ArticleBlog | Serving sermons: preaching as hospitality
Serving sermons: preaching as hospitality
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 24.12.22
I’m sure you’ve seen the banners: huge, colourful and stretched along the churchyard railings for all to see: ‘Everyone welcome!’ A lovely sentiment, and yet so often an empty one. Who hasn’t had an experience of walking into a church and being ignored or worse? For some, such an experience sounds the death knell for nascent faith.
It is vital that we, the body of Christ, live hospitably for the sake of what Jesus called his ‘lost sheep.’ And also because we are to be transformed into his image, becoming more and more like him in who we are and how we live. Hospitality is at its heart the offer of kindness, care and a place to belong, which is what we have received from God, who desires to share life with us. Rather than barging in, he awaits our invitation: ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me’ [Revelation 3:20]. God’s hospitality is sacrificial, generous, demanding and reciprocal. It is endless and intimate and painfully gracious, in the sense that we have to accept we’ll never be able to match it. It gives us an inspiring model – if one that seems unattainable.
What can we do to make sure we ‘practice hospitality’ [Romans 12:13] as churches, not just in the obvious ways – greeting newcomers with warmth, serving coffee and biscuits and so on – but in our preaching too? Here are some thoughts about how we can preach hospitably in our content and our delivery.
