How do you practice hospitality?

As one practioner explained, entertainment involves "putting on something for people," creating the impression of "perfect people in a perfect house." Hospitality, in her mind, puts the focus elsewhere, asking "'How can I extend myself for you without having all my things put together first?' ... It's being willing to say, 'Come in - as we live.' It think it takes a certain amount of self-denial to be able to do that."

Much entertainment, especially in the business world, is tied to gaining advantage. But churches face temptations as well. Faithful Christians are encouraged to entertain neighbors and coworkers because hospitality is a good setting for the latest outreach project. Concerned pastors are challenged to adopt a comprehensive "hospitality program" as a means to church growth. Hospitality sometimes seems little more than another marketing tool.

To view hospitality as a means to an end, to use it instrumentally, in antithetical to seeing it as a way of life, as a tangible expression of love. There is probably no better context for sharing the gospel than in a setting of warm welcome, and people will come in increasing numbers to a church that takes hospitality serious. But when we use occasional hospitality as a tool, we distort it, and the people we "welcome" know quickly that they are being used. Such misuse of hospitality feeds the loneliness that Henri Nouwen suggests is characteristic of our times. The roots of loneliness "find their food in the suspicion that there is no one who cares and offers loves without conditions, and no place where we can be vulnerable without being used."

It is difficult to resist the complex blend of intimacy, commercialization, and instrumental thinking that characterizes much personal entertainment, the hospitality industry, and even therapeautic techniques today. Extra vigilance is required to make sure that we do not misuse hospitality . An expression of this vigilance comes from several communities that explicitly distance their hospitality to strangers from any financial gain.

- Excerpted from Christine Pohl's book Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition, p. 144/145