The Spirit convicts not to condemn, but to draw us back. We have the same calling: to “pursue hospitality” (Rom. 12:13). Hospitality is not just hosting friends; it is the love of strangers. Pursuit requires intentionality, planning, and effort. It’s not optional or only for those “gifted with hospitality.” It’s a command and a continual pattern meant to shape our lives as a community. Are you actively pursuing others outside your circle?

The desire for community often leads Christians astray because our picture is distorted. What does community look like? A Google image search for “community” returns the same image again and again: people standing in a circle, arms around each other, faces turned inward. Even adding “Christian community” doesn’t change much—only now some are praying.

Often, this becomes our perfect picture: find a group of friends, grow in depth, share life together… and never have to do it again. But a close circle quickly becomes a closed circle. This may be community, but it is not Christian community. One distinctive of Christian community is that it eagerly welcomes new people.

The Challenge of Christian Community

Jesus’ disciples knew what it meant to have a close circle. For three years they walked with Him, ministering side by side, building the kind of community most of us dream of. After His resurrection, they might have thought their group was safe again. But then Jesus said, “I’m leaving, and I want you to leave too. Go to the ends of the earth” (Matt. 28:18–20). The circle wasn’t meant to stay sealed; it was meant to break open.

The book of Acts describes this new reality: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer… Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42, 47). Historian Rodney Stark observes that Christianity created a culture that offered, “to cities filled with newcomers and strangers…an immediate basis for attachments.”[1]

No longer a small, tight group—new people were added every day. That can sound exciting: revival, growth, answered prayers. But imagine if that happened in your church or small group. A group of 12 gains a new person on Monday, but by the end of the week, dynamics have shifted. It doesn’t even feel like the same group anymore.

This tension presses on every church. Do we really want the 40 million people who have stopped coming to church to return? Would we welcome them—not just through our doors, but into our lives? If this is our calling, a distinctive mark of Christian community, what can help us become this kind of people?

Remember God’s Heart

Paul exhorts, “Welcome one another, just as Christ also welcomed you, to the glory of God” (Rom. 15:7). God’s heart is not for an exclusive club. Jesus came “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10). He has always been gathering a people to Himself, a Father eager to expand His family.

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