Remove the Fences In Your Neighborhood
No fences? Huh. It was my first thought as I scanned our new neighborhood. From our home at the bottom of the cul-de-sac to the top of the hill, most of the houses sat next to each other without borders, their lush backyards blending into one long green alley.
My husband and I had just moved to a small town in Missouri, where we knew no one except one of his colleagues. As transplants from Arizona, we experienced major culture shock transitioning from the reclusive lifestyle of desert suburbia to the porch-squatting, casserole-swapping Midwest.
While my husband immediately took to the friendly atmosphere and began reaching out to get to know our neighbors, I shuttered myself inside. Because we were going through infertility, I wanted to avoid people and circumstances that could cause pain.
As I peered out our sliding glass door, seeing our neighbors fire up their grills and play catch with their kids, I sunk into loneliness. All I had to do was step outside and shout a hello. Instead, I drew the shades, slumped down on the couch, and questioned God: “Why did you put us here?”
CALLED TO BRING SPRING
Whether you recently moved across the country or have lived in the same town your whole life, your address isn’t an accident. God is sovereign over every detail of our lives, including the place we call home. And just as there’s significance to where we live, how we live there matters.
In their book, Placed for a Purpose, Chris and Elizabeth McKinney call followers of Christ to bring his kingdom come right next door. Looking to Jesus’ command to love our neighbor as ourselves, they lay out a clear vision for why we should engage with our neighbors, how we can invite them into his redemptive narrative, and what we can do to nurture meaningful, gospel-minded relationships with them.
The McKinney’s message veers from the cultural narrative of what it means to be a good neighbor, doing the bare minimum of taking out the trash and keeping the noise down. It also shakes Christians out of our cloister mentality, how we view our homes as places to escape or hang out with friends. We need a wake-up call to realize the obvious: God wants us to love our literal neighbors. Just as he brought us who were once far off near by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:13), so we should bring our neighbors into a community of healing and restoration.
If we think of our neighborhood as a microcosm of God’s grand story, we’ll understand the joy and responsibility of living out the great commandment. As the McKinneys write, “God desires to use ordinary people to make his kingdom flourish in your neighborhood. He is calling you to join him in pushing back against the effects of sin and death. In short, he wants to use you to bring spring to your neighborhood.”
MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE
We’ve all heard the saying, “If you want a friend, be a friend.” The same applies to our neighbors. Loving them requires knowing them. And before we can know them, we need to see them as Jesus did.
To help us do this, the McKinneys offer a paradigm for evaluating how we view our neighbors. Their Neighboring Grid suggests four lenses through which we see our neighbors: judgment, isolation, envy, or “glorious ruins,” meaning humans who carry the beauty of God’s image as well as the taint of sin. We might not be able to avoid snap judgments about the neighbor who doesn’t pick up after his dog or the Instagram family who has the perfectly manicured lawn. But remembering the example set by Jesus, our ultimate neighbor, we can look past impressions and seek to know them for who they really are.
Taking that step is necessary to live as ambassadors of Christ in our neighborhoods. As Paul David Tripp describes in New Morning Mercies, “God’s plan is to make his invisible presence and his invisible grace visible through his people, who incarnate his presence and carry that grace to others.”
We also incarnate God’s presence to our neighbors by welcoming them into our homes. The McKinneys clarify that biblical hospitality doesn’t mean decking out your house to look like a Pottery Barn display.
"When we forget that hospitality is a posture and see it primarily as entertainment, it's easy to strive for certain standards of perfection. We find we can become bound by expectations of an ideal. When we see it as engagement, however, we are excited to see how God will use our unique wiring, personality, family dynamics, hobbies, interests, and more to bring glory to himself."
Genuine hospitality aims to serve, not show off, to offer comfort in a bowl of chili or a seat by the fire. By adopting an others-focused posture, we create spaces where relationships can form, and the gospel can enter our neighbors’ lives.
FROM FARM TO TABLE
Jesus and the apostles often used farming metaphors to illustrate how we can spread the gospel. When applying this mission to a neighboring context, the McKinneys suggest another homey analogy: a slow-cooker lifestyle.
Engaging with neighbors requires an attitude of patience and understanding that our neighbors are in process. It rejects the ulterior motives of seeing people as projects, opting for ultimate motives that prompt us to care for others, and enjoy their company. If we operate on this “low and slow” setting, we'll recognize that every interaction with our neighbors has meaning.
"The real work--the important work--isn't always what you think. It's sometimes hidden in a pie, an Easter egg, an apartment stairwell, or in a passing conversation at your mailbox. It's a friendly wave that leads to a name that leads to a late-night chat on your driveway about divorce or unemployment."
Many of us might be eager to jump into this work but don't know where to begin. This is where the McKinneys get down to ground-level advice, offering several ideas for how we can initiate, serve, and cultivate our neighborhoods:
Print a map of your neighborhood and write names of who lives where.
Drop off a housewarming basket to someone who just moved in.
Organize a community garden or tree planting.
Host a book club, toy swap, or game night.
Create a tool-sharing list.
Coordinate a walking school bus.
Buy a portable fire pit and invite neighbors to make S’mores.
Activities like these provide a backdrop for engaging our neighbors in gospel-motivated conversations. Looking to the way Jesus communicated, we can listen to our neighbors with compassion, ask thought-provoking questions, and determine when and how to take risks that can help them progress on their spiritual journeys.
LIVING OUT OUR PURPOSE
Back in Missouri, when I had shut myself off from the world, I needed someone to take a risk and invite me into community. At my husband’s gentle prodding, we attended a barbecue for a new small group forming. There, we met the McKinneys and a few other couples from church. As I shucked corn in the kitchen alongside Elizabeth, she drew me in with engaging questions about everything from how we met our husbands to our dreams of visiting Disneyland. Meanwhile, my husband and Chris struck up a conversation about football and ribs. When the party ended, and we got in the car to leave, I leaned over to my husband and told him, "It might not be so bad here after all." I felt my icy attitude toward our new zip code begin to thaw.
Getting to know the McKinneys helped pull me out of self-imposed isolation. I started investing more in my relationship with the Lord and looking for other people struggling just as much, if not more than I was. My husband and I introduced ourselves to the neighbors who shared our backyard and discovered they were also facing infertility. We were able to encourage one another through the highs and lows of medical treatments. The two of them, along with the McKinneys and other friends, dropped off meals for us when adopted and brought home our son. The following Halloween, Elizabeth made our families coordinating costumes. Dressed as the Flintstones, we joined other neighbors and friends, pushing our strollers up and down the sidewalks in a trick-or-treating brigade.
These are the ways neighbors learn they're loved. Through small yet intentional interactions, we can share the hope of Christ with our neighbors in ways that no famous author, speaker, or social media influencer can accomplish. Reflecting on our years in Missouri, I can say with full assurance that God didn’t make a mistake transplanting us to that small town. He put us there for the same reason he placed the McKinneys in their neighborhood, and you in yours: to give and receive grace.
Whatever fences you’ve built up blocking you from engaging your neighbors, ask the Lord to open them wide. Look out your window, take a step toward connection, and help usher in the glorious neighborhood to come.
Jenn Hesse is a writer, editor, wife, and mother of two sons. She is the content developer at Waiting in Hope Ministries and has a passion for equipping others to know Christ through his Word. She writes at jennhesse.com and can be found on Twitter @jennmhesse.