Measuring Shalom (HL)

Our hope in Neighbourhood Life is to encourage the formation of a people of peace, or shalom, within every neighbourhood. We believe that neighbourhoods matter to God and that there is a plan afoot to have in every neighbourhood a group of people who would live into God’s dream for that neighbourhood.

What does Gods dream look like in your neighbourhood?

Well we are not entirely sure, but what we have observed is that in many neighbourhoods were people are attentive and active; there is lots of what we would call “vitality” or life.

Recently, the United Way of greater Toronto produced a paper entitled

“A Neighborhood Vitality Index, An Approach to Measuring Neighborhood Well-Being.”

Just the title of the paper indicates that it may be very important for us. The fact that this enterprise is interested in the Vitality of neighbourhoods is encouraging. We could legitimately say that in measuring the “Well-being” of the neighbourhood that we might be getting at the Shalom of the neighbourhood.

“Shalom” as you know is a profound concept that is at the heart of the Gods Good News. So in many ways this paper provides a lens through which we can look at neighbourhoods to see just what God is up to and where neighbours are at and how healthy the community might be. I think that this paper provides us with a great way to appreciate where God is at work and how he might be calling us to participate in our neighbourhood.

The paper begins by giving us a rational for why neighbourhoods matter and therefore why, full of life, or “Vital” neighbourhoods matter. They say that,

“For the past 20 years researchers have been increasingly concerned about neighbourhoods. Beginning with research on the impacts of concentrations of poverty and 'neighbourhood effects' on children’s learning and health outcomes, researchers have identified the neighbourhood as one significant determinant of success for individuals and for families."

Neighbourhoods are the constituent elements and are determinants of the cities’ ultimate success, as expressed in the Strong Neighbourhood Task Force Report:

"If our city is to remain strong and vibrant in the years to come, then its neighbourhoods must be places where people want to live. Parents must feel that neighbourhood streets are safe for their children to walk, and that local parks are safe places for their children to play. They must be assured that there are places for their teenagers to meet and get involved in sports and social events. They need to be confident that the shops and services that are a necessary part of daily life will be nearby and accessible. And they want to know that they will be welcomed and have a connection to their neighbours. Where we live matters to all of us.”

It is as if the paper is making a case for what we already know but have been unable to act on. In our western cities it has become easy to live as though neighbourhoods don’t matter, and build our lives around the consumption of goods and relationships. Some of us have become very good at crafting lives that transcend “place”, and so we land on the stage of networks and affinity groups. In our speaking we talk of our “community” when we should be speaking of our “neighbourhood”. We do this and so distort our experience of relationships and neglect our neighbourly obligations. We opt out of the neighbourhood and into the nowhere networks of relationships. Clearly the general flow of the dominant culture has been away from neighbourhoods and neighbourhood relationships. The first chapter of the report is summarized by words which point us back to our neighbourhood:

“Neighbourhoods are where life of the city, and the lives of its individual residents, plays themselves out. Because of this, strong neighbourhoods truly do matter. This sentiment echoes recent research on the significance of neighbourhoods across the English speaking world. Jim Ife, an Australian expert in community development, argues that there should be a renewed emphasis on local communities and away from communities of interest. He notes that many issues have physical manifestations or are based on relationships that occur in particular areas. As a result, efforts to address them should be rooted in a specific locality (Black and Hughes 2001: 11).”

Ministry is done by neighbourhood in the city.

Jeremiah 29:7
Seek the welfare of the neighbourhood where I have sent you, pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.