Pastors who welcome those who go out to spread the gospel of Jesus’s death and resurrection have the dual effect of meeting the immediate needs of those ministers and modeling hospitality for the church. It may be this kind of ministry that Jesus has in view when He describes hospitality as the fulcrum of judgment in the analogy of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31–46).

I suggested in the first entry in this series that a covenantal framework can be identified in the Lord’s hospitality in Exodus 24. Though Jesus’s hospitality to the eleven in John 21 does not have the same covenantal framework, in both passages, God effectively hosts a select figure to train him for ministry leadership: Moses for Israel and Peter for the apostles.

In the second entry, I noted that hospitality is a ministry of all kinds of leaders in Scripture. And they undertake this ministry with urgency. Abraham (Gen. 19), David (2 Sam. 9), and the public official Publius of Malta (Acts 28:1–10) extend hospitality with respect to their leadership positions.

In this third entry, I want to explore Paul’s statement that pastors must be hospitable. In the local church, pastoral hospitality reflects God’s care for the needy and establishes an environment for supplying and training ministry leaders. The qualifications for pastoral leadership express a man’s relational aptitude for leading a local church. Whether we consider the list Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 or Titus 1:5–9, each quality more or less has in view a man’s ability to reflect God’s character as he relates with people inside and outside the church.

The pastor must reflect God in his closest relationships. He must husband his wife (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:6a) and manage his household well (1 Tim. 3:4–5; Titus 1:6b). The pastor must also display God’s character in the more extended relationships of his life. He must be hospitable, a lover of strangers and outsiders (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8).

When studying the pastoral qualifications listed in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 or Titus 1:5–9, we must recognize two ways they might become fodder for eisegesis. First, we must remember that no one pastoral qualification functions in isolation. Relational aptitude functions as the hub into which these qualities fit as spokes. In aggregate, these features of a man’s life position him to reflect God as he leads the church. Second, the lists of qualifications should not be isolated from Paul’s flow of thought in 1 Timothy and Titus. These qualifications for pastors contribute to Paul’s broader portrait of beliefs and behaviors the church must embrace in light of Jesus’s death, resurrection, ascension, and promised return. These qualifications signify the pastor’s character in relation to God and the ministry of the new covenant.

Having identified the conceptual framework of these pastoral qualifications and pitfalls to avoid when interpreting them, we can consider Paul’s statement that the pastor must be hospitable. I identify two reasons why Paul lists hospitality as a qualification for pastoral ministry.

Read More