Q&A with Joshua Jipp
Joshua Jipp
Joshua discusses overcoming differences, the importance of being a good guest, and Christ’s ultimate act of hospitality
Dr. Joshua W. Jipp is an associate professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He has published essays in Themelios, Journal of Theological Interpretation, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Bulletin of Biblical Research, New Testament Studies, Horizons in Biblical Theology, Journal of Biblical Literature, and Journal of Theological Studies. He has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a Master of Theology from Duke Divinity School, and a doctorate from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. He loves reading novels, playing all kinds of sports with his kids (especially baseball), being outdoors, listening to music, and having great conversations with his wife.
The title of your book Saved by Faith and Hospitality is intriguing. Can you elaborate?
Yes, I certainly intended that the title would be more intriguing than something like Hospitality and the Bible. But the title also communicates something that I think is important at both a theological and practical level—namely, since the Bible often speaks of our salvation as an act of divine hospitality (e.g., Luke 15:11–32), God expects and demands that his people are marked as a stranger-loving, welcoming people. Maybe the Epistle of James states this as clearly as anywhere in the Christian Scriptures when he declares that a faith without concrete acts of mercy isn’t true faith (James 2:15–17) or when he speaks of Rahab as justified when she showed hospitable kindness to the Israelite messengers (James 2:25).
How did your experiences in Atlanta play into your understanding of hospitality?
God provided me with some incredible opportunities in Atlanta! One of them involved my wife and I starting a small group for young adults at our church in Midtown. We were surprised when twenty-plus people showed up and packed into our little apartment. When we first introduced ourselves, I thought, “This will never work. We are all way too different from each other.” But after a couple of months, as we studied the Scriptures, prayed together, served together, and shared our lives with one another, things changed. I realized that while we were quite different from one another in many ways, we had gone from a group of strangers to a group of friends, almost family. This is exactly the goal of hospitality—strangers transformed into friends and family.
A second experience involved a relationship with a refugee family who had recently been resettled to Atlanta from Iraq. There’s so much I could say here. But I’ll just mention two lessons. First, my wife and I learned about the need to think about the limits of hospitality. I think we just thought, “This family is in great need, and God wants us to do everything possible to help them.” Maybe that’s a well-intentioned thought, but we realized that there were certain limits to what we could do and how we could help them. We needed to have some types of boundaries, or else we would just burn ourselves out. Second, we learned about the importance of not just thinking that we were the hosts extending hospitality to this family but that we needed to also adopt the role of guest. Those of us who are used to privilege are tempted to think that we are the ones who do good, but often this can be a use of power that does not always dignify others, especially those—like our refugee family—who have been displaced and experienced so much powerlessness. One thing I learned was that they loved to show hospitality to us! They loved having us in their home and using their space, food, and drink to bless us. This was an opportunity for us to give up some of our comforts and to put ourselves in a position to receive, and I think this allowed us to learn more about our family and enabled them to enjoy the opportunity to use their resources to love and care for us.
You say that we should embrace the role of guest as well as that of host. Why?
The Scriptures speak of the patriarchs, Israel as a people, Jesus, and Paul all as embodying the role of guest. A good guest needs to be willing to engage in self-lowering, divest oneself of one’s power, and adapt to one’s hosts. I think so much Christian mission and evangelism has failed to grasp this essential point. I believe that Christians should indeed believe that they have good news to share and should not be timid or embarrassed about it. But seeking to impose beliefs and doctrines or even our strategies for what we think other people or communities need is a quick way to hurt and alienate others.
Why should Christians develop relationships with people of other faiths without trying to convert them?
When I think of meaningful relationships I’ve had with people from other faiths, it was when I knew that they valued me as a friend that I grew to truly respect and enjoy them. Once I knew they cared about me as a person, I didn’t mind it if they shared their religious convictions with me. I don’t think Christians need to be embarrassed to believe that they have good news to share. But this good news is something that needs to be embodied in a life marked by acts of mercy and a commitment to other people regardless of whether they would convert or not. If I understand Paul correctly, it seems that he was marked by a lot of unusual friendships. He worked with his hands, and this allowed him the opportunity to make friendships with people, some of whom were ultimately attracted to the gospel of Christ.
You have a chapter on greed. What does that have to do with hospitality?
The Scriptures often speak of greed as one of the primary impediments to hospitality. The Gospel of Luke, in particular, gives us a variety of characters who are unable to see the needs of others because they are consumed with and distracted by their desire to live comfortable lives or are obsessed with accumulating wealth and possessions (e.g., Luke 12:13-21, 16:19-31). For some today, especially those who have some wealth, one of the primary impediments may be time—are we willing to take the time out of our schedules to create space for relationships of hospitality?
What’s the most important point about hospitality you would make to the congregation of a sizable urban church with a somewhat diverse congregation, a healthy community, and international
ministries?
Hospitality involves risk, but it is also rewarding! I’m sure many of you have experienced this already. But I often find that developing relationships with people that are different from me or entering into a space that’s unfamiliar to me takes some courage. I have vivid memories of feeling nervous standing at the door of our refugee family and even more nervous about going into a prison. There are all kinds of different risks I could expand upon—and it hasn’t always been sunshine and roses. There have been difficult experiences for sure. But there are also great rewards for those who take the risk. My life has been transformed for the better by new relationships that have turned into real friendships. People have extended incredible hospitality to me (and my family) when in challenging, vulnerable situations. And I hope my wife and I have, in some small ways, been able to share God’s love with others as well. A life of hospitality is a life that takes courage, knowing that one is following the way of Jesus. But it’s a better life than one that just seeks to accumulate resources and wealth, a life that is always afraid of people who are different from you, and a life that involves no risk to extend God’s love in Christ to others.
How do redemptive entrepreneurship and impact investing fit into the directives of Jesus in Matthew 25 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner?
I love Matthew 25 and find it to be one of the most important descriptions of what it means to follow Jesus and be the church in the world. I also find it very challenging!
Jesus is clear that responding to the needs of the people around us is of utmost importance. He doesn’t describe, however, the best mechanisms for meeting those needs. I view redemptive entrepreneurship and impact investing as mechanisms. They are not magic solutions that always work or should always be applied. They will not solve every problem. They are not even always the best way to go about serving our neighbors. But in the right circumstances, they can be very effective. For example, I have done some work with an urban church that was exploring expanding their food pantry into a community-owned grocery co-op to not only feed the immediately hungry but to go deeper in addressing the food desert in their neighborhood.
Please explain the “two-pocket model” and why you don’t think that’s the best approach to handling money.
The two-pocket idea in investing is that there are philosophically two entirely separate pools of money an individual, family, or institution manages. One pocket is the moneymaking side. This is where money is invested for maximum financial return and income. The second pocket is where mission activity happens or where philanthropic giving takes place. Traditional investors, and most church institutions, keep the two pockets separate—never mixing money that is for income with money that is for charitable impact. A portion of the money made on one side is then distributed out on the other side.
One problem with this two-pocket philosophy is that it assumes money made on the investment side does not have a social impact or is value neutral. But this is not the case. The way we make money from investment has enormous implications in the world. It is a mistake to believe that we can make money without regard to impact in one pocket and then do good with that money out of the other pocket. In some cases, we may have a far greater negative impact with our investing decisions than any programmatic or philanthropic good we engage in out of the other pocket. For example, a few years ago the Church of England worked hard to address the economic devastation caused by predatory payday lenders in communities around the UK. But it was discovered that even as they waged a campaign to address that important issue, a portion of their sizable endowment was invested in the very same payday lenders they were trying to shut down. The church was making money off of the very practice they were seeking to eliminate. And those payday lenders were using church money to grow their business even while the church tried to shut them down.
Unless we literally put our money under our mattress, all of it has some impact, every second of every day. There is no such thing as value-neutral investing or saving. The question for us is “What is our money doing while we are asleep at night?”
