On couchsurfing, hospitality, and the church

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Over the past weekend I had the pleasure to experience a global phenomenon known as CouchSurfing. CouchSurfing is a project that was introduced to me by a friend and the day after he told me about it I signed up. And waited. I know from my website profile that I signed up on December 8. Today is April 1. My first surfer left yesterday on her way home to LA.  I will let them state their own mission: 

 CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding. As a community we strive to do our individual and collective parts to make the world a better place, and we believe that the surfing of couches is a means to accomplish this goal.               

The mission of CouchSurfing is noble. It moves with our historical context that we have ease of travel, money to do it, and the networking capabilities to enable movement around the world. Education happens as people travel and see how others live. And although I believe the concept of tolerance is to be challenged for theological reasons (see Paul Griffiths Proselytizing for Tolerance in First Things), I think that to be interested in and have a concern for ideas, opinions, and practices that are foreign to my own is generally a good thing. So does CouchSurfing really facilitate cultural understanding? In one word (and one experience to base that on): yes. 

  On Sunday I was able to share what it means to be Mennonite, which I did with a sweeping historical glance. She in turn told me what it was like to hold dual citizenship (Israeli/US), to be raised within as a secular Jew in LA, and gave me a perspective on Israel-Palestine relations that I don’t usually hear within the circles I run in. She also said something that struck me as profound: “CouchSurfing is one thing you can do to show that you believe the world is basically good.”

 

As a Christian, I believe that our attitude toward hospitality is greatly influenced by the way we view the world. If we believe the world is bad, we shut our doors, protect our wallets. If we believe the world is good we open our doors. Simplistic I know. What do we believe about what God has done in the person, life, and work of Jesus Christ? If God has set into motion the redemption of the world in Jesus, we live into the eschatological hope that God will continue to work in the world.  

 

Writing on hospitality, Maria Russell Kenney writes in School(s) for Conversion:

If our identity originates in God’s identity, then we are also designed to seek connection with others, even those who are “strange” to us… Because we serve a God who welcomes true “strangers” in humanity, we are called - and are able - to welcome our own strangers as well.

Kenney continues that hospitality is one of the disciplines of the Christian life, right along with other disciplines such as fasting, prayer, and study. 

How can the church learn from CouchSurfing? How can we model a discipline of hospitality, of welcoming the stranger?   

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Tags: church, couchsurfing, hospitality