How often, if we’re honest, have we re-gifted something given to us? The truth is that many of us have done it at some point. But what motivation lies beneath this act? Is it merely a desire to rid ourselves of an unwanted item, or is there a deeper motivation—a desire to bless someone else with something we ourselves found valuable?
In the blog post, “Converge 2025: Faithfully Present, Courageously Good,” Lynn Swaner, Converge 2025 chairperson and president of Cardus, U.S., encourages leaders of Christian schools to consider the concrete ways their institutions can be courageously good and be a faithful presence in their communities. While the practices that form and deepen faith inside a community are necessary to be a faithful presence, they can’t stay there. The virtue of courage is the drive to take up these Christian practices within the school’s wider community. She draws our attention to hospitality in Paul’s letter to the Romans as a courageously good practice of Christian communities desiring to be a faithful presence since the beginning of the Church.
Christian Tradition
In Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Christine D. Pohl (2024) examines how the modernization of society made an impact on a once commonly shared ideal of helping others in need. She begins by explaining that “in a number of ancient civilizations, hospitality was viewed as a pillar on which all morality rested; it encompassed ‘the good.’ For the people of ancient Israel, understanding themselves as strangers and sojourners, with responsibility to care for vulnerable strangers in their midst, was a part of what it meant to be the people of God” (5). Hospitality is a practice integral to God’s desire for community through the Bible. In Genesis 18, Abraham and Sarah entertained three strangers who were revealed to be angels in their midst. In Acts 2–4, during the founding of the Church, Christians sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need.
The transfer of caring for others in need from individual obligation to set-apart institutions began as early as the fourth century. With Emperor Constantine’s support behind Christianity, hospitality came to be viewed as a public service (43). Many hospitals were established to care for particularly poor local strangers who had no other resources. As Pohl explains, “Gradually, these hospitals were differentiated into separate institutions according to the type of person in need” (44). David I. Smith, in On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (2018), illustrates how hospitality shaped the community life and learning for the early University of Paris, bringing the monastic spirituality of care of the sojourning guest into the heart of the educational community (11). At the end of the Middle Ages, Pohl observes the shift of hospitality from a practice integral to communities of worship given without expectation of return into a practice with the expectation of return in political and economic life (51). Already by the Enlightenment, writers were lamenting that hospitality had lost its moral meaning or that it had been lost altogether (37–38).
Today, when we think of the term “hospitality,” our minds often drift to various images. The over-one-billion-dollar hospitality industry. The hospitality majors in college. The hospitality ministry in our churches. The after-service coffee and donuts in the fellowship hall or the coffee cart and barista in the church lobby. The individuals known for their “gift” of entertainment prowess. Yet, in these same spaces, we lament the present brokenness in our world. The homelessness crisis. The people in desperate need in war-torn countries. The child who goes home each night to an abusive household.
What if we reacquainted ourselves with the ancient tradition of hospitality, seeing it not as a gift possessed by a select few but as a practice integral to being a Christian community? Might hospitality be the courageously good practice that opens our perspective, allowing us as a faithful presence to transform our world, our communities, and, as Christian school leaders, our schools?
The Gift
Reflecting on my own journey, I recall a pivotal moment over twenty years ago. Newly transitioned from the public school system to the less-than-a-decade-old Central Christian School in Oregon, I found myself staring at a Christian school accreditation manual and feeling utterly unequipped to draft board policy in a Christian school context. In a moment of vulnerability, I reached out for help.
My first call was to the regional director of ACSI, seeking guidance on drafting board policies. He graciously connected me with an experienced Christian school leader in our state. With no hesitation, this leader agreed to share their entire school board policy manual with me—a generous act of hospitality to a complete stranger in desperate need. Within days, a binder arrived in the mail, brimming with practical wisdom and insight.
The Transformation
Central Christian’s journey of maturity is marked by the hospitality of others from various Christian education organizations and denominations who have shared with us what they have. Countless school leaders, educators, and the greater Christian community have contributed their knowledge and resources over the years. These ideas and frameworks have an impact on our policies and the teaching practices they shape. In turn, they encourage our students to embody hospitality. Each of these gestures became the collective offering of five loaves and two fish, from the story of Jesus’s feeding of the five thousand. Now at Central Christian, we are enjoying a feast.
If hospitality lies at the core of our identity as followers of Jesus, what does it truly mean to embody hospitality, to be a hospitable presence or a place of welcome? How should this inform the practices at the schools we lead? How does it shape the way we participate at Converge 2025?
Hospitality at Converge 2025 may look like opening our discussion circles to welcome those from other organizations. Inviting a stranger to sit at our conference table. Recognizing that our attendance is not just because a particular speaker or topic is featured that could help our school. Attending with a posture of openness, realizing that we might hold the cup of water that another school desperately needs to advance the Kingdom as a faithful presence in their local community. Choosing purposefully to be courageously good invites us to consider others’ needs above our own, just as Jesus modeled for us.
In a culture often characterized by self-interest and isolation, a return to the faith practice of hospitality is a tangible expression of love and generosity as a faithful presence in our wider communities. As we prepare to gather at Converge 2025, let us accept the invitation to be courageously good. Our “hearts can be enlarged by praying that God will give us eyes to see the opportunities around us, and by putting ourselves in places where we are likely to encounter strangers in need of welcome . . . When our lives are open to hospitality, opportunities will come to make a place for others. And, in doing so, our [schools] and our lives will be enriched and transformed” (Pohl 2024, 152).
References
Christine D. Pohl, Making Room, 25th Anniversary Edition: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024), 5, 37–38, 43–44, 51, 152.
David I. Smith, On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 11.
About the Author
Elisa Carlson, MS, is the Head of School of Central Christian School in Redmond, Oregon. She has been a professional educator for 35 years, joined Central Christian in 2002 as the Assistant Administrator and became the head of school in 2007. Elisa also serves as a Van Lunen Center faculty member and ACSI Board member.