Being Good Hosts and Good Guests
This year, the English ministry of NTU-CF identified room for strengthening the quality of our relationships, between individuals, small groups, language sections, and beyond our community. Our prayer this year was for us to be challenged to love beyond our comfort zones and to create a united community eager to point each other to God.
Hence, the direction we charted for the year is “Christian Hospitality: Being Good Hosts and Good Guests”. We want to explore what God tells us about serving others, and about humbly allowing others to serve us.
To kickstart the year, we held our first Fellowship Night of the year, “Hospitality and its Opponents”, to introduce and expand our understanding of the concept.
Sharing what hospitality ‘smells’ like to us
Our guest speaker, FES staffworker Prarthi began by posing the question: What scents do you associate hospitality with?
As our answers suggested, we often associate hospitality with positive things like hotel lobbies and baked goods.
However, we learned that Christian hospitality is so much broader, stemming from God’s example as the ultimate host and guest. God hosts us by inviting us into a relationship with the Trinity, and Jesus let others host him in tangible ways: from Martha’s home-cooked food to the sinful woman’s perfume.
In fact, Christian hospitality doesn’t always look pretty. It can often be risky, uncomfortable, and inconvenient.
Hospitality challenges us to rethink the world’s scarcity mindset, especially in universities where we’re taught to gatekeep our resources for career success. But God assures us that we can afford to flip our priorities to care for others, trusting that he will provide all we need.
We learned that hospitality is a framework of living, not just a once-off event. We should begin by showing hospitality to one another within our fellowship: to love those difficult to love, to make time for one another, and to be willingly inconvenienced.
The NTU ECF Committee with Prarthi
Within the University, we are exposed to many diverse ideas and perspectives. As NTU-CF, we are privileged to live out hospitality, even in our dialogue and conversations, by seeking to understand the culture and worldviews around us. We can intentionally look out for the vulnerable and overlooked here at our doorstep.
Christian hospitality is wildly counter-cultural, and we are excited to live it out this year!
— Joei Kwek is a Year 3 Communications Studies student in NTU serving as the Chairperson of NTU-CF.
Editor’s Note: This Fellowship Night review is part of our August news on ‘Hospitality and Welcome’! We invite students to consider what it means to be good hosts and guests in receiving and evaluating the different perspectives, worldviews, and fields of knowledge encountered on campus. As we mark the return to school for our university ministries, the planning of CF calendars and the immersion in campus life and study, this month’s feature article reminds us that behind every ministry activity lie deeper questions about why we gather, welcome, and serve.
