[This is part of a series on Thriving in the City.]
In contrast to my last piece, I’d like to offer you a more positive vision for the home.
Early in married life, before we had children, Sie Yan and I became inspired by the amazing story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. This American couple had been in church ministry in the US in the early part of the last century, but after a few years they uprooted their lives and moved to the Swiss Alps. There they rented a chalet and set up a ministry called L’Abri (“The Shelter”).
The Schaeffers engaged in a unique kind of evangelism. They simply opened their home to anyone and everyone at a time when – during the 60s and 70s – many young people were asking big questions about faith, philosophy and life. A generation was in the grip of the sexual revolution whilst questioning everything, and often seeking answers in all kinds of hallucinogenic drugs. A steady stream of young people found themselves seeking answers at L’Abri.
The Schaeffers went back to basics by welcoming these questioners into their home to stay for a season, and engaging in transformative conversations, whether over the dinner table or long into the night. As a result, many became firm believers in Jesus, leaving L’Abri with a new purpose and direction. (Many thousands more were impacted by the books and recordings released internationally; but the real heart of the ministry was this face-to-face work with real people.)
Sie Yan and I read a number of the Schaeffer’s books, and we became infected with this vision that the home could be a shelter and a place of transformation. It’s a vision that still inspires us and energises us with hope and a sense of possibility.
The home has always been the most natural context for discipleship. If Jesus wasn’t preaching to crowds on hillsides or in the Temple precinct, then he was around the dinner table, teaching, talking, loving, chastising, laughing, eating and drinking. It is no accident that at the centre of Christian worship there is a meal, the breaking of bread. That was Christ’s idea, after all.
It is difficult to quantify the spiritual potential of hospitality in a God-honouring home. When a person is welcomed under your roof, it can change their life. That change is rarely swift and dramatic, but instead it’s steady and long-lasting. Sometimes people have made the effort to thank us for the time spent in our lounge – often as part of a Life Group – and described the indelible impact it has had on them. My response has been to scratch my head and wonder what we did. But that’s the beauty of it; it wasn’t a programme or a fancy strategy. It was rather the work of the Spirit among us as we opened the Bible and intentionally engaged in real conversation, authenticity, and openness. It has been a thrill for me to see that multiply out across the church as hundreds attend Life Groups each week, or move in and out of each other’s lives in organic ways.
I am, of course, speaking of the possibility within all of our homes if they become places of shelter. This is not just about hosting dinner parties for those you see as ‘your people’ (as good and life-giving as that may be). It’s rather about seeing the home as a place of ministry and of mission as you offer your food, your central heating, and your sofa to others, even to the stranger.
To my mind, this is nothing short of revolutionary. In a world where hospitality is so often self-serving and performance-oriented, or it’s just poor to non-existent, the church can offer a taste of heaven – since God has invited us (even us!) to eat at his table.
Mission and impact in London may at times be expressed in dynamic influence and leadership ‘out there’ in the world – in work, service to the city, leadership, and so on. But it should always begin ‘in here’, in your home. If you want to change the world and affect the city, start with a sofa.
For more inspiration, I happily recommend the wonderful book The Gospel Comes With A House Key by Rosario Butterfield. Or alternatively, some of you may well be inspired to read Edith Schaeffer’s account of their ministry in her book, L’Abri.