Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Thursday, November 01, 2007

As I mentioned earlier I've been reading a great book on ancient Christian hospitality and the reviving of its practice today titled, Making Room. As I was reading while riding the exercise bike today (in prep for some weight work) I got to thinking about our new freshmen students here. One of the points that the author of the book makes over and over is that hospitality was traditionally directed as those who could be thought of as "aliens and strangers"; those marginalized or forgotten about by a community or society. The practice of such hospitality is supposed to minister to their needs of course but to do it in a way that creates a more equal standing between the giver and the recipient as well as respecting and honoring that person.

Yesterday the Dean of the Faculty held a forum that, from what I've been able to gather (I was unable to attend due to a committee meeting ironically focused on creating a First Year Experience course here), focused on why our students are doing so badly. He related that the one class he's teaching will have only a 40% success rate. Several other professors at the forum chimed in that this is their common experience as well.

As I was reading the book it occurred to me to wonder if our students are really aliens and strangers of a sort. We assume that since they've been to twelve or thirteen years of public schooling that they should be members of our community but the truth is that high school is so completely different that college in terms of work and expectations and culture and all the rest that new freshmen oftentimes don't have a clue about what lies ahead of them.

So what I'm wondering about is what does hospitality to this group look like from a Christian perspective? What would Chrysostom have said about meeting the needs of this group of aliens and strangers? What would Wesley have advised? How does a college create a culture of hospitality that welcomes strangers into its community while maintaining the standards and norms of the community?

I see a lot of issues in this topic and this consideration of what hospitality means. I see questions about how prepared the students are to enter the community. I see considerations related to a sort of intellectual poverty rather than a financial meagerness. I see it being very hard to change the culture of the school as a whole but I'm wondering what sorts of things I can do.

It's an interesting and powerful thing to consider.

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