I do not plan on making arguments here, rather I want to tell a story. My source is thinker Ivan Illich.’

Near the beginning of the 20th century a man from China converted to Christianity and in his joy decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome.). For most of his journey this particular man only had to introduce himself as a pilgrim and he would find a place to stay and food to eat to at any village he came to. By the time he got to Orthodox lands this had changed and instead he was placed in the parish house to be taken care of not by the people of the town but by the Church as an institution. As he came to  Poland people would raise money enough to be put up in a cheap hotel.

        Illich, while pointing this out to be the “degradation of hospitality and its replacement by care giving institutions”, also sympathetically points to the difficult situation the church was in. As the social situation in the Empire (4th century) got progressively worse major migrations were occurring leaving cities like Rome and Constantinople with many migrants and refugees without homes. In the tense and unprecedented situation the Churches received funds to deal with the burgeoning populations.

The dangers of this were recognized even at the time by the likes of John Chrysostom who warned against the creations of these xenodocheia (“Houses for foreigners”) as they would take the vocation of hospitality away from individual Christians and their households. Before this each Christian household was supposed to have “an extra mattress, a candle wick and a crust of bread” in case a stranger, who according to Matthew 25 was to be treated like Christ himself, was to come to the door.

My question,challenge and curiousity asks what does this mean for us? We have organizations upon organizations, even highly institutionalized missionary modalities and denomincational structures, that do the work of hospitality for us as Christians. We have groups we are a part of so we can evangelize. We have these shelters where we can offer hospitality by volunteering once a week (or in the case of short term missions, one a year!). 

For every vocation, calling and commandment we have as Christians there is a corresponding organizational structure where we go to and serve with. I am not suggesting this is all negative, but do these structures expand neccesary callings such as mission, justice, evangelism and hospitality for individual Christians or diminish them?