The Power of Hospitality: Finding Healing and Wholeness in Community
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Dr. Rosaria Butterfield returns to the podcast to continue the conversation about the power of hospitality.
As a new Christian who came to faith through the radically ordinary hospitality of a believing couple, Rosaria quickly realized that the church was “on a starvation diet of community.”
In today’s churches, people—especially those living with disabilities—often feel lonely, isolated, and unknown.
Rosaria urges Christians to practice hospitality, community, and inclusion, embracing the healing and wholeness that God intends for the church and each of his children.
What is the connection between “hospital” and “hospitality”?
In the previous episode Rosaria called her home “an incubator and a hospital for grace.” For many people who find themselves isolated, whether because of disability, illness, or other life circumstances, being welcomed into a home can open the door to healing in Christ.
God designed human beings to love and be loved.
He knows that all people need him and belonging with one another to experience joy and abundance in life.
The Bible frequently calls on believers to meet together, to pursue unity, and to look out for those most likely to face isolation: orphans, widows, prisoners, people with disabilities. God invites people into his family and provides human family for those in need:
“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families.”
Psalm 68:5–6
When hurting people get welcomed into a Christ-centered “hospitality home,” God’s power can be released in their lives in new ways.
How does God use hospitality to heal people?
Our Enemy uses isolation to fuel despair, addictions, and harmful coping mechanisms. He knows we are weak as isolated individuals, cut off from the body of Christ.
Rosaria says that hospitality can be spiritual warfare—a radically ordinary practice that wards off evil in people’s lives. Through hospitality the light of Christ advances into the dark corners of our lives and communities.
“Hospitality can interrupt sin in the most obvious of ways,” says Rosaria. For example:
“Maybe some people need to come over every night. Because if they’re at your house fixing dinner, they’re not watching pornography on the internet. You can’t be in two places at once.”
God designed deep relationships to be the joy of life; when people are sharing a meal, laughter, and conversation around a table—knowing others and being known—they experience the kind of satisfying goodness that God offers through community. This kind of love can slay addictions, sin patterns, loneliness, and despair.
“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!”
Psalm 133:1
How can I practice hospitality with my disability(ies) or other limitations?
The Bible shows Jesus both a host and guest—giving and receiving hospitality. Like Jesus, his followers need opportunities both to receive and to offer hospitality. But hosting (in the conventional sense) isn’t always possible. When you think about offering hospitality, do any of the following objections come to mind?
- My disability(ies)/physical condition prevents me from hosting.
- I don’t have a good home/space for hosting.
- My spouse/family doesn’t want me to host.
- I don’t have time/energy/resources to host.
Not everyone can have hotdogs on the grill, soup on the stove, and an open door all the time. For some people hosting a dinner may not be possible. But even if you face all four of the barriers listed above, you can practice hospitality. How?
Rosaria suggests helping someone else who is prepared to host. After all, collaborating—even to offer hospitality—is the whole idea of community. What does collaboration in hospitality look like?
- If you don’t have physical space or resources to host, co-host with somebody else.
- If you can’t help physically, offer to pray at a gathering, or make yourself available to listen—really listen!—to at least one person there.
How can the church practice hospitality?
Rosaria says that the “idea of individualism” can give modern Christians the idea that God’s commands are “for just us.”
But like many of God’s directives and designs, hospitality needs to take place not only in individual lives and homes, but throughout the church. Hospitality should be “what we do as a church,” Rosaria says.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:35
As Rosaria puts it, “A successful hospitality home really is an outpost of the local church. It has a number of people in it who don’t get their mail there. It may have a couple of elders from the church, and some folks who have a heart for first Gospel contacts.”
Rosaria affirms the importance of gathering at church for worship on the Lord’s Day. But she adds that the church shouldn’t stop there.
Through radically ordinary acts of hospitality, the church and its people can build and pour into people constantly.
“The Lord’s Day is for gathering to worship. But every other day of the week is for connection and for serving and for forgiving and for peeling a lot of potatoes together. It’s for picking up the neighbor’s kid at the bus stop and returning lost dogs. That’s what every other day of the week is for. We get to live for the Lord every day. And we get to do it 24/7.”
Rosaria
The Gospel Comes with a House Key
With the story of her conversion as a backdrop, Rosaria Butterfield invites us into her home to show how God can use “radical, ordinary hospitality” to bring the Gospel to our lost friends and neighbors.
