A Henry Center Partner Feature

released 5/15/2026

In this 2010 lecture, Christine Pohl (1950–2023) argues that an understanding and practice of hospitality should be recovered because of its centrality to Christian life and discipleship. She explores the richness of the tradition in Scripture and in ancient practice, with a particular emphasis on the mystery of hospitality at the heart of the Gospel. Pohl then shows how the transformational quality of Christian hospitality gradually became lost, and how even more modern efforts to recover it have largely been based on thin understanding and practice. Because of its potency, hospitality has its perils with which we need to reckon — and Pohl does reckon with them, but she also says that when practiced faithfully and creatively as a way of life, not a task, it often transforms and enriches both the welcomer and the welcomed. 

This lecture is provided courtesy of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding. The full title of the lecture is “Practicing Hospitality in Troubled Times: Promise and Peril for the Church.”

56 minutes

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