Hospitality and the Early Church

By Stephen Mitchell

Hospitality! From the very beginning of the Church, hospitality was an important part of Christian fellowship. The Apostles could not have gone from house to house, breaking bread and fellowshipping together if there had not been a corresponding hospitality from the host families (Acts 2:46). Anyone being considered for a pastorate was required to be of a hospitable nature (1Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:8). A widow could only be considered for church support if she had shown hospitality over the years (1Timothy 5:10). Peter wrote that we should show hospitality to fellow Believers while the writer of Hebrews encouraged us to show hospitality to strangers (1Peter 4:9 and Hebrews 13:2). Paul also instructed those in Rome to practice hospitality (Romans 12:13). This was especially important for them since they lived in the capital city of the empire and there would be many Believers who would have need of traveling there.

Jesus enjoyed the hospitality of many. He stayed in Peter’s home. He enjoyed many hours with Lazarus and his two sisters. He shared a meal with Matthew, the tax collector. He enjoyed a meal and was anointed in the home of Simon, the leper and Pharisee. He invited Himself to stay in the home of another tax collector, Zaccheus. And he even spent a Sabbath meal under hostile eyes in the home of a chief of the Pharisees. Each of these times Jesus had the pleasure of someone’s hospitality, even when the host held enmity towards Jesus.

Hospitality was very necessary because the early church was a church on the move. From the New Testament alone we find the Apostle Paul journeyed many miles. As an enemy of the church, Paul journeyed about 135 miles to Damascus. In his 1st missionary journey he traveled about 1,400 miles. For his 2nd missionary journey Paul traveled around 2,800 miles. For his 3rd he went a little less, somewhere around 2,700 miles. As a prisoner he journeyed 2,250 miles to Rome. For each of these trips he went by a combination of land and sea.

With Paul went many companions: Timothy, Titus, Tychicus, Barnabas, Luke, Sopater, John Mark, Silas, Silvanus, Secundus, Demas, Erastus, Aristarchus, Trophimus, Priscilla and Aquilla, at different times. Titus, Trophimus, Erastus and Timothy were sent off by Paul to travel to other places at different times. Not only Paul and his companions traveled; churches also sent representatives to meet with Paul. Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus traveled the 430 miles from Corinth to Paul in Ephesus, bringing him a letter and provisions. Epaphroditus traveled the 800 miles from Philippi to Rome, bringing gifts to Paul from the Philippian church. While there Epaphroditus became deathly ill and the church in Philippi heard about it. That means someone had to travel back to Philippi with the news prior to Epaphroditus’ return trip with the letter to the Philippians. Tychicus traveled from Rome to Ephesus and then on to Colossae, accompanied by Onesmius, bearing letters from Paul, a total distance of about 1,400 miles. Apollos traveled to Ephesus and then to Corinth, left there at some point, and planned to travel back to Corinth. After Paul was freed from his imprisonment in Rome, he traveled to Ephesus with Timothy and Titus, left Timothy in Ephesus and traveled to northern Greece. From Philippi he sent someone to Ephesus with a letter for Timothy. He then traveled to Crete, left Titus in Crete and traveled to Nicopolis on the western coast of southern Greece. From there he sent Artemus or Trophimus with a letter for Titus in Crete, asking Titus to come meet him in Nicopolis. From there he sent Titus to Dalmatia, today’s former Yugoslavia. Paul then traveled to Troas where he was rearrested and taken to Rome. Paul asked Timothy to pick up a cloak at Troas and get to him in Rome before winter, a distance of close to 1,000 miles. In all of this, on land, travelers made anywhere from 15-25 miles a day. When Peter traveled from Joppa to Caesarea to meet with Cornelius, a distance of 40 miles, it took him two days to arrive, an average of 20 miles a day.

What does this all have to do with hospitality? Travelers would often take tents with them to camp out beside the road, but this was not always safe (recall that Paul was a tent maker by trade). And every traveler, most often on foot, had to carry their food as well as the means to prepare it, on their backs. Inns in the Roman empire were usually not desirable places to stay. The poet Horace referred to one spot as “full of nasty tavern keepers.”

While there were probably several different accommodations available in towns, outside of the major population centers things were different.

The traveler “most often put up at an inn, and even respectable inns, the ones the Romans generally dignified by the neutral terms hospitium ‘place for hospitality’ or deversorium ‘place for turning aside’, included prostitutes among the services offered, while the kind they called a caupona was distinctly low class: it catered to sailors and carters and slaves; its dining-room had more the atmosphere of a saloon than a restaurant; and the caupo (or copo), as one who ran a caupona was called, was of the same social and moral level as his establishment. Indeed, caupones, along with ships’ captains and owners of livery stables, were the subject of special legislation, since a traveler was completely at their mercy, and the law was aware that, as a group, they were hardly noted for scrupulous honesty.” (Casson, 204)

Often the travelers would spend many hours over their wine, loudly singing hymns to whatever deity/ies they served, in their revelry. As such, the Christian traveler would frequently find their surroundings difficult to endure.

Camping out, in danger from thieves and brigands, was often the only other option, unless local Christians offered their homes in hospitality. Paul listed his difficulties traveling thus: “I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure” (2Corinthians 11:26-27). Imagine how refreshing to a believing traveler, such as Paul, was finding a fellow Believer who opened up his or her home.

And many did. Lydia, Paul’s first convert in Philippi, opened her home for an extended stay. Gaius opened his home to Paul in Corinth and they held regular worship services there. The Philippian jailer immediately opened his house to Paul and Silas upon his conversion. In Thessalonica Paul and his companions probably stayed with Jason. Prisca and Aquila opened their home as a place for the church to gather. Titius Justus opened his home for Paul to lecture from in Corinth. Nympha, in Laodicea, and Philemon, in Colossae, opened their homes to the church for worship. Simon the tanner opened his home for Peter to stay and then gave the servants from Cornelius overnight lodging. Cornelius offered his home as lodging for Peter and his companions. Paul, immediately after his conversion, enjoyed the hospitality of the Believers in Damascus.

Christian hospitality gave believing travelers a place to stay in an environment of safety, Christian companionship, and respite from the darkness of the surrounding culture. It offered a place where Christ is named and glorified and where all can call upon the heavenly Father with one voice. The church practiced it from its beginning and continues to benefit from it today. It also gives a place to discuss the latest news about churches and Believers in other places. Today, we often do this with those we call missionaries, offering a safe place for Christian fellowship and the building up of godly relationships. Christian hospitality offers many strengthening benefits to the Church. This is why God calls the Church to:

“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love, … practicing hospitality.”

Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (Baltimore and London, 1994)