Hospitality

We must relinquish our passive approach to friendships. That’s the bottom line. We’re too passive in cultivating meaningful affection for one another. We wait for the relationship to come to us. We want it to be “natural” and to “just flow” or “click.” I suppose there is a thing as trying too hard, but I think most of us are far from that. We perhaps try too little. We’d rather the coziness of being alone with our own thoughts, interests, and “friends” from some yesteryear like high school or college. We don’t like the toil of getting to know others and opening ourselves up (much less prying into their lives) in a substantive, transparent way.

One correction to this is an active hospitality ministry.  The Scripture commands us to “show hospitality” (Rom. 12:13).  By hospitality, I mean the cultivation of a wide network of relationships in the church through any number of invitations, engagements, and entertainments. The emphasis here is on the wideness of the relationships, not the particular activity over which you build them. Some part of our people’s time must be given over to meeting as many fellow members as possible, especially members not like them (i.e., different age, social/economic class, family backgrounds, ethnicity).

We must teach our people to open up their lives by opening up their calendars and their homes. If our churches are going to be healthy enough to survive difficulties, then our people must have enough credit with one another—drawn from the tenderness of sharing meals and meaningful conversation—to trust and assume the best. We must know one another broadly enough and deeply enough to know when someone else’s apparent anger is really deep hurt, or when someone’s resistance is masking pride, or when a brother’s disappearance from the fellowship is likely a sign of trouble with sin. And we can’t see beneath the apparent in one another’s lives if we don’t actually cultivate friendships with others. An active hospitality ministry in the body is one way of doing that. Of course, church-wide fellowships are another. But the point is that we don’t want to “professionalize” fellowship and hospitality by reducing it to only those church-sanctioned events and failing to discourage active hospitality member-to-member, up-close and personal.

Discipleship
Most churches I’ve belonged to have not had active discipleship efforts in place. Some people in “natural friendships” find time to encourage one another, pray together, or have regular accountability meetings. These tend to be some of the more mature members who find their way to each other. But the majority of people are not in that kind of relationship, at least not with members of their church. They find a lot of encouragement and love from Christian friends at work or at other churches. But they find little stimulus and nurture from the people with whom they covenant together in the local church. In other words, when our main source of spiritual care (apart from sermons and public gatherings) comes from those outside our church, our affections are likely to be stronger for those outside the body than for those inside. This makes it easy for us to “quit” on others because they’re not the source of nurture and love anyway. This is why some people can easily leave the church at the first sign of trouble and find a home in a church across town. Their hearts were already elsewhere, with people that they loved more than their church family.

If hospitality builds wide relationships, then discipleship builds deeper ones. It’s how we teach one another to obey all Jesus’ commands and follow His ways (Matt. 28:19-20).  Given that, is it too much to expect that every member of the church has at least two intentional, spiritually-focused relationships in the church… a relationship with someone more mature that is building into their lives and a relationship with someone as or less mature into whom they are building? And this, I would suggest, should be in addition to those relationships formed in small groups. So add two to the number of folks in your small group.

We will be healthier if we take some responsibility for one another’s spiritual lives. The membership is to be the frontline of spiritual care. If our affections lie with another country or just with our unit (i.e., small group) then our first line of defense against splits will be easily overrun. The enemy will establish key beach heads, take over key forts and bridges, and lay siege to the city.

What do you think about the points Pastor Anyabwile is making in this article?

With all due respect, what’s harder: to be an idolized rock star who travels around the world touting good causes and chiding governments for their lack of foreign aid, or to be a line worker at GM with four kids and a mortgage, who tithes to his church, sings in the choir every week, serves on the school board, and supports a Christian relief agency and a few missionaries from his disposable income?

Until we are content with being one of the million nameless, faceless church members and not the next globe-trotting rock star, we aren’t ready to be a part of the church. In the grand scheme of things, most of us are going to be more of an Ampliatus (Romans 16:8) or Phlegon (Romans 16:14) than an apostle Paul. And maybe that’s why so many Christians are getting tired of the church. We haven’t learned how to be part of the crowd. We haven’t learned to be ordinary. Our jobs are often mundane. Our devotional times often seem like a waste. Church services are often forgettable. That’s life. We drive to the same places, go through the same routines with the kids, buy the same groceries at the store, and share a bed with the same person every night. Church is often the same too — same doctrines, same basic order of worship, same preacher, same people. But in all the smallness and sameness, God works — like the smallest seed in the garden growing to unbelievable heights, like beloved Tychicus, that faithful minister, delivering the mail and apostolic greetings (Ephesians 6:21). Life is usually pretty ordinary, just like following Jesus most days. Daily discipleship is not a new revolution each morning or an agent of global transformation every evening; it’s a long obedience in the same direction.

I encourage you to read the entire article HERE.

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.  (10)  Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.  (11)  Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.  (12)  Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  (13)  Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.  (14)  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  (15) Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  (16)  Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Romans 12:9-16 

As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.  (21)  The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."  (22)  On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,  (23)  and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty,  (24)  which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,  (25)  that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.  (26)  If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. 1 Corinthians 12:20-26

I wish I could write one of those amazing blog posts that would rivet our attention on what God is doing in our midst and inspire us to celebrate the unity we have in Christ. But I am at a loss for words at this time. Let it suffice to say that God is at work to bring us together, and to lead us to share in each others joys and sorrows. May Christ be glorified in our crying and smiling!

I look forward  to sharing the Lord’s supper with you….my brothers and sisters in Christ….this Sunday.

Maranatha ….. Pastor Dan

These two mindsets involve fundamentally different values. The highest value of a community with a tribal mindset is self-preservation. A tribal community exists solely for itself, and those within it keep asking, “How can we protect ourselves from those who are different from us?” A tribal mindset is marked by an unbalanced patriotism. It typically elevates personal and cultural preferences to absolute principles: If everybody were more like us, this world would be a better place.

But in a missional-minded community, the highest value isn’t self-preservation but self-sacrifice. A missional community exists not primarily for itself but for others. It’s a community willing to be inconvenienced and discomforted, willing to expend itself for others on God’s behalf.

A tribal mindset is antithetical to the gospel. The gospel demands that we be missional, because the gospel is the story of God sacrificing himself for his enemies. Both these approaches are robustly present in Jonah’s story. Jonah represents the best of a tribal mindset, the absolute best. He’s like the trophy-boy for tribalism. And God—ever-gracious, ever-pursuing, ever-compassionate—carries the trophy for mission-mindedness.

Jonah runs from his enemies; God runs toward his enemies. Jonah serves himself; God serves the world.

- Tullian Tchividjian, Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels, 134,135

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian (pronounced cha-vi-jin) is a Florida native, the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, a visiting professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, and a grandson of Billy and Ruth Graham. You can read his blog HERE.

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other. 

The quickest way to slay error is to proclaim the truth. The surest mode of extinguishing falsehood, is to boldly advocate Scripture doctrine upon Scripture principles. Scolding and protesting will not be so effectual in resisting the progress of error as the clear proclamation of the truth in Jesus. 

“What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Over a half century ago, Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse offered his own scenario in his weekly sermon that was also broadcast nationwide on CBS radio. Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over Philadelphia, all of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say, “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am,” and the churches would be full every Sunday . . . where Christ is not preached.”

Michael Horton, Christless Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), 15.

I wonder..how many of us would settle for this kind of “Christian” community?

We obsess about the future and we get anxious, because anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here.

We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control.  We are not gods.  We walk by faith, not by sight.  We risk because God does not risk.  We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God.  And that’s all we need to know.  Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.