COVID-19: The Art of Neighboring in the Midst of a Pandemic (Part 3)
“Do you know what good news sounds like to your neighbor?”
Be careful before you answer this question.
In the art of neighboring we are not talking about what good news sounds like to you; this is about what it sounds, looks, smells, and feels, like to your neighbors. And most often the story we tell may look or sound different depending on who you are talking with. It requires us getting to know them rather than simply talking at them. It is offering friendship and sharing our lives with one another; an exchange of gifts as we help each other.
Relax. This isn’t about changing the message and getting into some kind of heresy. We are talking about finding a better way to tell the story of Jesus Christ, a way that actually sounds interesting to the people listening to us.
One of the first things any missionary must do is discover what the good news sounds like to the people around them. It is the art of neighboring lived out in a really practical way and every follower of Jesus needs to know how to do it.
Neighborhood Missionaries
cross-over into the lives of their neighbors to find a way to build friendship and share the good news: the kingdom of God has come near.
As a missionary to your neighborhood it is imperative you figure out the best way to share with your neighbors that the kingdom of God has come near them. If followers of Jesus hope to exchange gifts with our neighbors and bring any substantial change to their lives we must tell a better, more compelling story than any competing narrative they believe. Not only that, we must tell the story better than we have been telling it before.
This is especially true if during this Coronavirus pandemic we hope to have anyone listening. We need to be the missionaries Jesus commissioned us to be and rewrite the narrative so we can tell a more interesting, compelling, story revealing the wild nature of Christ’s love for us all.
The people of peace God has placed in our lives need to know and experience “the way” and they will most likely find it through their friends (you and me). This is the art of neighboring and we are mobilizing a missionary movement of people just like you to live it out.
Go ahead and make a difference in your neighborhood during this crisis through simple acts of kindness. Take care of one another, be generous in heart, and tell a better story of Christ’s love than whatever narrative has captured their hearts before.
Join us.