God commands His people to be “given to hospitality” (Rom. 12:13). This is one way we show Christian love, as we fellowship and break bread with one another. We must view our homes, then, not just as a place for personal retreat, but as a hub for evangelism, discipleship, and personal ministry.

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by Gil Arterburn and his daughter Summer, discuss the joys of hospitality as well as common barriers that often hinder families from opening up their homes. Many fail to practice hospitality because they think their resources are not “good enough.” Yet you don’t need a big home or a fancy steak dinner to be hospitable. Giving of what you have, in a spirit of love, is all you need to encourage others in the Lord. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. We're going to talk about recovering the home for equipping and evangelism and hospitality, the hospitality commands. We've got a really inspiring family we're going to talk to. The Arterburns from Kentucky. Hope you enjoy the discussion.

Well, Jason, we're going to talk about hospitality with these Arterburns. So, your reputation precedes you. Here's what I mean by that. I was talking to your pastor about something completely unrelated to this, and you're saying, Hey, by the way, I love the podcast. You know what you guys should do?

You should do a podcast on hospitality, and you should have Gil Arterburn and a daughter or two on that podcast, because they are a competitive weapon for our church. I think that actually is the phrase that he used. Here's what he meant by that. When a visitor comes to your church, he knows that they're going to be approached by the Ardor Burns and invited to lunch. You've never met them, you don't know them, but you want them to feel welcome to the church.

So you just have them into your house. That's so nice. Yeah. Love to love to hear that. So that, so here we are.

So now, now we're going to talk about it. We've seen it, you know, from afar too. So, and, and we have Gil and Summer. Hey Summer. So glad you're joining your dad.

I know your mother is out, you know, you know, maintaining the machine while you guys can sit here and talk about it. Hey, Gil, tell us about your family. Yeah, well, I have a wonderful wife who is shuttling the children around right now, much to her delight that it was the right time to avoid the cameras. But in Killerm, I have my ninth grandchild on the way. So yeah, the Lord's just blessed us.

You know, I'm one of the richest men in the world. In modern evangelicalism, when church is over, people, the building is evacuated immediately and everybody goes. And the hospitality commands actually is a resistance to that. Yeah. Let me read from Romans 12.

This is one of the New Testament passages that talks about hospitality. It's Romans 12 verses 10 through 13. So here's what Paul writes, Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love. In honor, giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality." So all of these things have to do with love, being kindly affectionate to the brethren, and also serving the Lord.

Both of those things are mentioned at the front end of that. So how are we kindly affectionate to one another? Well, that's more than just sentimentality, as either actually practical ways in which we're supposed to demonstrate affection to one another. Hospitality is a great one. There are practical ways in which we serve the Lord, right?

That's not just emotional and spiritual. We serve the Lord in practical ways. Hospitality is one of those. Yeah, Jason, I love what you said there. As I was thinking about this, more and more just came to me.

I thought about how good God was in creation, really. Obviously, he's the ultimate example of hospitality and all the good gifts that he gave in the garden and then beyond, he promised even after the fall that there would always be planting time and harvest and that's been true and that will, you know, we're encouraged that that will be true until the end. He provided manna for his people in the wilderness. Then all through the Old Testament you see Abraham reading Elijah and so many examples, even jail. You know, you want to think about that.

You know, talking about hospitality being a weapon, I guess, you know, Kyle said that. Well, there you go. Right through the temple with hospitality. Tent peg through the temple, hospitality, that's a new category, Gil. Jesus did many miracles and teachings and healings in people's homes in the New Testament, which I never had really considered that.

I knew I was looking through Acts, and there's so many places where the church was meeting. The church was actually meeting in people's homes, but then I thought, well, Jesus was in people's homes too. He was actually in their home. And the New Testament tells us that they said about the church, these are the men who have turned the world upside down. And they did it without programs, without gems, without websites or anything like that.

They did it out of people's homes. You know about a dozen years ago I wrote an article. It's on our website. We'll refer to it, Restoring the Household for Equipping in evangelism. And what I'm saying in that article is the home in the New Testament is a place of spiritual activity.

There's teaching, there's healing, there is breaking of bread, there are all kinds of things. Even Levi, Matthew, is practicing hospitality in Jesus, is there with all of Matthew's friends. So the home needs to be recovered for equipping and evangelism and the love of God. So 1 Timothy 3 verse 2, part of the qualifications for elders, right in the middle, hospitable. So, the qualifications for elders isn't super Christianity.

That's the wrong way to think of what elders have to be. It's just actually verifiably mature Christianity. That's all it is. Every one of those qualifications are things that Christians are called to, and when it comes to maturity in a man's life, then he's qualified to be an elder. One expression of mature Christianity is hospitable, open-handed with resources, open door with the home that God has given you.

Okay, so you all practice hospitality. I've experienced it in your house. So tell us about how it works. Well, you know, I just think it's a combination of things, but it's partly just a natural outflow of our family. At the same time, it's intentional.

But, you know, if you're feeding your family and everybody sitting down to dinner every night, you know, we don't make a spectacle out of dinner. Sometimes the younger ones, especially they love to have candles and things like that. And I don't know if we've done that for hospitality. But then, you know, I don't know, I've always been, and Val's always been just kind of geared towards reaching out and picking up strays and that kind of things. So we've always been having people in our house and when we had children, you know, we had families at age, somebody's got to be the person that does it.

You can sit around and say, well, there's nothing going on. Or you could be the person that makes something go on. And Nobody's ever invited us over to dinner. Or you could just say, we'll invite everybody else over to dinner. You know, I think one time when we were actually pastoring a small church with a couple other men, We made a commitment one year to have everybody in the church over to our house.

I don't know if we actually reached that goal or not, but that was our goal, just knowing that there were some people that we hadn't had over. So yeah, I can't really tell you exactly how we've just always done it to one extent or another. Sometimes it's been easy and a delight, other times, You know, sometimes it feels like work, but the Bible does command us to do that. And we have many examples from Old and New Testament of people showing hospitality to one another. God is a good father and he's very hospitable.

He's created a very hospitable world for us. Springtime, you know, we get to see it just how good he is with all the fruit trees beginning to bloom and all the, you know, time to get in a garden and plant. He's provided everything we need. And following his example, we can share those blessings with other people. So when I talked to your pastor, he said, hey, if they come on, make sure you get a daughter of theirs or two on because they're actually right in the thick of all that is happening with our hospitality.

So Summer, maybe you could just describe what a normal night of hospitality is and what you'd be doing. Yeah. I mean, I think lately we've had a lot of people over on Sunday afternoon, just after church and really a lot of new people like them saying, just we've had a lot of people visiting our church, and so we'll have new people over. And I think that's really a great way. I think it's been amazing with the new people just because it's not like they're just church friends or people you see at church like they become more closer friends and you know more like brothers and sisters in Christ when you're fellowshiping with them.

But really I mean there's a lot of us There's five girls at home right now. So we're kind of at a different season than a lot of people maybe that have little kids or whatever. So we kind of go. Did we lose one? Lose one what?

A girl? Oh, they could sing, but that's all. Oh, yeah. Well, five others besides me. Big families can lose one.

Go ahead. We all kind of. We left one in the park. We took all of them down in the podcast. Summer, it's interesting you used the word brother.

You mentioned you had that kind of terminology. That's really the language of the Bible. You know, there are different imageries of the church, a temple, a body, you know, a family, but the whole, you know, imagery of brother, sister is the most prominent metaphor for the church, mentioned like over 250 times. And so that's what you're talking about is creating a family kind of relationship with an extended family. So I used to work in electronics.

We had something called an attach rate, and it had to do with if you sold this one product, how many of this other kind of product would would go along with it? How often would you also sell the other product? So just in terms of local church, it's so valuable to have families thinking like, Gil, what you are articulating, because churches have visitors. How many of them stick? Well, there's a couple of answers to that question.

There's one answer to that question if nobody really takes an interest in them. There's a very different answer to that question numerically if somebody who's friendly says, hey, you guys do anything for lunch, you want to come join us after the service? Most people don't have a plan after the service and are happy to come over. And that just is a totally different kind of first encounter with any church. What do you think some of the barriers are for people who are reluctant to practice hospitality?

Yeah, I think. I mean, for sure, the time of life that you're in, I think is definitely or you may think that your resources are not good enough Or I think a danger probably is comparing to other people. And we've done that before. Just you see people that maybe they're richer than you or maybe, you know, they're at a different time in life where they have tons of time to prepare and have fancy table settings or whatever. But I think that's the wrong way to look at it to compare with other people.

You should be taking resources that you have and just be faithful in that however you can. Yeah. Yeah, we've done, you know, we've had big events where we had, you know, several families or lots of families, you know, for Fourth of July or Thanksgiving, Reformation Day, something like that. We invited the people that bought our house, the ladies that bought our last house when we moved to Thanksgiving, cuz we knew they moved to town and they didn't know anybody here. And then other times on Sunday afternoons, Dad just gets restless and invites a couple people, maybe he'll give in his wife a hand or maybe not.

We just throw and they go, hey, what can we bring? Well, hey, run over and pick up some fried chicken or pick up this or that. And we've got this already and we just throw it together. But yeah, so many people, you know, I've even told people when they've said to me, when they've complained to me, well, I went to this church for so many years and nobody ever invited us over or did this or that. And I said, well, did you ever invite them over?

Well, no. Awkward silence. That's not my calling, right? Our family's been known to roll out sloppy Joe's and tater tots without apology because honestly most people just value being together And they're not waiting for a steak dinner. They'd rather, you know, come over soon and have sloppy joes and tater tots rather than to wait a year or two and get their steak dinner.

Yeah, I think another thing I was thinking about was just the size of your home. And I think it's a lot of an excuse that I hear often. And you know, we've made war to. But we have a friend in our church who's a single girl and lives in an apartment. And she invited us over, our whole family over, so like nine of us.

A little apartment. A very, yes, a very small apartment. And there was hardly room for, I mean, some of us were sitting on the ground and, you know, she didn't even have enough seats in the house for all of us, but we had a great time. And none of us cared that we were sitting on the ground, like we just be there and fellowship with her. And I thought that was a great example of just like you don't have to wait until you have a bigger house.

You know, you can use what you have and people will be happy with that. Or even, you know, if you have an outside, like have people over for a campfire or something. And you don't have to be inside if you don't have space. Whatever it really is. It really is a matter of obedience.

You know, we can say, well, this is just got if this is just a side dish, then it's a choice. But there's commands in the Bible that command us to do it. And commands that assume actually that it's not natural to everybody. And It wasn't like maybe or maybe not those people in the first century were more used to doing it. I don't know.

But even if they were, there were some people that still drug their feet because Paul says to do it without grumbling, do this thing joyfully because you know the Lord's given to you, you know, you give. And we had to be commanded to do it because those things don't just like we're commanded to love it really is a practical working of brotherly love in the church and you know I think I've got written here where it was Tertullian that said that even the pagans had to admit. See how they love one another and how ready they are to lay down their lives for one another when he saw their lifestyle. They're sharing meals from house to house, the things you see in acts, you know, praying for one another, giving to one another, caring for one another. And that reminds me, you know, of that story which I know y'all know of the Pilgrims.

When they came over that first year, they were sick and the sailors that stayed in the ship in the harbor were sick as well. But the sailors were cussing one another and were ready to just throw each other overboard so that they wouldn't spread measles or whatever they had around, flu. When they saw the pilgrims loving one another and caring for one another, and even coming over and caring for the sailors at the risk of their own health, they were amazed. And they said, we treat each other like dogs, but look how these saints care for one another. Well, that's what Jesus told us, wasn't it?

They will know that you're my disciples because you love one another. So it had to come out our fingers and our toes. Love has to look like something. I can't just say, you know, be warm and be fed brother. I have, I have, I have fuzzy feelings for you in my heart.

Yeah, that's one way that you know that everybody can do. It doesn't matter what your gifting is. You may not be a great preacher or you may not think you're as gifted to other people, but everybody can share their home and their time and life and a little bit of food with somebody else. If you don't have enough money, well, just get everybody, you know, have a potluck. Who said you have to spend a thousand dollars on a meal?

Or a hundred or fifty. Yeah, yeah. Right. Make it work. Yeah.

So a great, great book on the topic by Alexander Strouk, The Hospitality Commands. Gil, it's just to your point with there are actually commands. We are commanded to be hospitable to one another. This book won't take you two hours to read. Definitely you can have it read and back on the shelf in less than two hours, but it's so practical.

And it just goes from New Testament text to New Testament text that talk about hospitality. So for pastors who are watching, get a box of these and pass it out to your people. It is contagious. You really do need an anchor family like the Ardaburns, like you and your family, Gil. And sometimes it takes a while to spread, but hospitality is contagious.

Over time, churches build a culture of hospitality where more and more people want to be a part of that. Amen. Well, may the Arterburns tribe increase all over the country. May hospitality be cranked up in the churches. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you, Summer. All right. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we hope you can join us next time. Www.churchandfamilylife.com