“Our world desperately needs safe people and safe places. Hospitality is one way we become God’s welcoming arms in a big and often hostile world” – Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

When I lived in Papua New Guinea, one of the global workers we met at our local church invited us to their home group, a gathering of workers that met at the mission compound every week. Their fellowship provided my husband and me with the precious gift of community we desperately needed as aliens in a foreign land. 

When we returned to the United States, my own reverse culture shock fueled a great sense of loss for the community we left behind. I realized if I was grieving, then so were the other global workers transiting in and out of our large metropolitan city. Whatever their current situation, they needed the care, connection, and community that we fellow nomads could provide for one another.

We decided to form a new home group to provide a place for global workers to gather. It didn’t take long for our home to be filled with sweet wandering souls who were called to serve the nations.

I liken our group to a modern-day picture of the early church revealed by Luke’s writings in Acts 2. Those early converts engaged in four key areas that represent the unique hospitality so essential to their unity at that time: teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. When they were together, the environment was characterized by praising God with sincerity and gladness. 

We emulate the community Luke describes in that we have a shared life experience that unites us. A bond developed by gathering in a safe place to learn, grow, pray, and of course, break bread together. Those things, my sister, are the essential and life-giving elements of hospitality. I encourage you to provide that safe place.

In his article on community, Eugene Park says, “One cannot “find” community, because it isn’t something to be discovered. Community is never found, only built.” To quote that memorable line from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, He will come.”