Questions in Our Heads

By Dr. Roger Erdvig
Seeing all the new students arrive on campus for the first day of school this year made me think about what is going on in their heads as they close the door on their parents’ cars and walk through the entrance to the school. I’m sure many of them had questions like…
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Will I be welcomed?
Will I be valued?
Will anyone take the time to get to know me?
Will I be accepted and supported?
 

These kinds of questions are often what’s on our minds when we head into unfamiliar territory. The answer to such concerns is...

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Seeing all the new students arrive on campus for the first day of school this year made me think about what is going on in their heads as they close the door on their parents’ cars and walk through the entrance to the school. I’m sure many of them had questions like…

Will I be welcomed?
Will I be valued?
Will anyone take the time to get to know me?
Will I be accepted and supported?
 
These kinds of questions are often what’s on our minds when we head into unfamiliar territory. The answer to such concerns is the practice of Biblical hospitality. As a school, we’re focusing on hospitality this year, aiming to answer these questions in positive ways to further build our school’s welcoming community.

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Hospitality is a key word in the New Testament, and it is the dynamic of the early church that knit together people from wildly different backgrounds. The Greek word that we translate as “hospitality” is philoxenos, which is a compound of two seemingly opposite words. Phileo is the love for a brother or sister—one you would hold in a close bond of personal affection. Xenos is a stranger, or one who is far from you. Taken together, this Greek word means to pull close those who are far away.
 
The call to hospitality in a Christian community, then, is the call to look for people who seem far away and to bring them close in.
 
To be far away can take many forms. It can be a student who is lonely and doesn’t fit in. Or maybe it’s the student who gets under her teachers’ skin and seems to enjoy causing strife. It can even be a school parent who seems to have it all together and yet longs for someone to truly know him.
 
Let’s examine a few texts that describe this New Testament quality of showing hospitality.
 
Romans 12:13 instructs us to seek to show hospitality, meaning we should consistently have our “stranger” radar up, looking for people who seem far away, to pull them in.
 
In Hebrews 13:2, we’re warned not to neglect to show hospitality. There are so many reasons we neglect hospitality—we’re busy, we’re rushed, we’re into what we’re doing, and we’re not paying attention to the needs of others. We need to be reminded of our hospitality ministry all the time.
 
But the writer of Hebrews adds a profound reason to avoid neglecting hospitality. Throughout Scripture, there are times when God’s messengers showed up as strangers. That’s right, if those Biblical characters had neglected hospitality, they would have missed out on entertaining an angel! I’m not sure that angels still take the form of strangers, but I do know that every stranger is made in the image of God and precious in his sight. So--angels or not--strangers deserve our best care and love.
 
Finally, in I Peter 4:9, we’re cautioned that our attitude matters when showing hospitality. It says that we should show hospitality “without grumbling.” That seems odd to me since I can’t imagine going through the effort of being hospitable while grumbling about it. But if I’m honest, I’ve done this exact thing.

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On the outside, I’ve acted like I’m glad to see someone, while on the inside wishing I hadn’t run into him. I’ve longed for more energized students in my classroom while acting like the ones I have are welcome there. I’ve even opened my home to people and at the same time wished we had more in common so our evening would be more enjoyable for me. Ouch.
 
Our team here at WCS seeks to create environments where our students and families are welcomed into the life of the school through Biblical hospitality. This influences how we greet families at events and how we interact with students in the classroom. And this hits at the core of our mission. Showing genuine Biblical hospitality to one another is an essential component of cultivating Godly influencers.
 
Will you join us this year in seeking to pull close those who are far away in our school community? Let’s make every time we’re together like a family reunion where strangers become brothers and sisters and members of our school community feel like they belong, they are known, and they are accepted.  
 
Consider yourself deputized as part of the WCS hospitality team!

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