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Missional Hospitality  
Towards Healing
A Narrative Approach in Missiology1

Bokyoung Park
Bokyoung Park has been teaching missiology at Presbyterian University and 
Theological Seminary since 2002. She currently serves as the Vice-President of 
IAMS (International Association of Mission Studies) and an active member of 
AMRI (Alliance of Mission Researchers and Institutions). She founded Korea 
IAMS Fellowship to mentor Korean young scholars to enhance their international 
scholarly activities. 
Contact: parkbokyoung718@gmail.com

Abstract

The entire world is suffering through the COVID-19 pandem-
ic. In this age of anguish, churches must work on the ministry of 

1. This article was originally published in Korean as “Ch’iyurŭl 
chihyanghanŭn hwandaeŭi sŏn’gyohakŭl wihan shironr iyagishing chŏpkŭnŭl 
chungshimŭro. 치유를 지향하는 환대’의 선교학을 위한 시론: 이야기식 접
근을 중심으로 [Essay on the Missiology of ‘Hospitality towards Healing’: Fo-
cusing on Narrative Approach]” Sŏn’gyoshinhak [Mission Theology] 61 (2021) 
114–43. The author wants to recognize special gratitude to Dr. Rebekah Lee, 
who translated this article. Following translation, it was revised and peer re-
viewed for publication in Ecclesial Futures.



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hospitality that leads to healing as part of God’s mission. This arti-
cle employs a narrative approach in articulating a missional hospi-
tality. It draws on two stories of the writer’s personal experience to 
describe how pain was healed through an experience of hospital-
ity. The sharing of personal stories demonstrates how experiences 
of hospitality can be converted into missional practice for others 
which becomes a locus of healing. As the conclusion, the study 
provides three implications. First, churches need to provide the 
space of hospitality for others experiencing pain and grief. Second, 
theology plays a role in providing a community-based collective 
interpretation of the pain. Third, the role of mission is to replicate 
the missional dimension of healing hospitality to the wounded.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is afflicting countless people over the 
world. As social distancing continued for months on end in South 
Korea, a “pandemic fatigue” settled among the general public 
(Badre, 2021). There were no safe havens, and face-to-face meet-
ings with friends and family were to be avoided if at all possible. 
While Korea has conducted efficient testing, tracing, and treat-
ment regimens and consistent information was provided to the 
public, the experience resulted in targeted blame toward certain 
individuals and groups. There is a persistent fear that anyone 
may unwittingly brush by an asymptomatic patient and become 
targeted for ostracization from our communities and workplaces. 
Those identified as positive cases tend to feel both guilt and re-
sentment toward those who avoid them over something that was 
beyond their control. Beneath the daily reporting of the number of 
dead by the pandemic are stories of our neighbors who have had to 
accept sudden and heart-wrenching loss. For some this loss mani-
fests in grief over losing a loved one, and for others despair over 
financial ruin. Others have been stigmatized as super-spreaders in 
contagion clusters and suffered irrevocable communal ostraciza-
tion. Many continue to suffer from exhaustion and depression 
resulting from the prolonged strict social distancing regime (S. Y. 



Bokyoung Park—Missional Hospitality Towards Healing 

13

Yun 2020). Indeed, the entire world is suffering through the CO-
VID-19 pandemic.

In these circumstances of suffering, the Church has the re-
sponsibility to practice the missional hospitality that leads to heal-
ing. The world is in need of the people of God to participate in such 
a mission today. This ministry must be taken up by the entire faith 
community, and at the same time must be manifest in individual 
Christians as they encounter other broken individuals in daily life. 
Such is the mission of the Church for today’s broken world.

Missional Hospitality in a Wounded World: 
Personal Stories

The following stories are personal stories of my own. They show 
how I became the wounded one, then grew to accept wounded-
ness as an existential experience of death and resurrection in 
Christ. With this experience of acceptance and healing, I was then 
able to extend missional hospitality that facilitated healing for 
others.

First Story

November 25, 2016, is the day I want to erase from memory. That 
was the day my husband was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. 
At age fifty-three my husband became terminally ill. My personal 
spirituality and ministry entered an entirely new stage from that 
point on. For three months, until the day of my husband’s death on 
February 12, 2017, my family despaired together, wept together, 
raged together, and pleaded with God together. As the moment of 
encounter with death approached, its shadow completely engulfed 
our entire family. My husband was facing the end of his life, some-
thing unimaginably fearsome and threatening. Our children and 
I trembled at the fearful prospect of being left alone with our grief 
and our task of accepting this sudden parting.



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14

Death shattered our existence to pieces. Devasted, we had no 
choice but to wait for Christ’s healing and restoration. After my 
husband’s death, I could not wade out of deep despair. I was racked 
with guilt. I was angry and bitter against God, asking if this was 
the paltry reward I got for following my calling. How could God 
let this happen? But precisely in that darkest moment, the seed of 
healing, restoration, and hope blossomed. I learned that as finite 
humans I cannot hold back death, the most painful reality. Slowly 
I started on the journey of discovering the true meaning of death 
and what it means for us as Christians to encounter death.

Healing and restoration started in an unexpected place. Our 
family was attending a small, ten-member church of Korean im-
migrants which my husband was pastoring in the United States. 
Many of them had been rejected by their family and community 
and were physically or emotionally unwell. This community was 
wrestling with the shock and grief of losing their pastor, but they 
also embraced our family into their space of hospitality. This 
small community of ten, marginalized and ignored by the society, 
brought our family into its fold and we were able to start on the 
path of healing.

The hospitality was mutual. The church members were living 
through their dismal reality of having depended on their pastor as 
their rock. His death was a traumatic loss. So our family also ex-
tended hospitality by providing meals after services each Sunday. 
This mutual hospitality led to mutual healing. Death made us all 
despair yet healing slowly progressed.

On the first Easter Sunday after the death of my husband, I 
shared a message at this church. It was the first time I had stood 
behind the pulpit since his death. As one still in the process of 
passing through the tunnel of mourning, I proclaimed Christ’s 
death and resurrection, and now our own experience of death and 
the hope of resurrection. As I preached with trembling voice, the 
congregation wept. After the sermon, an elderly woman leader of 
the church personally approached me and gave me words of divine 
encouragement. These comforted me on an entirely new and mys-
tical level. This was for me the clearest experience of healing in the 



Bokyoung Park—Missional Hospitality Towards Healing 

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midst of deepest grief which occurred within this hospitable faith 
community. Thanks to this experience I rediscovered the truth that 
the essence of Christian faith is to give an answer to the existential 
question of death. The experience allowed me to see how Christian 
healing and restoration are possible even in the depths of broken-
ness and despair as one is embraced by a hospitable community.

Second Story

Exactly three years passed from the first story until the time when 
a new strand of COVID-19 hit Daegu, a city in South Korea. In 
February 2020, I was present, concerned about the health of my el-
derly mother in her nineties. A day after I arrived in my hometown 
of Daegu, massive transmission clusters were identified. Each day 
we were flooded with news of positive cases and building closures. 
I saw the city shutting down before my eyes. It was so sudden that 
the medical system was in ruins. Countless patients had to wait 
in their homes and were admitted to the hospital only when their 
symptoms got worse.

Then I heard that my older sister, who had been suffer-
ing from the flu for a few days, was feeling worse. She took the 
COVID-19 test just to be sure, and the result came back positive. 
Because hospitals were overwhelmed by the sudden outbreak, she 
had to wait at home until a space was available. We called the pan-
demic response authorities countless times each day to check if 
there was a bed, but they could only tell us to wait. The symptoms 
of pneumonia grew worse. She was unable to consume a meal for 
a week as she wavered in and out of consciousness. We called an 
ambulance, but they had to return my sister back home because 
the hospital had no space. After calling several more times an 
ambulance came again, and they decided to try and look for any 
available space. The emergency workers connected my sister to the 
respirator in the ambulance and waited in front of a hospital until 
a bed was ready.

A bed finally did open up and she was admitted. But the 
hospital called not long after. The doctor told us that the illness 



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16

was too advanced. There was nothing they could do and the family 
needed to decide on end-of-life care. My family was devastated. 
Less than a week after hearing that our sister was sick with the flu 
we were hit with this shocking news. My older sister’s family had 
no idea what to do at such a sudden turn of events. My brother-
in-law in his eighties was in a state of shock. As the moment of 
death approached, I had to help my family face death. We bought 
a phone for a nurse to take into the isolation room and hold up 
to my sister, whose consciousness was slipping, and we said our 
goodbyes.

My sister’s surviving family had to face shock and grief at 
such an absurd end. For my brother-in-law, who lost his lifelong 
partner, this was shock he could not easily process. The sudden-
ness of it, along with his powerlessness to do anything to save his 
wife, left him feeling guilty and with a deep sense of futility. This 
was exactly the moment when he needed God’s healing through 
someone’s hospitality.

At this point own experience of loss could be converted in 
a new way to become a missional act. Based on my own experi-
ence of despair, I was able to extend hospitality. The small church 
community in the US had stayed with me at my moments of 
grief. Now I was passing on the same hospitality at another place 
of mourning. Practically, such hospitality meant simply to stand 
by the ones in pain, to grieve together, and to share little acts of 
kindness. Because of my own experience of losing a spouse, I 
could extend kindness and comfort to my brother-in-law. As I also 
recalled the existential lesson and the true meaning of Christian 
faith I myself had learned, I was able to provide hospitality in the 
hope of resurrection. In the spring of 2020, my experience of grief 
and restoration three years ago became a source of empathy and 
comfort for my other family members in their moment of grief. 
As a “wounded healer” (Nouwen 1972) in this new place of grief, I 
could practice hospitality that leads to the path of healing.



Bokyoung Park—Missional Hospitality Towards Healing 

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A Narrative Approach in Missiological 
Studies

In this section, I turn my attention to the power of stories in theo-
logical discussion. In the 1970s the narrative approach began to 
receive more attention as a theological methodology. Narrative 
theology is a creative approach, using stories to communicate 
about God—how God intervenes in humanity, the events that are 
shaped by human agents, and how the humans in those events 
transition and grow from despair to hope (Fackre 1983, 343). 
According to Fackre (1983, 347), “the quest for spontaneity and 
self-expression leads to a search for the immediacies and intima-
cies of experience.” Advocacy theologians pay great attention to 
narratives, seeing their potential to give “voice to the voiceless, 
or affirming the plural and the protean” (Fackre 1983, 347). The 
desire for self-expression and the need to heed the voices of the 
voiceless are even greater today.

In missiology the significance of stories has long been ac-
knowledged through missionary biographies. More recently, 
narrative theology has been employed to provide deeper missio-
logical reflections. Nancy Thomas asserts that narratives play an 
important role in missiological reflections, and that stories are the 
“footprints of God” in which are found the mission of God. To 
follow in the footsteps of God means to enter into the stories, write 
the stories, tell the stories, learn the stories, and live the stories. For 
Thomas (1999, 226–27), narratives are what motivate us to partici-
pate in the mission of God.

Frances Adeney also emphasizes the significance of biogra-
phies, a form of narrative, in missiology. She asserts that study-
ing the narratives of real individuals in their social and historical 
context contributes to missiology by giving a more accurate un-
derstanding of how Christian mission occurs in a certain time 
and place (Adeney 2009, 157). It is true that participation in the 
mission of God is not a practice of academic reflection through 
metaphysical propositions. Instead it is something that occurs in 
relationship with actual people and within specific sociopolitical 



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and historical conditions. Because theology has traditionally over-
looked real-life contexts of actual persons involved in the mission 
of God, the narrative approach is all the more significant for mis-
siology today.

The narrative approach has the potential to overcome the 
limits of traditionally abstract and propositional approaches to 
communicating about God, the world, and human destiny. Tradi-
tional theology with propositional declarations and abstract con-
cepts is too removed from actual daily lives. Yet, narrative breathes 
“life, joy, and vitality to the process of thinking theologically in 
mission” and “connects missiology to the real-world context it be-
longs to” (Thomas 1999, 233). Narratives are by nature holistic and 
integrated with daily life; they can be communicated in ways fa-
miliar to the lives and contexts of the listeners. Narratives allow us 
to “translate the grace and forgiveness and transforming work of 
God” in exactly these real-life contexts. In that sense, the narrative 
approach does not express the mission of God propositionally but 
rather as “mission on the way” and in process (Thomas 1999, 230).

Stories are even better able to communicate in times of suf-
fering and pain in the Church’s missionary practice. In theology, 
pain and suffering are something humans as holistic and finite 
beings must embrace and accept rather than logically understand 
and explain away. Such theology must be able to hold all of one’s 
whole self, including emotions of joy and grief, despair and hope. 
Especially for those in deep suffering, the emotional dimension is 
front and center. Logical explanations lack persuasion. The logical 
explanations of Job’s suffering expounded by Job’s friends—though 
they may have been the noblest pieces of wisdom in their age—
were of little consolation to Job. Instead they provoked intense 
anger and despair. Yet stories have the power to empathize in mo-
ments of pain and suffering, and thus are especially appropriate as 
a missionary practice in contexts of suffering.

Moreover, narratives invite the listeners to share in the expe-
rience of the storyteller. A shared story resonates with yet another 
story in a listener. This process creates an interconnected space 
of empathy and communication. Stories have transformative 



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power, but the power is manifest in much less direct ways than 
propositional statements. Stories do not invade into the thoughts 
of others. Rather, they invite others to see from new perspectives, 
thereby generating change in more roundabout ways.

Stories, especially Biblical stories, are especially useful for 
motivating us to participate in the mission of God. The great sto-
ries of God’s mission resonate with and give meaning to our own 
smaller stories. We learn that our suffering, struggles, and griefs 
are materials for the mission of God (Thomas 1999, 227). Our 
own stories also motivate us toward mission. In every individual’s 
unique stories, and in the stories of communities to which we 
belong, we discover the call to mission (Thomas 1999, 228). The 
stories of the world also stir us toward mission. As we see pain, 
grief, suffering, and despair, as well as hope in the stories of people 
around the world, we see their need for Christ’s salvation and are 
moved to enter into mission (Thomas 1999, 229).

In sum, the narrative approach to missiology overcomes the 
limitations of traditional propositional approach, enables missiol-
ogy to make connections with real people, makes possible holis-
tic communication of the gospel in the midst of suffering, and is 
invitational rather than coercive in the communication process. 
The narrative approach also consistently motivates participation 
in mission. It enables deeper missiological reflections in today’s 
context of suffering.

The Meaning of Hospitality towards Healing

How might hospitality lead to healing? Hospitality is an act of 
providing physical comfort and safety to facilitate restoration. 
Hospitality is related to a certain space or refuge for emotional 
and psychological recovery. The term is often accompanied by 
descriptors such as “generous,” “kind,” or “gracious” (Koenig 
1985, 17–18). Joshua Jipp defines hospitality as “the act or process 
whereby the identity of the stranger is transformed into that of 
guest” (2017, 2). Hospitality provides a “safe and welcoming place 
where a stranger can be converted into a friend” (Jipp 2017, 2). 



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Among those who developed the concept of hospitality in the field 
of theology is feminist theologian Letty Russell. Russell (2009, 82) 
defines hospitality as “a form of partnership with the ones we call 
‘others’” and asserts the need to reframe hospitality.

Hospitality is an act of recognizing the stranger’s common 
humanity (Pohl 1999, 6). Hospitality triggers a small but signifi-
cant change in the recipients. The experience of being recognized 
and received enhances one’s self-esteem. Hospitality enables a 
socially invisible person to become visible (Pohl 1999, 62). True 
hospitality is only possible when there is a relationship of respect. 
Respect and recognition are expressed by paying one’s full atten-
tion to the other, thereby proving their worth (Pohl 1999, 70–71). 
Because people share common humanity as individuals made in 
the image of God, it is possible to offer hospitality through respect 
and recognition. For Pohl, hospitality is more than a simple act of 
service; it involves the sharing of life. Hospitality takes place where 
there is sharing of life and resources resulting in mutual blessing. 
At the site of hospitality, respect and communication are shared by 
the guest and the host; it is a “two-way street” (Pohl 1999, 72). In 
this sense, true hospitality is impossible without friendship, and 
such hospitable friendship is best expressed in table fellowship. 
Pohl beautifully explains that the moment of gathering for a meal 
is an egalitarian experience for all participants. This is the moment 
when one can truly recognize one another—a moment one can be 
with others instead of for others. In hospitality, “respect and ap-
preciation, presence and friendship are indispensable parts of the 
affirmation of human personhood” (Pohl 1999, 84).

Healing is one dimension of hospitality. Healing happens in 
the “unexpected divine presence” within the space of hospitality 
(Russell 2009, 82–84). Henry Nouwen emphasized that hospitality 
has the power to heal. Healing requires providing a space of rest 
as well as concentration and community for the welcomed guest 
(Nouwen 1972, 96). In the space of hospitality, the stranger who 
needs healing requires a full and concentrated gaze. Such concen-
tration requires the host to set aside one’s needs, concerns, and 
anxieties and to humbly open up their space. The one practicing 



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hospitality must be able to keep a distance from one’s own prob-
lems. True hospitality is expressed by giving one’s attention to the 
stranger (Nouwen 1972, 97). The host, as healer, must be able to 
listen and acknowledge the guest’s stories of joy and sadness, hope 
and grief, successes and failures. Such attentive listening through 
being fully present is the highest form of hospitality (Nouwen 
1972, 95).

Hospitality can lead to healing when the host can dwell in 
their own wounded-ness. By remembering the vulnerability and 
dependency we ourselves experienced at that place of pain, we can 
enable healing in others (Pohl 1999, 65). However, the fact that 
there is healing in the hospitable space does not mean that the 
pain is diminished. It only means that the wound is redefined as 
an opportunity toward a new vision of hope in Christ. So when 
members of the community profess their wounds and share their 
weaknesses, healing takes place and their hope grows stronger 
(Nouwen 1972, 100).

Jesus showed God’s hospitality through his actions, but he 
also received hospitality from others (Yong 2008, 101). Jesus’ life 
was full of such stories. At the table fellowship with the disciples 
on the road to Emmaus the resurrected Jesus was both the guest 
and the host. The table was an expression of communal hospitality 
in which healing occurred. Leslie Hay points out that the presence 
of the resurrected Christ was revealed at this table of hospitality. In 
this sense, the meal was the “sacrament of hospitality” (Hay 2006, 
46). The parable of the Good Samaritan shows God’s hospitality 
to the one who is deeply wounded. Hospitality is a key message 
in the story of the woman who broke an alabaster jar of perfume 
for Jesus. The nameless and uninvited woman was the one who 
was truly hospitable to Jesus, who came as a guest (Hay 2006, 45). 
From the moment Jesus was born of Mary, through to his burial 
in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus depended on others’ 
hospitality. By being on the receiving end of hospitality, by being 
a guest, Jesus showed God’s saving hospitality (Yong 2008, 102).

Furthermore, hospitality has a missional dimension. The 
one who has experienced hospitality can in turn be hospitable to 



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others. Hospitality can be a missional calling, given that hospitality 
is above all an act of God before it is a human act. To extend hos-
pitality is to participate in God’s own hospitality. Just has humans 
participate in the mission of God, we participate in the hospital-
ity of God. As ones who have first experienced God’s hospitality, 
Christians have a missional calling to extend hospitality to others 
(Kim 2017, 165–66) For Nouwen (1975, 93), all Christians are 
called to be healers. This means that hospitality that facilitates 
healing is the missional calling for all Christians. Jipp (2017, 92) 
states that “the mission of the Church is to participate in God’s 
hospitality, whereby Jesus extends life and redemption to humans 
who are alienated from God and each other.” Jean Vanier (1995, 
9) writes that hospitality is a way of life that resists today’s com-
petitive and hierarchical social order that marginalizes the weak. 
Therefore, hospitality is the essence of the church’s identity and 
calling, and an indispensable element of Christian faith (Vanier 
1995, 2).

In sum, hospitality is more than simply an act of generosity 
or helping a stranger with material needs. It is an act of true rec-
ognition and respect for the other. True hospitality is impossible 
without friendship. Such hospitality has a dimension of healing. 
Healing is made possible when we provide a space for others to 
enter and as we dwell with them in their place of pain. Hospitality 
that leads to healing, therefore, also has a missional dimension. 
When one experiences healing by being received by a hospitable 
host, the guest can recognize one’s own missional calling, and in 
turn practice hospitality to yet more others.

Missional Hospitality That Leads to Healing: 
Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Healing hospitality is based on the ministry of Jesus Christ. Christ 
incarnate entered the world as a weak and vulnerable human be-
ing, and personally practiced the mission of the wounded healer 
by way of the cross. The mission of the Church is to continue in 
this mission of Jesus Christ. In a world full of brokenness and grief, 



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23

the Church must make the ministry of hospitality a priority. Such 
hospitality by the Church should not be practiced as an act of char-
ity from the center to the margins or from a position of power to 
the powerless, but by the Church itself becoming the weak and the 
marginalized, following in the steps of Jesus Christ. Only then can 
healing occur and become missional. In this section I will reflect 
on implications for church, theology, and missional hospitality.

The Role of the Church: Providing a Space of Hospitality

The Church must prioritize providing a space of hospitality to the 
grieving in today’s broken world. The Church has a role in offering 
an emotional and physical space to hold the stories of pain. This 
is a hospitable space where people can share their grief. Above, I 
described how my experience of grief was held within the space 
of hospitality provided by a small immigrant church community. 
For me this community was a space in which I was physically and 
emotionally welcomed to share my story of pain and to cry and 
laugh together with others. It was a space of empathy. The com-
munity had already experienced brokenness and alienation and 
were on the margins of the margins. As broken people, they were 
generous in welcoming me and my family. My family also recipro-
cated that hospitality by inviting them to table fellowship. In this 
practice of mutual hospitality, we could share our grief.

As mentioned later, narratives are especially powerful in mo-
ments of profound grief. They help us understand that the depths 
of human suffering, the enormity of life and death, and surviving 
through chronic pain without losing one’s humanity are all pos-
sible within a space of empathetic hospitality. By sharing stories 
in this hospitable space, we invite others’ stories of pain and make 
possible the experience of true community. The community is 
then able to bear the weight of suffering together.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit us unaware and has changed 
our lives to the core. The pandemic has revealed the degree of hu-
man vulnerability. It is affecting our society’s psychological, eco-
nomic, and political dimensions. As our close friends and family 



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passed away, the cruel situation that barred us from being present 
at their moment of death nor able to gather freely at their funer-
als to share in grief threw us all into deeper anguish. In Korea, 
when the death of an individual is relegated to the private realm, 
it becomes difficult to care for people mourning their dead. The 
number of deaths each day remain mere numbers; there is a loss 
of empathy amid the fear and loneliness of the dying (M. S. Ahn 
2020, 232). Across all societies, we seem to be losing our humanity 
during this time of pandemic. Ahn Myung-Sook (2020, 227–30) 
listed some of the social psychological phenomena that have re-
sulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. These include heightened 
guardedness, an aggression based on fear, loneliness, and increased 
isolation due to the lack of human contact. As isolation, loneliness, 
and fear cause people to raise their defenses and react in violence, 
churches’ mission is to provide space for the world to share their 
grief. For neighbors faced with sudden grief, churches must open 
up a space of hospitality and provide a ministry of comfort for 
them to experience divine healing.

The Role of Theology: Interpreting Stories of Pain

A process of community-based Scripture interpretation is neces-
sary in order for the stories shared in the space of hospitality to 
result in healing. This is the role of theology. The stories shared 
are reframed through the community’s interpretation of the Scrip-
ture. Kim (2007, 163–64) demonstrates how Hans Frei identifies 
community-based Scripture interpretation as its key characteris-
tic. The revisiting of pain within a hospitable community enables 
the sharing of grief and the making of meaning from suffering. 
The painful stories are reframed through community-based inter-
pretation. A whole new terrain of understanding opens up on the 
Trinitarian ministry of love and helps people see an even wider 
kingdom of God. Moreover, this space offers an experience of di-
vine healing through the presence of Compassio Dei, the God who 
is with us in our brokenness (Sauer 2010, 60–65; Hyun 2019, 444). 



Bokyoung Park—Missional Hospitality Towards Healing 

25

Hence theology allows us to enter to the new horizon of healing 
hospitality.

By the time I was asked to preach the Easter sermon in April 
of 2017, two months after my husband’s death, I could finally 
emerge out of despair. Preparing for the message required theo-
logical reflection on life and death. It was then that I could freshly 
interpret how the core Christian tenet of the cross and the resur-
rection gives hope to mortal humans doomed to finite existence. 
In the sermon I gave to the church community, I professed my 
human weakness, the vanity of human existence and the sudden 
approach of life and death. Then I shared the hope of resurrection 
to experience new connection and solidarity. This was a moment 
when my surface-level knowledge of life and death, encounter and 
farewell, pain and suffering were deepened through community-
based Scripture interpretation.

In the time of pandemic, for churches to offer healing to the 
world, scriptural interpretation within a hospitable community is 
necessary. Churches in anguish must offer theological reflection 
on the anguish experienced by the rest of the world. Only then can 
a new space of hospitality for healing be offered. Churches must 
be reminded that they are essentially missional communities, and 
therefore exist on behalf of the world. Just as Jesus Christ came to 
save the world, the Church must also exist on behalf of the salva-
tion of the world.

But today the Church is so broken that it does not have eyes 
to see the suffering of others. The sudden circumstances of the 
pandemic which made gatherings impossible left the local church-
es in Korea feeling robbed of their communal identity. While 
churches have reluctantly accepted government limits on gather-
ings, sustaining this state of affairs has been painful. Yet, rather 
than regarding these virus prevention measures as oppression, the 
Korean church must shift their perspective to accept the situation 
as an act of sharing in society’s burden. They must recover their 
missional identity as healer of the nations. This shift in perspec-
tive is possible through theology that prepares the Church to lis-
ten to the suffering of the world. Therefore, through theological 



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reflection on today’s situation, churches can consistently provide 
answers to questions of life and death and the relationship between 
humanity and the natural world. The world may seem unwilling 
to listen, but they are actually searching desperately for answers to 
these existential questions.

The Role of Mission: Practicing Hospitality That Leads to 
Healing

Once our own wound is healed in the space of hospitality, this 
experience makes possible the ministry of hospitality. Here the 
role of mission emerges. Once a wound is healed by experienc-
ing hospitality, it does not stay a wound. Instead, the experience 
becomes a divine resource for mission. Of course, this is only pos-
sible through the “unexpected divine presence” of God within the 
hospitable community (Russell 2009, 82; Langmead 2014, 46). We 
realize that our pain can be a resource to be used for others’ heal-
ing. We become wounded healers as we practice hospitality for the 
healing of others. Here, hospitality moves beyond a missional call-
ing to a missional act.

In the spring of 2020, when my sister suddenly passed away, 
I was able to extend the hospitality that I also had earlier received. 
The hospitality and healing I had experienced in the immigrant 
church community was now rebirthed into a missional hospital-
ity at this new site of grief. However, the healing hospitality my 
family and I first experienced blessed that church as well. Since 
2017 my relationship with the church and its members has devel-
oped in new ways. All the church members matured in new ways 
to become healers in their own places of life, just as I in Korea in 
2020 could offer healing hospitality for my extended family. The 
community that had experienced healing went on to offer healing 
hospitality to wider spheres of their network.

But we must remember a point of caution. True missional 
hospitality carries the scars of pain and loss. If hospitality is of-
fered from the center to the margins, it may be a momentary act of 
kindness, but it cannot facilitate healing. An act of generosity from 



Bokyoung Park—Missional Hospitality Towards Healing 

27

the center of power to the marginalized powerless may at worst 
become an imposition and at best an act of charity. When mission 
objectifies the other, it can become another act of violence. But for 
hospitality to facilitate true divine healing, the host must have the 
experience of becoming marginal and broken. Missional hospital-
ity must be based on the experience of the margins, which then 
enables the welcoming of yet another person on the margins. This 
process is beautifully illustrated in Jesus Christ’s own hospitality. 
Jesus was the model of hospitality for the wounded. The cross of 
Jesus Christ is above all a divine act of hospitality. At the center of 
the cross is the God who welcomes all through the act of creation, 
including the fallen and estranged. The hospitality of the cross is 
not only the essential vocation of Christ but also the essential vo-
cation of Christians (Boersma 2006, 18; Kim 2020, 72).

Therefore, as the Church recognizes itself as wounded, it is 
able to encounter the wounded world. The Church should conduct 
theological reflections to provide missional hospitality based on 
self-understanding as being on the margins. According to Susan 
Hope, what we need is not mission of the powerful but mission 
through weakness, vulnerability, and ordinariness. We therefore 
need not regret our powerlessness in mission but rather celebrate 
it (Hope 2010, 91–92). Enduring grief and powerlessness is an im-
portant part of missionary spirituality that enables us to draw near 
and deeply embrace the broken and lost world.

The Korean Protestant church today is despised by the rest 
of society as an antisocial group. The negative image of the Ko-
rean Protestant church has been building in recent years, but in 
the pandemic, this perception has increased dramatically, perhaps 
to the point of no recovery. Every day the media is reporting on 
churches identified as transmission clusters and super-spreading 
events because they pushed on with on-site gatherings, against 
government directives. This wound that the Church is now sus-
taining has become entangled in a complex web of preexisting 
church corruption, social anxiety, and the harsh critique of the 
media. The result is that Christians are regarded by some as a hate 
group. Yet this very experience of pain and suffering now offered 



E c c l e s i a l  F u t u r e s :  Vo l u m e  2 ,  I s s u e  2

28

to churches means they may experience pain that might enable 
them to finally empathize with others. This will facilitate healing 
by offering hospitality to those who had been similarly wounded. 
This is the very moment that the Korean church is truly ready to 
practice healing and missional hospitality.

Conclusion

As COVID-19 sweeps through the world, people are suffering not 
only physical but social and economic wounds. Missiology today 
must be able to empathize with those in pain and fully resonate 
with their grief. Dry propositional approaches are limited in their 
ability to offer empathetic and appropriate responses to those 
in pain. The narrative approach is the way to approach today’s 
context.

In today’s world, the Church as the body of Christ is called 
to become a healing community to participate in the mission of 
the God who empathizes with those in pain. To participate in this 
mission of God, churches must become spaces in which stories of 
pain and grief can be openly shared. Theology must provide fresh 
interpretations of the stories of pains through community-based 
collective interpretations. The role of mission is to recognize the 
missional dimension of healing hospitality, that is, for the Church 
to provide another hospitable space for others to heal. May the 
hospitable God who treats and heals our wounds continue to heal 
our church and the world!

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