Children as sojourners: The practice of hospitality towards children
Jesus thought children were worth his time, whether they were "street urchins" or from families
Children are on a journey of discovery and discipleship just as adults are. We should all come like little children to the Lord, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
monastic hospitality towards children
What were church practices towards orphans in the early church, in medieval church...what changed over time? Did things change over time? Are there stories of receiving the "stranger/orphan/child"?
Yahweh proclaimed his protection over the orphan, widow and stranger in the land; providing hospitality for them through His people Israel by leaving grapes on the vine, sheaves in the field, etc. for them to gather.
Proselytes as orphans in a way - leaving their family for the faith... What did care look like for these "orphaned children"?
Analogies of planting seeds... hospitality is planting kingdom seeds... hospitality to children plants seeds, who then bear fruit... like the mustard seed REMEMBER letting Mehiyo and his brother spend a few nights with us. Or when, or when...
mercy and hospitality?
What is God's view of children?
We do not just have examples of God's protection/defense of the orphan/fatherless... we also have the example of adoption. We were adopted into God's family through Jesus: coheirs with Christ and by grace now seated at God's table.
DIVINE HOSPITALITY for all who will believe and follow!
Hospitality & Welcoming the Vulnerable Child
Hospitality definition: Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with some amount of goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.
Jews understood it to reflect God’s own nature (Deut. 10:18). Hospitality usually included lodging and food with the goal of transforming strangers (potential enemies) into allies or friends, and thus differed from entertaining friends or relatives. (Duvall, Bakers Illustrated Bible Background Commentary, 181)
A warm welcome (obligation?) to the sojourner, provision of shelter, food, care for a time.
Abrahamic hospitality: welcome of the stranger as a welcome of God Himself
"And whoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, truly I say to you, he shall certainly not lose his reward." Matthew 10:24
"And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Matthew 25:40
Abrahamic hospitality: welcome of the stranger as the welcome of the Lord, not just a welcome but an enjoyment of the presence of the guest. Relationship is involved.
Welcoming a child is welcoming Christ. The Abrahamic hospitality applies to children. Are we always able to see this? Or do we tend to be blinded? How do we usually
then in the story of Lot; welcome of the stranger and "safeguarding" of the stranger (see the Reaves source)
Hospitality to children is more than welcome and shelter, but genuine safeguarding in the midst of an evil and broken world.
Jesus examples of hospitality towards children.
This sets the example for his disciples.
Jesus is constantly teaching and modeling the kingdom.
Divine Hospitality: Adoption to Sonship/children of God not only makes us co-heirs with Christ, but co-hosts at the table "everything I have is yours" (Luke 15, father says to older son)
God's concern for the widow and the orphan/fatherless; God mandates care for the widow, for the orphan and for the stranger. It is a distinguishing factor for his people.
Define a child's status in the ancient world, in the Roman times/early church days.
What were the expectations of children?
What were the dangers experienced by children?
- Abandonment of babies; to be sold as slaves or prostitutes
- Abuse, verbal and physical (Roman schooling examples)
(What was the vulnerability of a child, both for the child within a family structure and a child who was an orphan or a slave?)
What legal protections, if any, did children have?
What was the place of adoption or orphan care in society at large and then in
TODAY? What are expectations of a child today in Lebanon? What are the dangers? What are the legal protections? Physical shelter and provision, protection from abuse and poverty, lack of education and no ability to access it, forced into child labor... oh a hundred things.
Look at examples of how the apostolic church, the early church and the churches of Byzantium (monastic care, and mandates of the Church Fathers) provide hospitality to children/fatherless.
How do Eastern traditions of the Church today address the issue of vulnerable children? What is the practice of hospitality toward the fatherless today?
How does this hospitality to the fatherless demonstrate/continue in the example of Abrahamic hospitality? Divine hospitality?
With the changes in society's "best practice" of orphan care today, what can we learn from the early practices of the Church? Is there anything that must be reinstated? Anything that absolutely must go? Why should Kids Alive Lebanon take these things into consideration and how can KAL make necessary changes to be more aligned with Biblical hospitality when working with vulnerable children?
Living as Heirs
4 Now I am saying, so long as the heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, even though he is the owner of everything. 2 Instead, he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. 3 So also, when we were underage, we were subservient to the basic principles of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time came, God sent out His Son, born of a woman and born under law— 5 to free those under law, so we might receive adoption as sons. 6 Now because you are sons, God sent the Ruach of His Son into our hearts, who cries out, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a son—and if a son, also an heir through God. (Galatians 4:1-7 TLV)
"Polycarp clearly identifies that the giving of alms and helping the poor was a powerful witness to the Gentiles, the assumption being that it was something so different than what the Gentiles were used to seeing." (Das, Compassion, 95)
Hospitality and mission are intricately related! The transformation of strangers into friends... When kingdom hospitality is extended to the vulnerable child, it says, "Come, all who are weary and heavy laden - Yes, even you, little one! - and I will give you rest for your souls."
What if ... we re-wrote scripture verses about God's hospitality with the child in mind? Not to make them simpler, but to make it clear that they are included? (Such as above?)
I believe we would then discover that yes, indeed, all of God's promises are also for children, and we might uncover precious gems of understanding in how we approach hospitality more holistically.
Feeding the 4,000 and the 5,000 (children were there)
Let the children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these the assertion that these were street children
Prodigal Sons? A father's hospitality towards his children? (Does this story work? The children are older... but it is a story of the loving, patient, pursuing love of the Father and welcome to all of His goodness...)
However, "The poor you will always have among you."
Roman Systems for legal guardianship of orphans
tutela legitima: orphans and their property go to the oldest living male in the family. If the grandfather was alive (the pater familias) he would have been considered already to be the head of family. If no grandfather, then to an uncle, if no uncle, a male cousin, if no male cousin on the father's side then "the ancient Roman clan unit, the gens would select one of its male members to become the guardian." (Miller, 32) from Orphans in Byzantium THIS ONLY APPLIED TO ROMAN CITIZENS.
tutela testamentaria: A specific person was named by the father in a will to care for the children upon his death. This was not restricted to Roman citizens, anyone could be named. Interestingly, this shows the move towards individual rights over family/gens mentality (as shown in tutela legitima).
WHY, then, is orphan care as practiced by the early Church, a big deal?!
How is Roman practice of care for orphans similar to the practices of Islam?
Although there is no formal adoption procedure in Jewish law, in modern times people who seek to adopt must clearly satisfy the legal requirements of the nation and state in which they and the child reside.
tutela Atiliana: Developed latest in the game, in the case that an orphan had no living males in the family and no will was written before the father's death, the state, essentially, decided on a respectable male to raise the child.
"Guardian problems became so numerous under the emperors that Marcus Aurelius (160-180) created a special magistrate, the praetor tutelarius, to examine only cases involving guardianship." (Miller, 34) "Roman law clearly revealed that guardians supervised orphans' property, but did they care for the children?" Children would stay with their mothers if she was living, but if she wasn't they stayed with the guardian or they were appointed to the care of another. Roman law shows a concern for the ward, because sometimes the child would be murdered in order to gain the property. Nothing is mentioned about emotional concern for a child. It's all legal.
A male orphan no longer needed a guardian when he was 14. Girls would stay under their guardians care forever. However, 14 year olds aren't awesome at taking care of themselves legally, so the court would appoint someone to assist as needed. (Miller, 35)
"Christianity, however, did have a more direct impact on the empire's system of orphan care in cases where it was not possible to find a guardian." (Miller, 108)
Orphanages in Byzantium
Became an expectation of the empire for bishops to take care of orphans.
Therefore, orphanages became institutionalized.
5 main sources: Apostolic Constitutions, Didascalia Apostolorum (from the 3rd century),
St. Basil the Great, late 4th century, Caesarea Cappadocia: Orphanage within the monastic community, run and operated by monks. (Miller, 115)
"Basil designed his school not exclusively for orphans." Monks were first to accept homeless children, then could accept children that parents brought to them. This was preparation for a life in a monastery, but Basil stressed that when children reached 17/18 they were to freely choose the secular world or the monastic life. It was recommended that children be accepted between 5 and 7 years old. Older and younger boys were to be kept apart, with separate daily routines. The girls were to be completely separate. All the children's housing was to be separate from the monk's housing. (Miller, 115)
xenodochion, or hostelry for the sick, poor and vagrant... some became brephotrophia asylums for children.
“Now, therefore, I Datheus, for the welfare of my soul and the souls of my associates, do hereby establish in the house that I have bought next to the church, a hospital for foundling children. My wish is that as soon as a child is exposed at the door of a church, it will be received in the hospital and confided to the care of those who will be paid to look after them.”
(https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels/two/1.html, accessed March 1, 2022)
Where is the SPIRIT in the enacting of hospitality toward the orphan/vulnerable child?
The Spirit will always point to Jesus.
But the Helper, the Ruach ha-Kodesh whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything and remind you of everything that I said to you. John 14:26
If hospitality is the welcome of the stranger, with the "goal of transforming strangers (potential enemies) into allies or friends" (Duvall), then Jesus sets the perfect example! WE were all lost and without hope in the world (Ephesians 2) "By nature we were children of wrath, just like the others." BUT, we were saved by grace through faith.
"So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household. You have been built on the foundation made up of the emissaries and prophets, with Messiah Yeshua Himself being the cornerstone. In Him the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple for the Lord. In Him, you also are being built together into God’s dwelling place in the Ruach. Ephesians 2:19-22
18 I will not abandon you as orphans;[d] I will come to you. 19 In a little while, the world will no longer behold Me, but you will behold Me. Because I live, you also will live! John 14:18-19
Therefore, we vulnerable children who were wretched and lost in the world, were welcomed by the love-inspired hospitality of God through Jesus who welcomed us to his table where the bread and the wine was shared. We, who were his enemies, received his welcome, his shelter, his table and his divine, abiding presence through the Holy Spirit and became "members of God's household". As sons and daughters, we now have the divine call and privilege to welcome other helpless, wretched and lost children to the table of the risen Messiah.
We welcome orphans and vulnerable children as obedience, yes, but obedience compelled and inspired by love which we found ourselves at hospitality of the cross and the table of grace.
Do people who work for Christian outreaches, NGOs, orphanages, and other child-welcoming ministries understand the depth of the calling to which they are putting their hands? I DONT THINK I DID UNTIL NOW! Because "compassion ministry" is such a small understanding of the work. Jesus, thank you the wisdom and knowledge of your spirit! If DEA's staff could refresh, heal and refocus, imbibing again the Holy Spirit inspired HUGE Kingdom purpose that is behind
DEA could be refined in this way: a spiritual re-awakening. NOT JUST doing Bible studies with the kids and having them go to church! The STAFF, YOUR PEOPLE JESUS! Need a spiritual awakening! A holy, guided LIVED-OUT understanding of the calling to care for vulnerable children! God help us, that we would just fill places with warm bodies - JESUS, help us by your SPIRIT, to fill our hearts anew with a holy passion for your name and an KINGDOM SIZED perspective of what it means to offer hospitality to the vulnerable child and orphan. God, fill us up! Abide in us so we can welcome "children of wrath" to the table, our old definition and self, welcomed to the table.
"You are the helper of the orphan." Psalm 10:14
It will always be the Lord's table. Sons and daughters acknowledge and honor the leadership/ownership of the Father. As sons and daughters, the role is to welcome, care for and serve the guests. Sons and daughters are not guests, nor are they servants. Sons and daughters care about the honor of their father's name (because it is also their name and their inheritance!). Though the spiritual promptings will always be God's work, the children must do as Jesus did - welcome the stranger (sincerely), provide shelter (physical), serve the meal (table fellowship, Word of God!), and be physically present to wash feet, teach, guide, listen...
WHY am I not including SCHOOL EDUCATION of children in my paper?! It's such a big part of raising children and "orphanage" life!
Because I am focused on welcome, provision of shelter, and the presence of the Host.
When teaching happens in these contexts what does it look like? Isn't it more often modeling behavior? What does it look like in practice to welcome? To offer shelter (refuge, perhaps)? To provide a meal? To be physically present?
For DEA this means - how are we modeling Christ-like table fellowship? How are we welcoming "outsiders": the stranger or the enemy? How are we providing (generously?) for the needs of those being welcomed? When Jesus invited his disciples to "come, follow me" he invited them into his presence and modeled "come and see how its done in my kingdom".
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Unlike the current view of hospitality in our culture, within this kind of radical hospitality, the host is not the only one who has something to offer, but rather both guest and host give to each other so that the lines between host and guest become blurred. Just as in hope, there is an interdependence that strengths all. (Dale, 569)
How often do we consider the child as having "something to offer" in our current programs/ministries? The child is vulnerable, yes, but not only a beneficiary! Should our child "guests" be given more value by being allowed to be a participant and not just a beneficiary? This is an OLD concept - so what does that look like today? What expectations does DEA have on this topic?
EDUCATION seems SO KEY in ANY work with children. It's nearly impossible to separate the "hospitality" to children within a long-term child-care setting. It would be irresponsible to NOT educate a child when you receive the orphan or vulnerable child.
There were provisions given to Moses by God for the Israelites to allow foreigners who wanted to the ability to celebrate the yearly Passover feast! This was established at the one year anniversary of the first Passover, at the exodus from Egypt. Numbers 9?
The “organization” world of the 21st century is super concerned with reporting: documenting successes, expanding programs, and proving it through constant pictures and video. What have we LOST in the world of orphan-care because of donor-driven reporting? As rather frightening critique – where have we been more concerned about programs/donors/reporting than we have about being obedient to God’s command to care for the orphan? And does care for the orphan mean lots of programming and camps? There definitely weren’t kid camps in Jesus’ day. What does the creation of a healthy – holy – home life and why is that more important than activities and photos? Are we being faithful to the essentials?
Some things to consider in the practical application are: What worked WELL then (how can we determine this? How do we define this? What are the metrics used? Were there metrics? What does that mean today? Kids Alive does not have these metrics and are working on defining them! The problem is, anything you put on paper creates legalism and Jesus said true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth! Is there a danger in institutionalizing orphan care?! Should it be done away with completely and re-delegated to parishioners and local church? In some way, it would be ideal! But how could it possibly revert after being institutionalized for so long? How could the local church ‘reclaim’ orphan care but not do so in an ‘institutionalized’ way, since it’s the model they’ve seen and witnessed for so long?)
Dar El Awlad: Practical Application
Dar El Awlad is a residential program established in 1948 as a response to seeing vulnerable stranger-children (refugee) on the streets of Beirut.
RESPONSE TO REFUGEE CHILD
RESPONSE TO COMPLEX VULNERABILITY: child, foreigner, refugee, stateless, poverty... When we talk about the refugee child, there are so many categories of vulnerability. A national vulnerable child has his own challenges; child of prostitution, divorce, undesired child when there is a new wife, deceased mother, poverty creating a situation where the child is neglected, abused, etc. A child can be subject to myriad reasons that make him vulnerable.
CHRISTIANS ARE COMPELLED BY: The example of Jesus and for the love of Jesus - "A new command I give you, love one another just as I have loved you, you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." Jesus himself sets the example of welcome to the child, no matter their age, status, situation (babies were blessed by him, "street urchins" were welcomed by him, a little child in a home where he stayed was used as an example of how to receive Christ himself!
GOD EXTENDS HOSPITALITY TOWARD THE VULNERABLE CHILD AND ORPHAN.
How was it done in the early church?
What was done well?
What needed refinement?
How is that done at DEA?
What is done well?
What needs to be discarded?
CONTRASTS: EARLY MODELS of hospitality towards the orphan...
1 - Because of marked Christian care and compassion for the poor and vulnerable - the widow, the orphan, the foreigner - it became an expectation that the Church would continue in these good works, so much so that the Roman Empire began sending orphans and vulnerable children to the care of the monasteries.
- Bishops were responsible for the creation of philanthropic establishments, including orphanages or asylums for babies (as per D whats his name) and thus care for these children was directly under Church jurisdiction and spiritual authority.
- Its like... monasteries were established and doing their thing; and children were welcomed into this existing structure. When children were welcomed into monastic life, they joined a spiritually centered community; prayers, labor, meals and education were the rhythm.
- Monasteries were marked for their reception of anyone and everyone, without exclusion, and the welcome of children would have been no exception. Because of this, children accepted even from pagan backgrounds put their faith in Jesus because of this welcome.
CONTRASTS: DEA's MODEL of hospitality towards the orphan...
1 - The government does not have its own orphan care system - similar to Roman Byzantine - and relies on NGOs to provide care to vulnerable children. There is social welfare which provides a small amount but only for Lebanese children. Occasionally, the courts might contact DEA to house a child for a short period of time while a court case is pending.
2 - DEA was founded by an American businessman (not by a church nor a bishop), then later came under the umbrella of Kids Alive International, a US based Evangelical Non Denominational, Non Governmental Organization.
3 - A missionary kid from Dar El Awlad in the mid 1950s said of her dad and director of DEA, Leonard Swenson, that, "In taking the boys in, Dad had a hard time saying NO to much. He went with the neediest. He trusted too much and was lied to. Once the boy was in, even though the lie exposed (not an orphan), he kept the boy there. Back in those days, home visits were very difficult. Poverty and age was enough."
4 - The residential care aspect of the Kids Alive Lebanon ministry (DEA Residential) typically accepts children around the age of 5. Children are usually referred word of mouth, a home visit is (should be) conducted to ascertain the true condition of a child's situation, and then the child is accepted into the program. The residential care facility is set up as a group home on a campus designated for DEA. In the same way a monastery would be arranged with community life and living in mind, so too is DEA set up. Initially, there were dorm rooms with bathrooms, a community kitchen and dining room where all would gather. Over the years this went out of vogue and residential apartments were built with 4 kids to a big bedroom and a house mother to care for up to 8 children in her unit.
5 - What are the projections for the future? "Missionary compounds" definitely went out of vogue, and that is a similar set-up to how DEA is run. The majority are local staff, but over the years foreign missionaries have come and gone. When DEA was much smaller and only a residential home, the director oversaw the rhythms of life (like a Father would at a monastery), both spiritual, educational (they were sent off site to local schools, unlike a monastic school), and community work (onsite labor - in the kitchen, site clean up, building walls, etc). TODAY, this has ebbed - things are done FOR children and life isn't as simple as it once was. MONASTIC HOSPITALITY claimed that guests had something to give, not just something to receive. In the case of children in Shenoute's monastery, children were involved in child-appropriate labors of the community, the spiritual rhythms of the community, and had expectations and standards of discipline and helpfulness.
-WHAT COULD DEA STAND TO GAIN HERE?
*DEA used to have children participate in the labors of site care and campus life, such as picking up garbage together, trimming trees and hauling brush, sweeping, etc. In the early days of DEA in Mansourieh, older children helped build the stone walls which still frame the basketball court and upper terrace. When God created the perfect world and handed it over to Adam to be its caretaker, Adam had to take care of it! This was done in monastic life and I wish it would return to DEA.
Our Purpose
At Kids Alive International we believe every child, even those with the most challenging needs, is a priority to God, and far too many are overlooked, unheard, exploited, and threatened.
Our mission is the call of Isaiah 1:17, to serve these children by constantly learning to do good, earnestly seeking justice, standing up to what oppresses them, and advocating for their rights.
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God created the structure for family: Loving husband and respectful wife, to be fruitful and multiply, raising children to know and love God and become re-creators of this family structure one day. Sin entered and family broke with it. Stories of brokenness abound in scripture, in our histories and in our present world.
Jesus said, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice." (Luke 8:21)
Jesus said, "
Though the world is still broken, the faithful Church has been obedient to care for the vulnerable and fatherless child, offering these little one's hospitality that reflects the heart of God.
To me, the central component of divine hospitality that sets it apart from any type of cultural hospitality is the welcome of ANYONE (expressed in monastic hospitality) and the Spirit of God.
Dale declares this hospitality "audacious".
We expect any residential children's home to offer shelter and provide food. What sets Christian care for vulnerable children and orphans apart from the rest should be the LOVING WELCOME that is consistent over time, only possible because of the Spirit of God at work in the host/host-community.
"Do everything in love" from provision, to discipline. Welcome the child by valuing him - you will welcome Christ himself. Valuing a child says, "You matter, to God and to me. Your heart and thoughts matter, and it matters that I shelter and provide and be present for you because it is an expression of God's love for you."
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 "These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts. And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."
Hospitality invites the stranger-child into a home there there should be diligent teaching of spiritual truths.
Orphanages established by bishops and run by monks had a rhythm of life which revolved around prayers
These things are expected of parents in a Christ-centered family, and
Value: Thoughts... One of St. Basil's methods was surprising a boy with the question, "What are you thinking right now?" And in this way, he would hope to catch their genuine thought and so determine if their mind is in a good place or not - and then receive either the praise or guidance/correction needed. The the training of a child's thoughts to be placed before the Lord is of great importance.
In a world where child abandonment was common, Jesus "put his arms around the children and blessed them by placing his hands on them." (Mark 10:16)
In a Roman household, when a father saw the new baby, he would either bless it to receive it or withhold his blessing, thereby condemning it to exposure where the baby would either die, be picked up and adopted, or be used as a prostitute.