Customer Reviews

Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition

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It is hard to know where to start. The book is elegantly written, it is full of interesting history of the early church. But more importantly, it speaks to a deadness in the church today. Often members of the church have learned to live distant from problems of their "neighbors" be they down the block or down the street in the challenged neighborhoods in our cities.

In the early church, members were the challenged people, they reached out to each other, but now much of the church is isolated and distant from the needy stranger. Read Luke 14 - decide if you have responded to principles in those scenarios described by Jesus. If you come up short, then this book will help with a compassionate analysis of our dilemma in reaching out to "the least of these."

In addition to setting the stage for individuals to learn to reach out to needy strangers, the book creates a context for the faith-based social service discussion. While members of congregations may not exhibit the skills of professional social workers, they have an important role to play in being present and responding to neigbors in their communities who need the touch of grace in their lives.

The book is a good read, but it requires more than one pass. If you invest in the book deeply, you will be called to action.

In her book, Pohl makes an excellent case for the lost ministry of hospitality. She explores the tradition of welcoming stangers into our homes while discussing the ways in which Christians can offer practical hospitality to the poor, homeless, and refugees in our communities. I am impressed that Pohl is careful not to confuse the challenging ministry hospitality with entertaining.

Making Room is a narrative of the Christian story of hospitality, and is rich in historical and Biblical detail. Pohl convinces us that in recovering this lost Christian practice we will not only encounter the holiness and mystery of God, but entertain angels as well.

Making Room is a positive and a healing book. All is not right with Christendom, but throughout church history there have been a few persons who have recovered and continued the practice of entertaining strangers, and have promoted or formed redemptive welcoming communities. Making Room is thus a book that brings to life the holy underside of history. Included in the narrative are the stories of some contemporary communities of hospitality still functioning on the edges of church life today, bringing hospitality to workers, the condemned, the handicapped, or those seeking spiritual direction.

In spite of the persistent theme of encountering angels, however, Pohl does not gloss over the human toll involved in providing hospitality, and the enormous burden it often places on a few. She discusses openly the painful question of boundaries and limits in the practice of hospitality, and the need to maintain identity as well as openness to others.

Pohl's writing is remarkable in its ecumenical application. All traditions and communities are incorporated at some point in the history and in the contemporary application. This text will be invaluable for seminary students, pastors and priests, lay church groups, and anyone interested in social issues, spirituality or church history. Making Room will provide answers to those perplexed by the lack of depth in contemporary church life today, and those who are thinking through issues of boundaries and openness with regard to refugees and aliens in many contexts.

In this day of declining membership in mainline Christian churches and the exponetially rising number of refugees and migrants worldwide, Christine Pohl makes a convincing case for the primacy of hospitality as a spiritual discipline for 21st century Christians. Fear and institutional distance has radically altered the practice of hospitality, making what was once common behavior, a radical devotion among only the bravest of souls. Simple hospitality will be the hallmark of sanctity in the modern world. Every minister should have this work in their pastoral library. It is a book to ponder and pray over.

Few ideas would seem to be as obvious as the idea that churches need to be welcoming communities. This book does more than remind us of the obvious, it opens the whole idea of hospitality, its history, spirituality and practice to personal study and communal implementation. Pohl firmly grounds "Making Room" in Scripture and in the experience of various Christian communities. The depth of her scholarship and research will reward church ministers and those preparing for ministry. Her clear writing style makes her work accessible to any reader.

I read this book in preparation to interviewing Dr. Pohl for a magazine. It's terrific -- a thoughtful examination of practices that used to be considered an essential component of the Christian faith but which have, over the years, been institutionalized and removed from our everyday lives. How do we recapture the Biblical imperative toward hospitality in the reality of a modern world? This book doesn't give pat answers, but it does give you a framework for asking the right questions, and some suggestions that might point you in the right direction.

In her book, "Making Room", author Christine Pohl considers the practice of true Christian hospitality from historical, theological and cultural perspectives with an eye to application in a modern context. With numerous quotations from figures throughout the history of the Christian faith (including Chrystostam, Luther, Calvin and Wesley), Pohl builds a compelling case for recovering what may be a mostly lost practice for the modern church. Pohl doesn't just make a statement regarding the recovery of hospitality but she also points out the difficulties, tensions and pitfalls that may await a practitioner. Her explanations of how hospitality has changed over time and how it must be practiced in both individual/family and congregational/community settings are simultaneously challenging and encouraging.

I found this book a to be real eye-opening work that has forced me to reconsider many of the ways I interact with those I come in contact with. As a college professor I have begun to look at my students as "aliens and strangers" within the culture of higher education and to think about what hospitality might look like in that context. This is the power the book has for the reader in my mind. It points out what true hospitality is and the power it has in a disconnected and disillusioned world and then challenges the faithful reader to examine how to live out the potential it has. I strongly recommend this book for those seeking to live an intentional or missional faith.

Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition is an excellent book on the subject of Christian hospitality.

The one caution that I might add would be those who are looking for a program for hospitality for a church or other religious organization. This book does not tell you about greeters and donuts after Mass. It is a work that makes a good attempt to rediscover the theology and actual practice of hospitality in Christianity. It is an invaluable resource in this respect. Christine Pohl also examines how this has changed throughout the years and how it has disappeared for the most part in modernity and post-modernity.

One might think this is just an obituary for Christian hospitality, but after talking about its demise, she finds hope. As part of the research for this book, she went to various places that have attempted to engage the hospitality tradition of Christianity in a serious way. By look at contemporary communities of hospital (such as L'Arbi, L'Arche, Catholic Worker Houses), she show that hospitality is still possible. By the use of her research, she helps the reader to begin to see how the Christian hospitality tradition might be recaptured in different facets of life; the church, the home, within the family, etc. While I felt convicted in my own heart, rather than feeling bad, this book had invigorated me to make authentic and radical Christian hospitality part of my own ministry once I am a priest.

This is a good book for Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. Pohl delves into the Patristic tradition, especially Saint John Chrysostom. She uses John Calvin and Martin Luther of the period of reformation. She quotes John Wesley. Finally, she goes to more modern Christians such as Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and Henri Nouwen. For those of other religions and those with a secular mindset, this book is probably not the book for you on hospitality. It is hospitality for a Christian perspective.

The academic research in Making Room is impressive. The theological connections and implications that Ms. Pohl lays out for the modern church as our lost heritage are well worth the reading, and should cause great concern and reflection within every congregation.

Yet, despite these excellencies, I was tremendously frustrated. Every review clearly accents the author's exploration of multiple modern hospitality communities, as well as her discussion of the costs of radical, authentic hospitality. Yet very little of book itself is devoted to the practical questions of HOW to realistically embody this radical, authentic hospitality NOW on the personal level so deeply stressed as essential.

The modern aspects and realities of hospitality could have been interwoven with the relevant historical examples and edicts or given their own equally developed and similarly organized half of the book. Either model would have been truer to expectations created by the reviews and would have done vastly more justice to both the theology and the modern practice than either received as it stands.

I picked this book up because it was suggested "in addition" to another book on hospitality that I read recently and thought was life-changing. This book is very good, it includes interesting and thoughtful ideas and it is pretty well written. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading some academic paper prepared in graduate school. While I liked the book fine and it definitely worth reading, I think if fails to measure up to some other books on the market right now. I would certainly suggest it for anyone doing academic work, preparing for a class or inventing some church program.