First, there’s this. A group of pastors asked their local mayor how they could help address the problems of their community. The mayor told them that the majority of the problems “could be drastically reduced if we would just become a community of good neighbors.” Take a look.
Then there’s this comment from the city manager: “There’s not a lot of difference between the way Christians and non-Christians neighbor.”
Think about that for a minute. How well do we, here in the Northern Virginia suburbs, know our neighbors? I know some folks who know their neighbors well. While I know some of my neighbors well, I don't know all of them.
Now look around our church neighborhood. How well do we know the neighbors who live around our church? I sure don’t know very many of the people who live around Grace. Most of them don’t go to our church. Fewer of us live in the immediate neighborhood around Grace anymore.
We've been studying what Jesus called the greatest commandments – love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself – for Lent. This is what Scot McKnight calls The Jesus Creed. I found the video on his Jesus Creed blog. McKnight followed that with a post in which he said maybe the question isn't “Who’s my neighbor?” but “What is the art of neighboring?” The folks who made the video wrote a book and have a web site dedicated to offering advice on the art of neighboring.
They’re taking the command to love our neighbors as ourselves to heart and are seeking ways to do just that.
Recently our youth came back from a ski trip retreat excited after hearing the guest speaker, Ray Garcia, talk about the Philadelphia Project. Area churches are reaching out to their neighbors, getting to know them, and seeking ways to help them meet their “physical, spiritual, emotional, and social needs.”
Grace has a tradition of being involved in the Springfield area through ECHO, tutoring, nurturing parents, and other service activities. While the neighborhood around our church has changed and many of us would be hard-pressed to name many of the church’s neighbors, we’re not coming at this completely cold.
So, this week, I’m combining the weekly question about the Bible with our Jesus Creed study.
Do you think the comment that most problems could be “drastically reduced if we would just become a community of good neighbors” also applies here in northern Virginia?
More importantly, how do we live out the commandment to love our neighbor?
What does it mean to be a neighbor as a church?
How can we practice the art of neighboring here in Springfield?
What are some things we can do as individuals and as a church?
I know a lot more people read this blog than comment on it (and that’s okay). I hope this week you will break that tendency and offer your ideas (there’s even an option to post anonymously if you’re shy). You might just inspire the rest of us to do something we hadn’t thought of doing before. I’m looking forward to your comments!
Grace has been a great neighbor to Crestwood and the people who live here. Open doors, block parties, GANAS, VBS, pool parties, tutoring, ECHO, Cub Scouts, AA...outreach with mailings, flyers....the list goes on and on. But, friends and neighbors move on, and new neighbors move in. The Evangelism Committee and Communications Committee would create and manage opportunities to get more involved. Perhaps we should re-create those to engergize and organize our efforts.
ReplyDeleteAre we still reaching out? Enough?
You asked, 'how can we practice the art of neighboring' and I don't know that "we" are practicing. Maybe others are. I don't feel like I am, and there's "no we without me."
"We" should get involved in spreading God's love in our neighborhood.
You made some good points I've also heard from others:
Delete- We've had a number of outreach efforts in our neighborhood that were successful because some one or some group felt a passion and a call to get involved. That passion was "contagious" in that it energized others to get involved.
- We need folks willing to get things going. We're all busy, but a group of people working together can accomplish a task that might be overwhelming to one person.
- We also need to make sure we're equipping and encouraging people to get involved. Before we send people out, we might need to teach or train them so they're not going out unprepared (which can be discouraging).
Here are three ideas of how to serve the community. They come from my little sister Lois’ Presbyterian church where she works in San Mateo, CA, which is just south of San Francisco. I’m returning today from a week visiting my mother and Lois’ family where I saw some of this stuff.
ReplyDeleteFirst, set up a bounce house once a week, and open it to everyone for free. You know those inflatable houses that little kids bounce around in? I’ve seen people rent them for birthday parties, but once you’ve bought one, it’s pretty cheap to operate and pretty durable, too. At the same time, but less frequently, they’ve had their youth set up a free car wash and refuse to take donations.
Second, have a mothers day out. Basically, it’s just supervised play for little kids for a few hours on Friday morning. Young Moms need a break.
The neatest thing they do is a program they made up called “Kings Club”. There is also a similar program you can get now called “Logos”. King’s club is somewhat similar to our Ganas program, but it runs every Wed night at 5:30 to 7:30 and is for K through 5th graders. It has three components: music, crafts, and games. The music part consists of learning songs for a spring and fall musical they do for a worship service. Of course, the musical material is available online. The music fills a gap left by the schools whose music programs fell to budget cuts. The crafts are themed off the musicals, but it’s amazing to see kids mostly from unchurched families reciting Bible verses and building crafts around them. The games are the draw for the boys - a chance to run off energy. Kingdom Club takes six supervisors, three of whom happen to work for the church and another, my brother-in-law, who is married to one of them. It takes a pretty serious commitment. The thing that really gets me is that they also use youth volunteers to supervise the kids. The youth are all graduates of Kingdom Club; there are about 30 of them(!), more than they know what to do with.
San Mateo is at the northern end of Silicon Valley, so the area is pretty affluent with bunches of very busy professionals, very few of whom attend church, but who want the best for their kids. Sound familiar?
Those are good ideas... There's a lot we could do to get to know the folks in the neighborhood. The key thing is getting to know people by name. Maybe some of the things we do now - like the Crop Table or the book sale we just had this past weekend could be opened up to the neighborhood. A lot of possibilities if we put a little thought to it.
DeleteI liked GANAS because not only did it attempt to reach out to the neighbors, but it also pulled in a lot of folks from Grace, young and old, to help out. It seemed like a good start, but it also takes some energy and commitment to build on it.
I've been reading "40 Days Living the Jesus Creed" by Scot McKnight for Lent (hence the Jesus Creed questions for the week posts). Today's reflection was on the "God is love" passage from 1 John (chapter 4), which I had spent a lot of time reflecting on last Lent. McKnight talks about a cycle of love that grows out of "God loves you/God loves others/love God/love others". He also talks about cycles of "unlove" that can get in the way of loving one another and the challenges of breaking that cycle.
ReplyDeleteI thought about what cycles of unlove I need to break (there are a few) and what kinds of cycles of unlove might exist in our church neighborhood. I know there have been parking problems around the church (and we have signs in the front of the church encouraging church visitors to park in the lots so we don't crowd the streets). A few years ago, there were problems with multiple families living in the huge houses that popped up as "remodels" of the older, smaller houses that made up the original neighborhoods. There may very well be residual feelings lingering from that. Of course, we live in the Washington suburbs so many of us are crossfire of the political polarization that has this country in gridlock. I suspect we'll find folks all along the spectrum within our own church, and certainly within the surrounding neighborhood. How do we bridge those differences to become better neighbors amongst ourselves and within the neighborhood?
Another reflection in McKnight's book - on boundary-breaking love - offers a different way of thinking on this. It must have been a good reflection because my mind is filled with more ideas and thoughts than can fit easily in a comment section. So, assuming I can fit in a lunch break today, I'm going to try to organize them in a coherent form and put out a "bonus" post. But feel free to add your comments here in the meantime.