Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition
I highly recommend Making Room: Recovering Hospitality As a Christian Tradition
- Christians should regard hospitality to strangers as an expression of the gospel.
- History reveals the importance of hospitality to the spread and credibility of the gospel.
- As Christians, identifying our self as strangers and sojourners is part of what it means to be the people of God.
- The New Testament portray Jesus as a gracious host, welcoming children and prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners in his presence.
Description: Although hospitality was central to Christian identity and practice in earlier centuries, our generation knows little about its life-giving character. Making Room revisits the Christian foundations of welcoming strangers and explores the necessity, difficulty, and blessing of hospitality today. Christine Pohl traces the eclipse of this significant Christian practice, showing the initial centrality of hospitality and the importance of recovering it for contemporary life. Combining rich biblical and historical research with extensive exposure to modern service communities–The Catholic Worker, L'Abri, L'Arche, and others–this book shows how understanding the key features of hospitality can better equip us to faithfully carry out the practical call of the gospel.
Making Room discusses Old Testament stories of Abraham welcoming angels, Jesus’ commandment to love those unable to reciprocate and the early church’s emphasis on sharing meals with the poor. More than a product or a service, hospitality may be a transformative spiritual practice. We are particularly encouraged to share ourselves with those not like ourselves—without requiring that they become like us to receive our attention and care.
Here is an example of the cost of community/hospitality from Francis Schaeffer:
Read More"Don't start with a big program. Don't suddenly think you can add to your church budget and begin. Start personally and start in your home. I dare you. I dare you in the name of Jesus Christ. Do what I am going to suggest. Begin by opening your home for community…
How many times in the past year have you risked having a drunk vomit on your carpeted floor? How in the world, then, can you talk about compassion and about community – about the church's job in the inner city?
L'Abri is costly. If you think what God has done here is easy, you don't understand. It's a costly business to have a sense of community. L'Abri cannot be explained merely by the clear doctrine that is preached; it cannot be explained by the fact that God has here been giving intellectual answers to intellectual questions. I think those two things are important, but L'Abri cannot be explained if you remove the third. And that is there has been some community here. And it has been costly.
In about the first three years of L'Abri all our wedding presents were wiped out. Our sheets were torn. Holes were burned in our rugs. Indeed once a whole curtain almost burned up from somebody smoking in our living room. Blacks came to our table. Orientals came to our table. Everybody came to our table. It couldn't happen any other way. Drugs came to our place. People vomited in our rooms, in the rooms of Chalet Les Melezes which was our home, and now in the rest of the chalets of L'Abri.
How many times has this happened to you? You see, you don't need a big program. You don't have to convince your session or board. All you have to do is open your home and begin. And there is no place in God's world where there are no people who will come and share a home as long as it is a real home."
America’s Most Innovative Churches of 2008 – Really?
Why are America's Most Innovative Churches also some of the largest in America? Northpointe, NewSpring, Saddleback et al are nominees for the award in 2008. Is this like when Taco Bell wins best Mexican food because it's the most voted place in town? Aren't there small churches who are doing innovative things too? It seems like smaller churches should have more freedom to be innovative. House church movements? Harbor's multi-site, multi-congregational non-video venue model? Soma's multi-congregational, involved discipleship (street walking) and dialogue based services? How about people who are doing amazing mercy ministries, changing a city, Tentmakers, re-thinking church structures based on changing paradigms?
Hmmm…according to the survey these aren't considered as much as podcasts, blogging, websites, social networking, film production and video venues ….
Read MoreEkklesia 360 Church CMS v2.0
Ekklesia 360 Church CMS has launched our new design. The old design had run it's course and we decided to give the site a fresh look. The website uses the Ekklesia Website CMS. The website was designed by Designwise and Shane Thacker developed our new logo. (see blue/white logos)
It's been a great year so far, we have had 20 different design companies use our CMS for their clients. (View a few of our website design partners) We now have over 800 churches, ministries and companies using our backend to manage their website/content. Our team has grown to 12 people who are passionate about helping use technology for God's glory.
Learn more about Ekklesia's:
- Content Management System
- Event Management System
- Member Management System
- Contact Management System
- Blogging System
- Outreach System
- Social Networking
- E-commerce
Kaleo Church Website v 5.0
Kaleo Church has re-launched it's website for the 5th time. Our website has been a significant tool in our ministry as an effective way to connect our community, communicate with people who visit our church and non-believers. Through our website we've seen people attend events/services and become Christians.
To commemorate the launch, I thought I'd talk about why we have done this now and in the past and other decisions involved.
Kaleo v5.0 - As Kaleo seeks to launch it's third and fourth locations, we created this design to reflect our multi-site church planting strategy. We also wanted to change the style of design. Our previous website designs were typically black/dark. We wanted to change this to a more clean/white-space design. The functionality is powered by the Ekklesia 360 Church CMS. Some of the changes included:
- Design: A new clean design was used, created by Mark Priestap at Designwise. We partnered with the Journey in St. Louis in sharing the cost for the design and we each customized our one layout to reflect our community. Mark's design was influenced by Mars Hill and we spoke to them to ensure it was ok that we moved in this direction.
- Design: We wanted to put more people and stories on the site. We now have 3-types of Kaleo Stories: Gospel Stories (how the gospel is changing lives), Mission Stories (how people in our community are living on mission) and World Stories (how people internationally are spreading the gospel. The persecution of believers and the church planters we support/pray for.)
- Content: Changed a lot of content, such as the gospel, added Mission, Serve & Connect sections and other pages.
- Media: We centralized all sermons (previously on three pages) to one Media & Messages page.
- Blog: We added a blog to the home page for better updates/communication.
- Social Networking: We added a backend for community members to create their own page, blog, galleries, commenting on content, participate in groups, discussions, etc. As part of the previously mentioned Mullet Strategy – "business in front, party in the back".
- Event Registration: The site now has event registration both for free and paid events.
Kaleo v4.0 - While we had this site, we moved into AMC Theaters for our Mission Valley service. We had the site up less than 2 months when we launched our 2nd site at San Diego State University (SDSU). We had decided to move to a multi-site, multi-congregational church planting strategy. The site was designed by Church Plant Media and the flash was done by AM Design. This was our first transition to the Ekklesia 360 Church CMS. (click on design for screenshot) Some of the changes included:
- Content Management System: CMS to manage content (sermons, articles, events, pages, etc.)
- Design: First design not created by me!
Kaleo v3.0 - This was the site we had when we moved into a church building because we outgrew our warehouse. The design was created by me and used a php/mysql database. We managed it through phpMyAdmin. Chris Livhdahl and I did most of that. Click on the image to the right to view an interior page.
- Dynamic - We moved from a static, hard-coded site to php-based.
Kaleo v2.0 – While we had this website, Kaleo 'went public' in 2004 with a move to Sunday morning service in a warehouse we rented. We went public when we had about 50 adults attending the church. This design was created by me (man I'm glad I don't design anymore). It is a static site that better laid out content to view. Click on the image to the right to view an interior page.
- Flash - Each interior page had a unique flash header.
Kaleo v1.0 – This is our first site ever. We launched this site as we began to do services with a core group of a dozen or so people in the 2002-2003. I had 7 or so images for the home page that were selected at random to give it a changing appearance. Click on the image to see another home page.
Triperspectival Benedictions
Each week I (or an elder @ Kaleo) end our worship service with a benediction. I used to do these benedictions based on verses in the bible. In the last 6-months I have transitioned to Triperspectival Benedictions that follow the sermon. The three elements of the benediction are:
Normative/Information: What was the passage, topic or emphasis we examined from the Bible.
Existential/Transformation: How, as Christians, are we changed by God in this area? What is God's grace doing in our lives?
Situational/Sending: What is our call to now live in response to this new reality. How are we a sent people to be on mission and proclaim/live this reality?
This was today's benediction based on a sermon in Acts chapter 9 that dealt with Paul's conversion and his radical life of faith through the gospel.
Kaleo, may you grow in faith in the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ,
May you see yourself as the children of God. That you are forgiven, that you are more loved, accepted and approved than you dare imagine.
May you go and live as the children of God, rejoicing and telling everyone the good news of what God has done.
Go in peace.
Just another crazy triperspectival idea from the Kaleo guys.
Read MoreDrew Goodmanson
CEO of Monk Development creators of Ekklesia 360. Co-Founder of Kaleo Church where I served as Pastor for 8+ years and helped coach several church plants in San Diego. Co-Founder of the GCM Collective, President of the Board at the Center for Church Communication, Board Member of the Entrepreneurship Organization, Internet/Technology Advisory Chair at the Christian Leadership Alliance. Connect
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