It is a beautiful thing to host someone, to share your home, to invite someone in to your own sacred space. Likewise, it is a great joy to visit someone’s home, to know they trust and value you enough to give you their time, their food, and their hospitality. There are several stories in scripture about hosts and guests, perhaps none more compelling than the story of Jesus and the believers on the road to Emmaus. When they reach the disciples’ home, our Lord changes from guest to host in that transformative moment when he takes the bread, blesses it, and shares his meal with his hosts/guests.

What Does Stewardship Mean to You? by Kathy Lemmerbrock, Synod Administrator and Stewardship Liasion

In the weeks ahead, all over the Northwestern Ohio Synod, congregation councils will be hosting special guests, 45 lay persons and pastors who have been called to serve as ambassadors within the synod. These visitors are coming to thank their hosts for faithfully sharing in the financial support of our common mission, making Christ known in our local communities, and throughout the world. The visitors are coming to tell stories about the fruitful ministry being done through our mission support dollars. And yes, these visitors will also be asking congregations to support that mission as well as they are able in 2004.

I trust our visitors will be good guests, graciously receiving the hospitality shown to them. I know they will be grateful for the opportunity to help their hosts understand the tremendous work that has been done in the name of Jesus through the congregation’s giving. I also trust that the host councils will receive their visitors graciously, understanding that their guests come to demonstrate how each congregation has done the work of God by sending their mission support offerings in regularly.

Most importantly, the visitors and the host councils would do well to recognize that they are all guests in the Lord’s house, beggars at his table. We are indeed to be polite guests and conscientious hosts in our daily lives, but we need to remember, ultimately, that we are all guests in our Lord’s house.