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Job Requirement

             Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, (I Timothy 3:2)

and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds. (I Timothy 5:10)

Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. (Titus 1:8)

OK, this is scary. The first and third verse above deal with overseers. The middle one is about widows who are supported by the church. All three verses include some form of the word hospitality. What Paul seems to be saying in each of these passages is that if you want to lead, or if you want to be put on the church payroll, you need to show hospitality. Two of the verses also use the word self-controlled. I suspect that hospitality isn’t  high on the list of qualifications for overseer of a modern church, but it should be.

My purpose in pointing this out is not to get on the case of overseers or widows who aren’t doing this. Instead, it is to point out how important hospitality is. The Church can’t be the Church without it. If the Church practices hospitality, I suspect there are other things that don’t matter too much if the Church doesn’t include them – like speaking in tongues, miracles, and prophecy (none of which are required for overseers.)

Maybe that’s why one of the last things Jesus did before being arrested was to wash the feet of the disciples, which would  have been a task delegated by the host.

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