Hospitality
Last night, I finished reading James Jordan‘s The Sociology of the Church, a book I deeply enjoyed. I found Jim’s treatments of the nature of conversion and of Pentecostalism and the gift of tongues very helpful and very balanced. The book is quite challenging, and there’s a lot in it that I’ll need to think through some more, but I highly recommend it.
I may post some more quotations from this book later on. But here, from an essay entitled “God’s Hospitality and Holistic Evangelism,” is a quotation about the eldership:
Rule in the church is to be by means of footwashing (hospitality) as much as by giving orders (Mark 10:42-45; John 13). Christ rules by being present with us, by being our Host and having us over to His house for dinner, even by being our Servant! The elders, who are to imitate Christ, must do the same (pp. 235-236).