“My home is your home.”
Most people’s eyes get big when I tell them that my mother-in-law came to live with us for a matter of weeks immediately after our wedding. Technically, it was our second wedding; we had our first wedding in Bogota, Colombia, then a honeymoon, then straight to Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, for a second wedding (where I am from). After that, we traveled to Iowa, where we were going to be living as I worked and my wife finished school.
Two weddings and a honeymoon, and my mother-in-law along for the ride, staying with us in our first days of marriage.
It was a memorable way to start out, to be sure. But then, Colombian culture is far more communal than my American culture (even in the South, where we are the “kings and queens of hospitality”).
You see, while Southern hospitality is very kind, very beautiful, and very fun, it is typically about reciprocity. You invite those whom you desire to return the favor. It is less hospitality, I think, and more realistically “hosting.” I have some friends who are amazing at hosting. They can plan a party that will make your mouth drop, and they show genuine love through those events! They make their guests feel magical. But that is not the only way, nor even the ideal way, to show hospitality.
“Hospitality . . . is a one-way flow. It is your choice to offer something of value—your time, energy, food, or money—with no expectation of return on your investment,” says Kate Gaston.1
Hospitality Is a Command
“Cheryl, you have such a gift of hospitality.”
“Hospitality isn’t a gift, it’s a command.”
This was the regular response of a church leader in our church in Iowa. She wasn’t afraid to step right up to people and let them know that hosting can be a gift, but hospitality isn’t something you do if you just have the “gift,” it is something you learn through regular practice. It is a rhythm, a discipline you build into your day-to-day life.
Rosaria Butterfield puts it this way, “Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom . . . offering radically ordinary hospitality is an everyday thing.” 2
Hospitality changes your normal rhythms in almost every way.
Love of Neighbor
But why bother with this? Because true gospel hospitality is for the love of our neighbors.
“The command to love our neighbors lies at the core of God’s plan for our lives, and when we follow this mandate, it changes everything,” say Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon.3
We are called to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (see Luke 10:27). The goal is not what we can get, but what we can give.
In the context of Jesus’ time, this level of hospitality would be extended most often to strangers and travelers. This was “the virtue of xenia, a Greek word meaning ‘guest-friendship’ . . . considered a sacred obligation to those traveling far from home,” writes Catherine McNiel.4 This is a group of people who have nothing to give back to you and are brought into the natural rhythm of your life for a few days or for a few weeks, depending on the circumstances.
But what does this mean for someone not located in this first-century context?
While I have friends in some parts of the world for whom guest-friendship applies, in a lot of cultures, it is just not a normal experience.
So let’s reframe the question.
Who Is My Neighbor?
When is it costly to show hospitality? To whom might we extend hospitality even if it is difficult? Who may be unable to reciprocate our offerings?
And more questions, especially as we look at our calendars, full to the brim:
Where can we create margin to be people of hospitality? How might the Lord want to use us and our homes? What are we holding too tightly? How might God be moving us to grow and stretch?
Table Fellowship
Table fellowship is part of the secret to gospel hospitality. It is not a place where we seek to “get” ourselves. Yet, that does not mean God will not use it to form, grow, and sanctify us. “Here, then, is the mysterious work of hospitality: it changes those who are offering it,” says Kate Gatson.5
God wants to form us into his people, and the intimacy of the table is one of his primary methods. It turns strangers into friends and friends into family. It allows us to offer space to those who represent Christ.
Jesus says as much when he calls us to serve those who are hungry, thirsty, without clothes, and in need (Matthew 25:34–40). Certain Christian groups practice Jesus’ instructions with purposeful care. For example, the Benedictine Rule calls their monks to broad hospitality. It says, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.”6
Putting Hospitality into Practice
Table fellowship brings with it an intimacy of proximity, changing both guest and host as their lives are shared.
This is where the church can shine. We can be people of the Table, offering the peace of Jesus to our neighbors, both literal and metaphorical.
Our practice could start with going through our list of coworkers and inviting them one by one. Maybe we are in a new church, and rather than waiting to be invited, we invite people to get to know this new local body. Maybe it’s the new neighbors from another country who just moved in next door. It could look like praying over who will move into that empty house across the street, and then showing up with a gift and a dinner invite when they do.
Table fellowship brings with it an intimacy of proximity, changing both guest and host as their lives are shared.
What would it look like for us to make hospitality a scheduled rhythm, to open our homes and tables to someone the Lord brings into our sphere of influence? Could we:
- Commit to inviting one or two new people over this month?
- Look at our money, time, and homes, and pray over how to rearrange them to be interruptible for Jesus?
- Build a generosity line into our budget?
- Buy a bigger dining table?
- Eliminate a hobby to have more time for people to come eat?
- Go on prayer walks in our neighborhood and stop to ask people if they would like prayer as a way to meet them?
- Gather a group that throws a block party once a month with an open invite for all?
- Pray for the Lord to bring strangers into our paths?
When we begin to implement hospitality, I think we will be shocked with the results, both for our communities and within ourselves. Our God is a God of proximity, and he wants to use us as his hands and feet—so let us let him.
- Kate Gaston, “When No One Shows Up: Hospitality in the Age of Maybe,” Substack, December 8, 2025, https://rabbitroom.substack.com/p/when-no-one-shows-up-hospitality. ↩︎
- Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018). ↩︎
- Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon, The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside Your Door (Grand Rapids: Baker). ↩︎
- Catherine McNiel, “The Radical Practice of Christian Hospitality,” Missio Alliance, April 11, 2023, https://missioalliance.org/the-radical-practice-of-christian-hospitality/. ↩︎
- Gaston, “When No One Shows Up.” ↩︎
- Timothy Fry Benedict, Imogene Baker, Timothy Horner, August Raabe, Mark Sheridan, and Jean Neufville, The Rule of St. Benedict in English (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1981). ↩︎
