Church on the Way

The practice of Christian hospitality reaches back to the early centuries of Christian life as well as deep into Jewish history, life, and Scripture. This practice is alive today in Christian churches and in parachurch organizations within the United States, but new contextual realities--in particular twenty-first-century global migration patterns--have altered the conditions under which hospitality is practiced. The reality of migration and its effect on human lives disrupts static conceptions of hospitality and challenges ecclesial communities toward contextual appropriation of hospitality practice. This volume explores Christian hospitality practice in light of twenty-first-century U.S. Latino/a migration, and it develops the notion of a journeying hospitality of accompaniment with and among persons migrating, which fosters deeper relationships and formation. The shifting identities of persons "on the move" challenge assumptions about what it means to welcome another in hospitality and, ultimately, what it means to be church from within these new relationships. In turn, the new conceptions and expressions of hospitality offered in this book press how the nature and mission of the church will be oriented toward new ecclesial patterns and alternative forms of residing on earth.