and to steward. People are open — perhaps as much as any time in recent memory — to Jesus. Churches that can meet people in this openness — with authenticity, humility and a focus on discipleship — may find fresh opportunities to minister.”
Some faith communities were already modeling that behavior.
To those who arrive from different places to become our neighbors, colleagues and fellow church members, how might the language of inclusion be received?
In Lansing, Michigan, St. Luke Lutheran Church’s commitment to authenticity and cultural appreciation is removing barriers and boundaries for its multiethnic congregation. The church holds gatherings where worship is multilingual and songs like “Harambee Harambee” are sung in the native languages of community members.
Worship services are offered in English, Arabic and Swahili in a church of more than a dozen languages.
Hearing in our own language
To the overlooked and most vulnerable in our society, how might a language of mercy, compassion and hope be known, heard and received?
In San Antonio, Texas, Chris Plauche, a 76-year-old retired pediatrician, imagined providing stability and support to senior adults experiencing homelessness. The result, Towne Twin Village, is a community for formerly unhoused individuals 55 and older. Along with 200 residences, the campus offers medical and behavioral health care. Daytime guests are provided breakfast and lunch along with access to spacious showers, haircuts and pedicures.
Plauche’s project partner, Edward Gonzales, says that long-term residents are skeptical at first, but by day 180 “they’ve improved their quality of life and are standing a little bit taller. They’re smiling and looking you in the eye.”
Hearing in our own language
To those who are lonely and feeling far from God in our society, how might a language of trust and belonging be received?
In London, James Fawcett leads Being With, a 10-week course whose participants practice being present in the lives of others as well as their own. The course stems from the “being with” theology developed by the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, which centers around Christ’s life in relation to the time that he spent being with others. It’s not through a rigorous curriculum or Bible study lessons that God’s presence is realized in the lives of the participants but through conversations of wonder or dwelling in spaces of silent reflection.
“We’re trying to be with people as Christ is with people but also as God is with us,” Fawcett says, “and God’s desire is to be with us, and [God] was with us in Christ.”
Being With has now extended beyond the UK, and transformation is happening in the lives of individuals all over the world. People who are on the various edges of faith are being brought to the center of the church and are finding belonging.
“There’s something about it which opens an unclosable door for individuals that they’re then continually seeking,” Fawcett says.
I’m reminded of 1 Corinthians 2:13, where the apostle Paul writes, “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.”
Through our words and actions, communication that is taught and empowered by the Spirit stretches beyond the barriers of cultural appropriation, injustice and exclusion. We can express hospitality, compassion for the vulnerable and belonging that reach into the hearts of all of God’s beloved.
To those who arrive from different places to become our neighbors, colleagues and fellow church members, how might the language of inclusion be received?
Familiar Bible stories can be some of the hardest to read as adults. The children’s Sunday school versions, with their accompanying crafts and upbeat sing-alongs, can obscure the full range of nuance and complexity in a given passage. Take the parable of the sower from Matthew 13.
In all the illustrations I’ve seen, the sun is out, the sower happily scattering seeds over an artfully textured ground. Given the bounty in the “good soil” harvest, the seeds that aren’t so lucky don’t seem to matter. The classroom drawings never fully capture the scope of loss present in the story — the seeds pulverized in the bird’s beak, withered by the sun among the rocks, strangled by the weeds.
Suddenly, this cheery parable fills me with discomfort. Why wasn’t the sower more careful? Surely there are ways she might have minimized the risk and maximized the yield.
I feel frustrated that the sower seems entirely unconcerned about failure. As she walks, she tosses handfuls of seeds to fall where they will. Some will grow; most will not. No attention is given to the soil quality. The sower simply keeps on sowing.
I’ve realized that this reading is challenging me to reconsider the parable’s lesson. Perhaps this story is more about consistent faithfulness and less about engineering results. But that is not what I want to hear in a moment of great change and uncertainty for the mainline church in America.
Congregations are aging. Membership numbers are declining. Churches are closing their doors and selling their properties at an unprecedented rate. This does not seem like the moment to be scattering our limited precious seeds with abandon.
And yet what if this is the exact right moment for the church to be taking risks and embracing failure?
Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn lead and teach at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. They help organizations innovate in a rapidly changing world by cultivating cultures of experimentation — what, for the church, could be seen as the spiritual disciplines of listening, humility, courage and holy playfulness all rolled into one.
In their book “Ideaflow,” they write, “What are the chances you’ll make an interesting discovery doing something in the exact same way you always have?”
I wonder what this imagination might do for the church. If doing what we always have is no longer working, could this be the moment to experiment and try something new? Sometimes an experiment will produce 30 times what was sown. Sometimes an experiment will fail. Often it takes many failures before a successful solution is found. Recall the story of the light bulb.
I believe failure is essential for vibrant congregations. But failing is scary. In order to survive, the church must create a culture where failure is expected, welcomed and even celebrated.
Utley and Klebahn offer some suggestions on creating this kind of culture.
First, individuals and groups need to feel a sense of safety in order to take risks. When we’re afraid that we’ll fail — or that we or our ideas will be judged, laughed at or dismissed — our creative ability withers. Our brains (and that infamous entity called the church committee) are masters at naming why new ideas won’t work. While this instinct can keep us safe, it can also be wrong. We don’t always know where the good soil is. Scattering with abandon creates opportunities for learning and even surprise.
To scatter with abandon, shift the goal from finding “good” ideas to simply getting as many ideas out on paper as possible. Get playful. Bring snacks and colorful Post-it notes. Ask a middle schooler to join the conversation. Pull your chairs into a circle or move to a space with lots of light and big posters on the walls. At this stage, the goal is quantity over quality. The only rule is that ideas cannot be judged or deliberated.
Initially, ideas might come slowly and feel obvious. Keep going! One leader who uses the ideaflow process told Utley and Klebahn that it’s always excruciating for her — but only at the start. “As soon as she gives herself permission to write something truly outrageous, ridiculous or just plain illegal,” they write, “the floodgates open.”
Second, make space in the schedule to fail. Utley and Klebahn write, “To learn something new, you must try new things, and experiments always have a risk of failure. To take that kind of risk regularly, you can’t chase 99 percent efficiency every moment of your day.”
Not every new idea will bring in more young people or help balance the budget. But when framed with intention, every new idea is a learning opportunity for a congregation. Start talking about the congregation’s latest experiment and the learnings it produced, regardless of how well it achieved the anticipated results.
Utley and Klebahn note Thomas Edison’s response to a friend who lamented Edison’s lack of results on a project despite his hard work: “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
Not every project needs to be “the solution” as long as we are able to learn from it.
A few Sundays ago, I heard a pastor retell the parable of the sower and recount the harvest it produced as “thirty-, sixty- and even one hundredfold.” That’s how Mark 4 tells the story, but it’s not what Matthew says. Instead of saving the largest, most remarkable yield for the end, Matthew’s version says the yield was “in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty” (Matthew 13:23 NRSVue) — concluding with the smallest. Even the smallest yield is worthy of note, Matthew seems to be saying.
Failure happens when we take risks. Our call is to be faithful sowers who scatter with abandon.
And yet what if this is the exact right moment for the church to be taking risks and embracing failure?
For all the talk by politicians about optimism and the bright future ahead, many of the students I teach are not buying it. A growing number among them are telling me they are not planning to have children. Their decision isn’t selfish. It stems from the multiple worries they have about things like accelerating climate change, gross economic and social inequality, and the normalization of hate.
I agree with them that there isn’t much reason to be optimistic about the future. But this doesn’t mean they can’t be hopeful. Hope and optimism are not the same thing.
I’ve studied social and environmental movements for three decades and am now helping lead a major research university’s efforts to address climate change. This experience has taught me that optimism can actually get in the way of creating a just and hopeful future.
The problem with optimism is that it is a status quo concept. It assumes that even if present times are bad, the future will eventually and somehow turn out all right. Why? A common refrain is that some person or some new technology will come along and save us. At its core, an optimistic attitude believes that the current order is basically sound, trustworthy and deserving of our commitment.
Most of the people I talk to are not convinced of this. Some even say that optimism is dangerous, because it prevents us from correcting the conditions that create so much despair in the first place.
So how is hope different?
Hopeful people do not assume that everything is going to be all right. They see the current trouble and expect that more is on the way. That makes them honest. Hopeful people also resist efforts to predict the future, because nobody knows exactly how things are going to turn out. That makes them humble.
In addition to honesty and humility, a crucial characteristic of hopeful people is courage. Seeing the trouble, facing the pain and suffering, they do not withdraw or become bystanders who assume others will take care of the situation. Instead, they work to create a world better than the current one. It takes courage and a creative imagination to picture what by current standards appears to be an impossible future. It takes resolve not to give up when obstacles to that future come along.
That makes love the essential power that inspires and animates authentic hope. Without the activation of love, hope withers and dies. I don’t mean the sentimental love that, like optimism, assumes a smooth and tidy world that is easy to embrace. Rather, the love that energizes hope is often accompanied by sadness and lament; it grieves the damage done to this lovely world. It often takes the form of protest and resistance, because it demands an end to the wounding of life.
I am inspired daily by the many people I meet who want to give themselves to the creation of a just and beautiful world. They are building community gardens that invite their neighbors to share in the work and enjoy the delicious food they grow together. They are walking the southern border, looking for migrants who need help and protection. They are volunteering for relief efforts when extreme weather hits.
These people are witnesses to hope, because they are nurturing spaces and times in which love and beauty can grow. In a world saturated with suspicion and hostility, these people light a way of hope, because they are agents of hospitality. If hope has a future, it will be because people are committed to the creation of hospitable homes and communities in which all people are welcome.
But I am also chastened by the young people who tell me that my generation has been far too selfish and shortsighted. We are delinquent in our care of school buildings, neighborhood parks and watersheds. We have not designed or invested in infrastructure — those projects that demonstrate our love for the children and grandchildren. We have lived as if the interests of future generations don’t matter.
When I teach about the degradation of our lands and waters or the abuse and abandonment of many of the world’s communities, it is easy to feel depressed. I am regularly asked, “What gives you hope?” My best response is to point to examples of people who are fiercely committed to nurturing and protecting the communities and places they love. When people give themselves to the care of each other, they don’t only inspire others to do the same. They also cast a vision for a future that is worthy of our commitment.
Love is the power that repairs and heals our wounded world. By committing ourselves to magnifying and extending this power wherever we are, we choose hope.
Without the activation of love, hope withers and dies.