Do you know how to offer, give & receive help?

The revolution starts now

In your own backyard

In your own hometown (SEarle)

Are you writing a neighbourhood love story with your life?

Fall in love with your neighbours/hood. God loves 'em!

Try looking in your neighbourhood...

Having a wide circle of friends helps middle-aged men and women have a greater sense of well-being, according to new research.

A network of relatives is also important, they found, but only for men.

We're not talking about Facebook-type friends. 

"Having more friends with whom we actually meet is important to our mental health. Not having friends at all is bad for our mental health. We need to treasure friends that we have." Dr. Noriko Cable

Even in a big city ...

... you can love God with all your heart, soul, mind & strength & love your neighbour as yourself.

Bear naked.

A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die. (Nikki Giovanni)

The Neighbour Challenge Week 4

Question:  Do you know your neighbours by their deficiencies or their gifts?

Challenge: Talk to one neighbour about what they know about, what they can do, and/or what they care about.

Life in the neighbourhood means...

... learning how to get along with others who are different from you.

How do you speak to your neighbours?

No preaching or lecturing - nobody wants to hear that in your neighbourhood.

It can be a challenge, because it asks a lot of a person’s soul to open yourself up to community.

Try sticking your neck out for a neighbour.

It may lead to a breakthrough.

Vocation is more about who you are than what you do

The purpose of every vocation, in all of the different spheres in which our multiple vocations occur — the family, the workplace, the culture, and the church — is to love and serve our neighbors. Loving God and loving our neighbors sums up our purpose (Matthew 22:36-40). Having been reconciled to God through Christ, we are then sent by God into the world to love and serve him by loving and serving our neighbors. This happens in vocation. So we can ask of every kind of work we doing, “Am I loving and serving my neighbor, or am I exploiting and tempting him?” (GVeith)

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. MTheresa

Never have Christians pursued relevance more strenuously than we currently do, and yet never have Christians been more irrelevant. (OGuiness)

Try raking some leaves instead of discussing theology.

Bake a pie & take it to a neighbour.

The Neighbour Challenge Week 3

Question: What are you good at?  What are you passionate about?

Challenge:
Write down three things that you know about.
Write down three things that you can do with your hands.
Write down three things that you are passionate about/care about.

It's all about relationships...

Choose not to drive out of your neighbourhood so much.

Make it fun!

Love your neighbour.

Who is going to make the first move?

If you could only see what God can see in your neighbourhood...

Will you do everything God said to do?

The Neighbour Challenge Week 2

Question:  What excuses do we make for not meeting our neighbours?

Challenge:  Introduce yourself to a neighbour you haven’t yet met.

What is God doing in this neighbourhood and how can I get on board with it?

The person who sows seeds of kindness enjoys a perpetual feast.

The Top 25 Neighbourhood's -

1. Give people a place to hang-out.

2. Give people something to see.

3. Give people something to do.

4. Give people a place to sit down.

5. Give people a safe, comfortable place to walk.

6. Give people a safe, comfortable place to bike.

7. Give people reliable, comfortable public transportation.

8. Make the streets safe – from crime.

9. Make the streets safe – from traffic.

10. Remember the streets belong to everyone, not just motorists.

11. Don’t forget about the needs of older neighbours.

12. Don’t forget about the needs of kids.

13. Let your community go to the dogs.

14. Reclaim front yards as social spaces.

15. Remember the best neighbourhoods, even in big cities, feel like villages.

16. Plan for winter weather as well as sunny, warm days.

17. Don’t fear density – people enjoy being around other people.

18. Don’t give up hope – great changes are possible when neighbours get together.

19. Build on what’s good in your community to make things even better.

20. Remember the power of the commons: people working together for the benefit of everyone in the neighbourhood.

21. Never underestimate the power of a shared meal to move people into action.

22. Start with small steps – like planting flowers.

23. Become a community booster, watchdog, patriot.

24. Learn from other neighbourhoods in your town and around the world.

25. Take the time to have fun and enjoy what’s already great about your neighbourhood.

The neighbourhood is the basic building block of humanity.

God Is Now Here in the neighbourhood -

Through You.

Our neighbourhoods are not under-resourced, they are under-relational.

Do your part.

How do you teach kids to take care of their neighbourhood?

Have them help keep it clean - go out in groups & families, picking up garbage & helping those who can't take care of their yards get things in order.

It'll give you a chance to serve together - and they'll get to see your real values in action.

The Neighbour Challenge- Week 1

Join us on a journey as we challenge ourselves to an honest assessment of how well we, “love our neighbour.”

Question:  What are the names of your neighbours?

Challenge:  Draw a diagram of your street with each house represented by a square.  Now label as many houses as you can by family name.  (If you’re really brave, draw the surrounding blocks as well) HT The Abundant Community/Seeking Community

If you live in a condo or apartment, start with your floor and expand to other floors or nearby houses/apartments.

You are the people of hope.

You are the people of the scriptures.

You are the people of the neighbourhood.

You are the hope of the world.

Fall into new relationships...

God offers us here and now, by the Spirit, a fresh kind of relationship with himself - and, at the same time, a fresh kind of relationship with our neighbours. (NT Wright)

The Lord himself comes, the teacher of love, full of love, ‘shortening the word upon the earth’, as was foretold of him. He shows that the law and the prophets depend on the two precepts of love. 

What those two commandments are, brethren, recall with me. They ought to be most familiar, and not come to mind just when they are mentioned by us; rather, they should never be blotted out from your hearts. Always, at all times, reflect that you must love God and your neighbour: God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; your neighbour as yourself. 

 At all times these must be pondered, they must be meditated and retained, they must be practised and fulfilled. The love of God comes first in the order of command, but the love of neighbour first in the order of action. The man who would teach you this love in two commandments should not commend to you first your neighbour and then God, but first God and then your neighbour. 

You do not yet see God, but by loving your neighbour you gain the sight of God; by loving your neighbour you purify your eye for seeing God, as John says clearly: If you do not love the brother whom you see, how will you be able to love God whom you do not see? 

You are told: love God. If you say to me: ‘Show me the one I am to love’, what shall I answer, except what John himself says: No one has ever seen God? Do not think that you are altogether unsuited to seeing God – no, for John states: God is love, and he who dwells in love is dwelling in God. Love your neighbour therefore, and observe the source of that love in you; there, as best you can, you will see God. So then, begin to love your neighbour. Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; if you see the naked, cover him, and do not despise the servants of your kinsfolk. If you do this, what will you obtain? Then shall your light break forth like the morning. Your light is your God to you he is ‘morning light’, because he will come to you after the night of the world; he neither rises nor sets, because he abides always. 

By loving your neighbour and being concerned about your neighbour, you make progress on your journey. Where is your journey, if not to the Lord God, to him whom we must love with all our heart, and with all soul, and with all our mind? We have not yet reached the Lord, but we have our neighbour with us. So then, support him with whom you are travelling so that you may come to him with whom you long to dwell. (Augustine of Hippo, 354-430)