Last year, my wife and I welcomed ten strangers into our home. One of them was our newborn son. The other nine were homeless or vulnerably housed young people, whom we hosted through an organization called Nightstop, part of the charity Depaul UK.

Nightstop’s mission is “preventing youth homelessness through volunteer hosting.” This happens through a network of staff, volunteer hosts, and higher-profile homelessness charities such as Centrepoint. Young people (aged sixteen to twenty-five) come to them facing a night on the streets or in unsafe conditions and the charity refers some of them to Nightstop. The Nightstop team then pairs the young person with an available volunteer host, initially for one night (this can be extended later), while longer-term accommodation is arranged. The guest receives a safe, private room, an evening meal, a shower, and breakfast in the morning. The host receives Christ, as Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 affirm: “When I was a stranger, you welcomed me.”

Some of the young people we’ve met through Nightstop have been refugees. Others have found themselves homeless as a result of family conflict. Some want to talk: one young man spent hours over dinner sharing the story of his treacherous journey across three continents from Yemen to the United Kingdom. Others would rather go straight to their room with a pizza. It’s not surprising: for a vulnerable young person to enter a stranger’s home takes courage, even if it comes with the accreditation of a reputable charity.

Welcoming a stranger takes some courage too. At least, it does in England, where the saying goes that “your home is your castle” – the image expressing that we’re all slightly afraid of each other.

It was a step of faith to sign up to host, but Nightstop provided extensive training and a home visit before we welcomed our first guest, as well as risk assessing for each placement and giving us relevant context in advance. The impact of the system depends on recruiting and retaining volunteers, so they work hard to make it straightforward. At the time of writing, our son has moved into our second bedroom, so my wife and I aren’t currently hosting – but we’d like to do it again.

The initial decision to host was also made easier by the fact that others in our community had done it first. Three doors down, our friends started hosting with Nightstop about a year before we did. Our vicar and his wife have hosted dozens of young people over several years, some for just one night, some for a few weeks.

The combination of hospitality and community can have remarkable effects. Although our paths cross only briefly with most guests, there are exceptions. A few years ago (before we started hosting), a young man found himself facing homelessness after conflict with his family. He was referred to Nightstop and stayed with a couple who had heard about hosting through our vicar. Then, while waiting for longer-term accommodation, he stayed for a few nights with our friends down the road – also through Nightstop.

Speaking to the families he stayed with, he realized that they shared a Christian faith in common. And he started to wonder what it was about Christianity that could make people do such “radical” and generous things. So he started coming to church, and found himself more welcomed and at home than he had ever expected: he came to trust in Christ. Now he lives in a community house owned by the church, is studying business management, and regularly volunteers at church events and English classes, some of which I teach. My wife and I went to see Hamilton with him a couple of weeks ago. It was our first evening out without our son, and our babysitters were our mutual friends down the road. Radical, or ordinary? It’s a bit less clear which is which now.

When modern Westerners think of hospitality, we usually imagine spending time in our homes with people we already know and like. That is a good thing, but it’s not how hospitality is understood everywhere, or the main way the writers of the New Testament thought of the word. When the apostle Paul instructed the church in Rome to “practice hospitality,” he used the word philoxenia, loving (philo-) the stranger (xenos). So “hospitality” in the New Testament means welcoming the people we do not already know and like.

This kind of hospitality – loving the stranger – was one of the hallmarks of the early church. Christians in the Roman Empire became known for their adoption of abandoned infants and their indiscriminate care for the needy. At the root of their radical hospitality was the welcome they had received from God in Jesus Christ, who called both Jew and Gentile “no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household” (Eph. 2:19). The good news of God’s hospitality shaped the ethic of early church communities: to love the stranger as we, formerly strangers to God and one another, have first been loved.

My wife and I are novices at this kind of hospitality. We’re also far from unique. Nightstop operates in over thirty locations in the United Kingdom, and in 2022 the network worked with 306 hosting households to provide 621 young people with a safe place to stay: a total of 7,522 nights’ accommodation. These numbers are encouraging, but they are dwarfed by the estimated 135,800 sixteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds
homeless or at risk of homelessness in the United Kingdom. It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of need like this; and individually, yes, we are limited. But when community and hospitality combine, amazing things can happen. In the face of divided times and immense human need, I find myself asking: What if the church once again became known for our radical hospitality – our love for the stranger?