Why It Matters

Knocks at the door. Steaming food, fresh and delicious, placed on hot pads, spread across the counter. The smells waft through the air, tickling our senses, awakening something within us. Here is home. A safe place. A place to gather. A place to expand our definition of family.

Family eats together. Family converses with one another. Family jumps up without being asked to fill needs for one another. Family makes space for each other to breath and release the pressures of the week. Family chooses to choose, to prefer, one another. Family grows stronger together and grows us individually into better versions of ourselves. Family gives grace. Family is patient. Family is present.

Wait, wait, wait, you may be thinking. This is not what family looks like for me. There is a void as deep as the Grand Canyon, hurt as sharp as shards of shattered glass—and my hope has been numbed with waves of bone-chilling cold.

How can I create what I have yet to experience, make true for another what has never been true for me?

I don’t have a family of my own yet, or the family I do have is not here with me. I feel alone. Rejected. Torn. Damaged. Unlovable.

Dear hurting soul, I wish I could reach over and give your shoulders a squeeze and sit with you a moment in silence, letting you breathe. I wish I could cup my hand beneath your chin and gently lift your head. Because, friend, you may be rejected by those who were supposed to love you best. Your heart may be torn by choices you had no control over. You may feel you are trying to hold your damaged, broken heart together, and it’s seeping out between the cracks of your fingers and you have no way to stop it. You may feel that there is nothing within you of value, nothing worth treasuring, nothing worth the love of someone else.

But you are not alone. There is a God, the one who fashioned you in his very own image, and he sees you. If you dare to lift your eyes, you will be met with a love beyond measure. He has not rejected you. If fact, he was rejected, for you. He feels the pain you feel. He felt your pain, and the all the other pains that had been and would be. There, torn, bruised, and broken, he felt it all. And he says that you make his heart stop. He is insanely in love with you. You. He says you are full of value, because he gave it to you, so worth treasuring, so very worth loving.

And this God, the one who loves you, he created you not to solely be in relationship with him, but in relationship with others. Community. Belonging.

Community.

Belonging.

This is why we invite neighbors and friends into our home. This is why we share meals every Friday. This is why we gather, and converse, and encourage, and open up, and serve each other, and serve others together, and learn to do life together, less as neighbors and friends, and more as family. This is why it matters.

Because we are better together.

Because we were not created to live this life of ours alone.

Because discipleship cannot happen without community.

Because knowing and being known breaks open your heart and lets God in in ways you might never have expected.

Because people matter to God, so they matter to us.

Because we may not be able to choose our neighbors, or our family, but we can choose to treat neighbors like family.

Something happens when we begin to love those not living under our roof and treat them as family, because we choose to. We stop seeing our needs, and the needs of our neighbors, as isolated needs with no ripple effect beyond the walls of our individual homes. Instead, we share and borrow, receive and give, help and are helped. If we are cooking chili and are short on the chili seasoning, we can ask someone a door or two down if we may borrow some instead of rushing over to the grocery store. If we rent a yard tool for 24 hours to flatten out our lawn, we can let as many neighbors as possible use it before we need to return it. When someone has a baby or an unexpected surgery, we can all help lighten the load by walking meals over at dinnertime. We help each other with yard work, and carrying heavy stuff, and fixing broken things, and watching kids, and the list continues.

We are better together.

The things that matter to us—we make space and time for them. We fit them into our rhythms of normal. They become predictable parts of our lives.

For us, this looks like the rhythm of gathering with friends and neighbors every Friday evening. We usually just call it group—but in essence, we are a missional community with a specific focus on our neighborhood. The first hour is reserved for sharing a meal. Usually we pick a theme—like Italian, Mexican, appetizer night, breakfast for dinner, or Costco favorites—and everyone brings something to contribute. The second hour, which often goes past the hour, a sitter or two watches the kids in the basement or outside while the adults have discussion time. We use Right Now media as there are scores of incredible video teaching available, many of which also have discussion questions crafted. If we have time, we share and pray for each other’s prayer requests.

Our summer rhythm looks a little different. Last summer we pressed through Right Now media series despite fluctuating numbers, but we are trying a less structured summer this year to be more adaptable to vacation schedules and summer spontaneity. So far we have had separate ladies and guys nights, some whole family hang out nights, and a night of filling a need we identified within our neighborhood—something we want to make a regular practice of as well.

Our gatherings on Friday nights is not the end goal, however, so much as it is a piece of the puzzle. As I talked about in “The Uncommon Normal: Behind the Name,” you don’t have to start a missional community to live missionally in your neighborhood. We gather because it is #thenextrightthing for us. It may not be the right timing yet for you, and that’s ok. You can still foster community amongst your neighbors without meeting together as a large group inside your home. Cultivating community within your neighborhood that resembles a big, extended family will take time, and it also may not look exactly the same for you as it does for your friend, or for your sister.

Where can you start today?

Perhaps a few minutes of silence to pray, reflect, and listen will help clarify this for you. Feel free to use the following steps as a guide:

1. What could community within your neighborhood look like? I invite you to ask, and to wait in silence for what God brings to mind. Jot down notes so you don’t lose the picture you’ve visualized.

• Next, pray for what #thenextrightthing is for you. Give yourself grace to start small, to start from where and who you are today. Give God space to grow your faith as you trust him to meet you in the midst of moving forward with the next step you identified.

• Talk to someone else about what is stirring in you. Share #thenextrightthing you wrote down. You are so much more likely to follow through on it if you have told someone else about your plan.

Here are some practical, action steps you might consider if you feel you want more direction. Does one of them jump out at you? Pray about whether this is your next right step.

• Bake cookies and bring a plate over to an elderly neighbor, just because. If you are feeling extra brave, ask beforehand if they have a favorite kind of cookies.
• Take a walk through your neighborhood. If someone is out weeding flowers, stop to admire the flowers and ask them which one is their favorite.
• You notice balloons and extra cars parked at a neighbor’s house. The next time you see that neighbor outside, stop to ask them who they were celebrating.
• You may not have space to invite a whole lot of people over at once, but do you have space to invite one family, a couple, or a neighbor living alone to join you for dinner?
• Stock up on some extra popsicles, and bring sidewalk chalk out to the front of house. If any kids are nearby, offer them a popsicle and invite them to play hopscotch (which you can draw with chalk).
• Notice your next-door neighbor working in the back yard? Walk over to the fence and offer to help.
• Smile and wave at cars driving past your house.
• Talk to neighbors out walking their dogs. You might start the conversation like this: “I know I can always count on seeing you out walking your dog. Hey, what’s the story behind how you got this dog, by the way?”
• Notice a neighbor is packing their van? Ask them if they are heading out for vacation and if they could use some help getting their trash cans out to the curb on garbage pick-up day.
• Have you lived in your neighborhood for years and know very few of your neighbors? Try this conversation starter: “I’d like to get better at knowing my neighbors. I’m sorry I’ve never introduced myself before. I’m ____. What’s your name?”
• You’re in the middle of cooking and find you are short an egg, or a teaspoon of baking powder. Instead of running frantically over to the store, knock on a neighbor’s door and ask if they have extra of that ingredient you could have. Assure them that you would love for them to ask you too whenever they have need for an ingredient.
• Signing your kid up for a dance class, soccer, a summer camp? Ask a neighbor with a child a similar age if they might like to register as well.

Intentionally loving and serving your neighbors, making space for them in your lives, and leaning into discipleship opportunities in the everyday moments of doing life together—this is what missional living in our neighborhoods is about. We do it for each other, because our faith without action grows stale, because we were not made to live isolated and alone, because a life worth imitating is forged in the alone with Him and shared through discipleship.

Lord, you hear the cry of our hearts for community, for belonging, to be not alone. Thank you for creating us with this desire, and please speak to our hearts about how we can begin to cultivate true community right in our own neighborhoods. Lord, would you guide us to what the next right step is for us. Help us to treat our neighbors like family, live a life worth imitating, and foster growth through discipling in the everyday moments of doing life together. Amen.