In his recent Erasmus Lecture, “
The Desecration of Man
,” Carl Trueman argued that our best response to today’s precipitous cultural decline is to cultivate local communities of worship and faithfulness. In the Q&A that followed, Trueman spoke movingly about the power of hospitality as a concrete, personalized expression of kindness and love that can help mend atomization, estrangement, and loneliness. Trueman is right: Hospitality works, but it works because it’s more than useful. As writers such as Christine Pohl and Joshua Jipp have emphasized of late, hospitality is of the essence of the church and her mission.