some Noel works

Noel Collins Pfeifer, Reviewer

Making Room: Recovering the tradition of Christian Hospitality
by Christine Pohl

Pohl begins with a historical excavation into the ancient Christian tradition of hospitality and finds it to be a quintessential part of the Church’s identity. The material is well-researched and well-presented. She gleans strength from her treatment of Scripture, tradition, reasoning a plausible re-shaping of it in contemporary culture and being shaped by the experience of historical and present day hospitality ministers. Pohl writes of hospitality as a deeply Biblical practice that God even forged into the Covenant with Israel through their “identity as aliens and related responsibility to sojourners and strangers.” (27) They even saw it as a place of sacramental meeting with God. Pohl is also critical of many aspects of today’s particularly Western context that have and may continue to impede hospitable churches and homes. These include fear, busyness, loss of a sense of Church as family and the valuing of individualism. However, Pohl has not lost hope and continues to explore the possibility of reconstituting hospitable attitudes and practice with the help of God and the wisdom of those who have previously taken up the mantle. No conversation on hospitality would be complete without defining “stranger”, the art of welcoming, the dignity of persons, the power of recognition, communal meals, multiple Church or family co-operation, and the importance of laughter. She also outlines many of the challenges inherent to this ministry and those nitty, gritty, honest fears and questions that may very well keep people from ever even attempting hospitality. Pohl does not pull punches or minimize the loss of this hallmarking tradition, but it is clear that she believes in an educational-conversational approach rather than simply making Christians feel guilty about it. She speaks as a prophet in, for and to the Church. Overall, it is a vastly helpful book for those who recognize that our society is truly yearning for belonging, and that the Church is in a unique position to offer genuine belonging and love through open hearts and open doors. It is a highly accessible read, enabling to the hospitable of heart and exhortative to those who are not gifted but consider hospitality a valuable tradition to be resuscitated in the Church. For further practical help, she includes some brief information from existing hospitality ministries worldwide and an extensive bibliography. Making Room is an important asset to this Biblical discipline’s rediscovery and incorporation, which Pohl would say, and I would agree, is paramount to the proclamation of the Gospel and the symbol of our eschatological hope of feasting together at the wedding banquet of the Lamb.