Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl, A Review

Christine Pohl's Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, starts off as a somewhat academic exploration of how Christians, through the centuries, have handled the act of hospitality. 

Right away,  Pohl explains that hospitality isn't entertaining. It's offering basic human needs - like shelter and food - to those living on the fringes. 

The first quarter or so of the book lays out how the Christian church started off as a group of "strangers in a strange land," misfits who, like Jesus, didn't fit the culture they lived in. Because of this reality, the early followers of Jesus naturally focused on helping others.

Midway through Making Room, Pohl turns her attention to the specifics of hospitality - and, for this reader - that's where the real heart of the issue became clearer. 

Writes Pohl: "Although as a society we seem enamored with those who project self-confidence and offer ready answers to even the most complex questions, the best hosts are people who recognize their own failures and weaknesses. When we offer hospitality, our faults as well as our possessions are open to scrutiny. If we need to hide either, we are unlikely to offer much hospitality...

"A life of hospitality means a more continual interaction with others, and fewer opportunities to carefully project a 'perfect image.'"

Pohl points out that hospitality shouldn't be used to gain an advantage, like soliciting new church members. "To view hospitality as a means to an end, to use it instrumentally, is antithetical to seeing it as a way of life, as a tangible expression of love... When we use occasional hospitality as a tool, we distort it, and the people we 'welcome' know quickly that they are being used."

She also discusses the human tendency to distinguish between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor. "Echos of such concerns ring loudly today in complaints about welfare abuse, in questions about whether some people are 'really' homeless, and in distinctions between political and economic refugees."

Pohl makes the point that "[T]he potential for misuses of hospitality cannot be eliminated. Most gracious hosts and hospitable communities know that they will sometimes be 'used,' but they provide welcome anyway. There is no perfect solution to this issue."

There's also the reality of individuals receiving hospitality who come from broken homes. She quotes Edith Schaeffer, who with her husband, Francis, founded the L'Abri community. "For some young people, L'Abri homes are the first really happy homes they have ever seen."

The paradox seems to be that offering hospitality is one of the most powerful things a church can do, yet it is often the most difficult. "Churches have generally done better with offering food programs and providing clothing closets that with welcoming into worship people significantly different from their congregations. Because we are unaware of the significance of our friendship and fellowship, our best resources often remain inaccessible to strangers."

Christine Pohl/Photo Credit Asbury Theological Seminary

And the author is very up-front in describing challenges faced when engaging individuals living on the edge of society. "When we focus on hospitality to very needy strangers, we encounter additional strains. In the midst of a larger society that can be hostile to the very people we welcome, it can be extremely difficult to absorb the pain of rejection and loss which our guests bring with them."

It's no wonder, writes Pohl, that "Hospitality will not occur in any significant way in our lives or churches unless we give it deliberate attention. Because the practice has been mostly forgotten and because it conflicts with a number of contemporary values, we must intentionally nurture a commitment to hospitality. It must also be nurtured because the blessings and the benefits are not always immediately apparent."

It takes grace, writes Pohl. And it is at this point in Making Room, that Pohl offers practical bits of wisdom.

"A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God's grace and generosity. Hospitality is not first a duty and responsiblity; it is first a response of love and gratitude for God's love and welcome to us."

The rest of Making Room could be used as a "how-to" manual for loving our neighbors in need.

"Our hospitality both reflects and participates in God's hospitality. It depends on a disposition of love because, fundamentally, hospitality is simply love in action."

"We make a habit of hospitality when we remember how much Jesus is present in the practice."

"We nurture hospitality as a habit and a disposition by telling stories about it. We retell the Bible stories of guests who turned out to be angels. We remember the stories of Jesus' life - how he welcomed all sorts of people..."

"We nurture hospitable dispositions and practices by explicitly teaching about them. A number of communities of hospitality are intentional about education; community life includes regular reflection on what hospitality means and looks like."

"Every contemporary practitioner of hospitality learned the practice from someone else's example... a gracious grandmother, or a wise and generous coworker. People for whom hospitality seems natural are wonderful models from whom to learn the practice... As contemporaries, they help us work out the practical details of an ancient practice."

Towards the end of Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Pohl sums up brilliantly: "Because hospitality is a way of life, it must be cultivated over a lifetime... We do not become good at hospitality in an instant; we learn it in small increments of daily faithfulness."

Making Room:  Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition
by Christine Pohl
Published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI.