Do you think it matters to God how we live with others in our neighbourhood?

Jesus was clear that anyone we come in contact with is our neighbor. We must be looking for ways to love and serve the people around us. So while “neighbor” is a broad term, the best place to begin is with your literal neighbors: the people who live in your neighborhood. This is the most effective place to love your neighbor as yourself—including both the believers and unbelievers who live near you.

Within their neighborhoods, believers ought to gather to encourage one another to remain focused on the goal and mission of God. They are there to call one another to a life in which the gospel can be accurately displayed through both word and deed. They are to serve one another in such a way that unbelievers in that neighborhood will see and hear them reflecting God.

By practically living as a gospel community in our neighborhoods, we allow the unbelievers around us to understand the truth and impact of the gospel and to respond in love and worship to God. It is in our neighborhoods that our love for God and for His purposes ought to become evident and increase as we live out the life-changing truths of the gospel.

We have come to understand that God didn’t primarily leave us on this planet to improve our understanding of God, huddle people into groups, create more effective worship services, etc. Those are merely means God uses towards a much greater end. God left His precious church in this world so that followers of Christ might be made through the vehicle and power of the gospel for the purpose of drawing near to and worshipping the one who matters most: God (Matt. 22:36; 28:18-20; Heb. 10:19ff).

Out of this nearness to and love for God will come a group of people who have developed a heart for what He loves most. God’s heart is set on pursuing His glory, empowering His people, and reaching out to the broken and lost in this world. As the people of God, the church must be about reflecting God’s love in reaching out to the hurting world around us, calling them to become followers of Jesus (1 Pet. 2:4ff). The day you decided to follow Jesus—whether you understood it completely or not—you committed yourself to His mission. (Francis Chan)

To say it another way, you became a missionary.

God has saved you in order to make you a missionary to your neighbors, whom you are called to love as yourself. (Matthew 22)