Neighborhood Missional Living When I Am Too Busy

This post is part of the “Obstacles to Neighborhood Missional Living” series, and it is available on both the blog and podcast. To view all the topics in the series, including where to read or listen to the other posts/episodes, click here.

“How can we possibly add everyday mission to our already-packed fifteen-to-nineteen waking hours of each day?” ask the authors of A Field Guide for Everyday Mission. Perhaps this is a question you and I have asked with similar words—one that haunts us and simultaneously offers us permission to dismiss the nudge to live on mission. They continue: “The very thought is enough to overwhelm us and keep us from even trying.” We nod in agreement. But their next question is unexpected: “But what if that’s the wrong question?” The statement that follows hit dangerously close to home for me, a former we-need-to-say-yes-to-all-the-things type of mother: “God’s mission cannot be added into our busy lives; our busy lives must wrap around God’s mission” (Connelly and Roberts, Jr. 117). In this post/episode we are going to unpack how neighborhood missional living can take place in the midst of our busy lives.

When we are suddenly not busy.

Right now, many of us may be wishing we could be busy. Ironically, the blur of packed calendars and constant running is what eludes us, not the space to listen to our own thoughts. Perhaps like mine, your calendar has been gutted of all but what you can do from home. With our current reality being a foreign and unfamiliar amount of margin in our schedules, maybe we are assessing our priorities through a new lens. We might be hopeful we can carry more quality time with our family forward into the post-coronavirus season. There may be things deleted off your calendar you had no control over that you question whether you will add back in.

But this I ponder: perhaps during the disruption to our usual pace the fissures in our souls can begin to heal. Lulling the pace of schedules peels back the band-aid-remedies busyness afforded. What felt like it was crumbling that now has you undone on the inside? The Soul-Healer is busy even when we are not. He can be present in our homes even if no one else can currently enter. So let’s welcome Him now into those spaces we had barred His entry. He is waiting and willing.

Jesus, You are the Soul-Healer, and today, I desperately need You.

Would You come, Lord—and take the crumbling pieces of my life and identity in Your hands?

Thank you that You “[heal] the wounds of every shattered heart” (Psalm 147:3, TPT). Today would you heal the deep and shattered places within me as only You can do?

We don’t know how long it will be until we have the freedom to safely add things that pull us away from the four walls of our homes back onto our calendars. So during this this season of slow I wanted to encourage you keep offering to the Healer the things that need His touch as they surface. Please don’t shy away from the process as each layer removed takes you closer to the thing beneath the thing that He wants to restore. I read this morning in Romans 6:13 the exhortation to “passionately answer God’s call to keep yielding your body to him as one who has now experienced resurrection life! You live now for his pleasure, ready to be used for his noble purpose” (TPT). The CSB version highlights that we are to “offer . . . all the parts of [ourselves] to God.” All.

Deep dive into our calendars.

What is it about our calendars that drives us to keep it off limits to God? It might seem unimportant or overwhelming, or it may uncover feelings that make us comfortable. When I’ve invited Jesus to mine with me the why’s beneath what I pencil onto the pages of my calendar, I’ve run head on into fear, pride, selfishness, and apathy. When I avoid availability and vulnerability and instead fill my calendar with only what feels safe—that’s fear. When I seek to craft the life I want my kids to have rather than trust that God holds them in His hands, not I—that’s pride. When my eyes focus inward instead of upward and outward, my calendar follows suit—that’s selfishness. When I go on autopilot, not inviting God into conversation about how we as a family spend our time—that’s selfishness.

Today our calendar looks different than it did even a few years ago. I’ll give you a glimpse into it because I know practical and concrete examples can be helpful. However, I want to emphasize first that your calendar and your priorities are a conversation between you and God. The goal here is not to replicate, compare, or give up. If you’ve been listening or reading on the blog or Instagram for a while, you have probably heard me talking about baby steps. Leaning into living a life on mission often looks like one shaky baby step, followed by another, and another. If you long for your time to be used for God’s glory within your neighborhood as you live missionally right where you live, apply the same principle of baby steps.

Here are a few steps to guide you:

1. Open your hands palms up, a physical representation of how you want to posture your heart towards God. Then simply begin talking with Him. You might start with something like this: God, I am choosing to hold my calendar with open hands and offer You my open heart. Would you reveal to me what the rhythms and pace of my schedule say about what I believe to be true? Would You speak Your truth over any untruths I have been holding on to?
2. Listen. Lean in. Stay open. Prayer is conversation that involves both listening and responding.
3. Record. Is there a specific action step you feel God is asking you to take? Write it down. Then jot down the name of someone you can share your step with and ask them if you can be accountable to them.
4. Take action. Even if your step sounds very small when you say it aloud, it can feel much larger once you go to put it into action. Give yourself grace to feel the emotion. And then keep moving.
5. Repeat steps 1-4. Keep in mind that you want God to be at the helm at all times. The more you practice listening, the clearer His voice will be. The more you practice responding quickly, the easier it will be.

When it comes to living on mission, take every step forward in humility with the attitude of a life-long learner. God is growing things in you that are beautiful, and He will be faithful to complete the work that He started, but there will always be things that we can learn from and learn to do better.

With that, here are a few things I have learned—and relearned—along the way:

• Missional living is a lifestyle, not an activity I do at specific times. It is not limited to my neighborhood, but living missionally right where I live helps me integrate it into every aspect of my life, including when I am not at home.

• Doing life throughout the week with neighbors takes intentionality and visibility. We seek to be both purposeful with our time and visible to our neighbors through regularly doing things in the front yard that don’t have to be done inside or in the back yard.

• It is normal to feel inadequate—imperfectly ready. I don’t have to have it all the way figured out to begin from where and who I am today.

• When I offer my small—even my small amount of time—it grows once it leaves my hands.

Because of our more recent priority to do life with our neighbors, we’ve said some hard no’s to things that are good but limited time we could spend at home. We replaced near-daily karate with a once-a-week-piano lesson, playdates through a local playgroup with play with neighbor friends, and Friday evening events with weekly gatherings with our neighborhood-focused missional community. We don’t schedule much of our summer because this is prime time to play in the front yard and in the neighborhood. We ride bikes and scooters through the neighborhood, bring Barbie dolls and Baby Alives and Hot Wheel monster trucks outside, turn on the sprinkler, draw hopscotch and race tracks with chalk, bring out the gymnastics mat and turn on Kidz Bop on the Bluetooth speaker, and knock on neighbor friends’ doors to ask if they are able to play, to name a few of our favorites. My husband is great about jumping in to help with projects neighbors are working on, sharing tools, and asking for help. All of these are great opportunities to get to know our neighbors better.

Are you tired of the busy?

Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG) both comforted me and helped me let go of what I thought I wanted so I was free to embrace what was far more life-giving:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

Missional living “begins by simplifying your life as God rearranges your priorities and you spend more and more of your time living with God’s mission at the center of [your] life” (Kalinowski 48). Yet this is a rhythm that is freeing and light. It gives us purpose and community and rights the balance of our upward, outward, and inward priorities.

Further, missional living becomes, one step at a time, not something we add on to our busy life but the expression of who we are in Christ. It raises our eyes to notice and positions our hearts to include neighbors, so we invite neighbors to join us in some of the everyday things of our lives. We share meals, help watch each other’s kids, borrow and lend tools and grocery items, join each other for walks or bike ride through the neighborhood, gather to chat and play in each other’s yards and driveways, run errands together or for each other, and through it all, share naturally about rhythms God is cultivating in us. We choose to be present, vulnerable, and humble about our imperfections and give God His due glory.

We pause here for today, but I wanted to point you towards some additional reading on the blog that you might find helpful if you are wrestling with how to live missionally in your neighborhood when you are already so busy. Podcast listeners, the links I share on the blog will be listed in the show notes as well:

• Creating Margin
• Margin Meets Mission: The Gift of Availability
• The Paradox of Rest
• Summer in a Picture-Frame: Nos and Yeses

Thank you for joining me today—on the blog or the podcast. I am honored that you are here and excited that you are curious about living a life on mission right in your own neighborhood. May I pray with you before we part ways?

A prayer for the too busy.

Jesus, we invite You here right now. We accept Your healing touch. Would You reach deep within and uncover what our busyness has masked?

Remind us as we unpack the layers with You that You are patient and gentle and love us with unfailing love.

Teach us to listen to and treasure the sound of Your guiding voice as we choose to hold our calendars with open hands.

Would You walk with us as You begin to rewire our rhythms?

In Your holy name we pray. Amen.

Connelly, Ben and Bob Roberts Jr. A Field Guide for Everyday Mission: 30 Days and 101 Ways to Demonstrate the Gospel. Moody, 2014.

Kalinowski, Caesar. Small is Big, Slow is Fast: Living and Leading Your Family and Community on God’s Mission. Zondervan, 2014.

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