Well, it was in the chapter on hospitality of all things that I found grounds for real disagreement with the practices of many emerging communities. I find this surprising, because hospitality is the discipline that has catalyzed a lot of my thinking about what a Christian community might best look like in a post-modern context.
I agree that hospitality is the practice of welcoming in the outsider, but I do not agree with the mental leap that makes the outsider simply one who is different than you, and I do not accept that we should allow worship of other gods within the context of our Christ-centered community.
Yes, it is important to welcome in people from other faiths. We need to be hospitable toward them. I do not like evangelism that seeks to force anything on anyone. I resonate deeply with the emerging custom of being soft to non-Christians, of letting ones life do the evangelizing. However, in our gentleness, I do not think we should be weak. Jesus is Lord and no other stands beside Him. He is all the hope we have and all the hope we have to offer.
Hospitality is welcoming in the stranger, the marginalized, the alien. It is giving them a seat at the table. It is being patient and kind to them. It is being Christ to them and allowing them to come to Christ, to enter His kingdom advancing all around them to include them. But it is not suggesting to them that the world they are welcomed in from is the real world. It is not celebrating this-earth practices. To do so is to be unfaithful to our guests and our God.
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