My spiritual director Marylin, a serial cat-lover, recommended I read We’ll Prescribe You a Cat. It’s a series of linked short stories, each following an individual who goes, in emotional misery and desperation, to a mysterious doctor’s office. The doctor infallibly prescribes a pet cat as the cure. Somehow, the cat transforms the person’s life: a dyspeptic, ignored husband bonds with his wife and daughter over their new feline; a young worker crippled by anxiety at a high-stress, thankless office job is introduced, via cat, to a new job and work family in the construction industry, where he thrives.

My husband hates cats (the heathen!) so my family of five doesn’t own one. We do have two bunnies, one who is the sweetest, mildest, softest creature imaginable, and one who might be possessed. About four years ago, we and our buns moved into a suburban enclave within a large city. Although I am individually an off-the-charts introvert, as a family unit we are highly social, hospitable people who had built a large network of friends in our former location.

Yet we have never managed to connect well with our new neighbors. We’ve tried. We had a fitful start when our daughter went for four months to the neighborhood elementary school and we could walk her there and back with some of the other families, but then she graduated and went to a middle school several miles away. Those meeting points evaporated.

Other aspects of suburban sprawl are also to blame. When you have to drive everywhere, you simply don’t run into your neighbors as much. When nearly everyone has a back yard with their own pool and all the homes are set far back from the street, there isn’t a vibrant front porch and yard life. We haven’t found a neighborhood church, depriving us of a natural place for forming relationships. Our divided society also plays a role. Coincidentally or not, about the same time we voted for the “wrong” House candidate, some of the neighbors we did know stopped inviting our daughter over for playdates.

Then we got a puppy. And everything changed.

In October, we brought home a 9-week-old Goldendoodle. We named him Tofu, in honor of his nearly white fur and my side of the family’s Asian heritage. Tofu looks as much like a Muppet as a dog can possibly look. He has a wide mouth with a lolling tongue, dark round eyes and a big black nose, gangly legs and oversized paws, and an explosion of fuzz.

It turns out that when you are walking an adorable, bumbling canine through your neighborhood six times a day, people that you barely knew existed and certainly couldn’t have cared less about you, suddenly become more solid and friendly. Some of them don’t have dogs of their own but can’t resist a puppy, especially one who runs up to every person he sees, wagging his tail, and begging for attention with his melting, hopeful eyes. But most of the people who we have gotten to know are fellow dog owners. Hardly a walk goes by when I don’t run into at least one person and their dog. And I keep meeting new human/pooch pairs, even five months later.

Across the street to our left: Raider (named after the football team) the German Shepherd and his parents. Around the corner: Mia, a tank-sized Cane Corso and her family, including a 9-month old she could probably eat with one gulp but thankfully doesn’t. There’s an Asian American woman who walks her oversized dandelion Samoyed and a tiny fox-colored Cavapoo that yips with every step—you can hear her coming a block away. There’s a suave middle-aged Italian man with salt and pepper hair who owns Smokey, a bulgy-eyed, snorting, salt and pepper pug. On the far side of the block a young man with Down’s syndrome walks his pocket-sized dog. I could go on for a while.

No one ever yells my name when we are out for walks. But Tofu gets shout outs all the time. Adults and children cross the street to pet him. They bring their dogs to sniff noses. Once a minivan screeched to a halt in front of us and the kids inside piled out, screaming “Tofu!”

All that to say: For years, we knew hardly anyone in our neighborhood and those we did know hardly ever spoke to us. With Tofu galumphing beside me, I have conversations with all sorts of people. We exchange smiles and small talk and pet each other’s pups. We don’t talk (yet) about much besides our dogs, and I still know more dog names than people names. But everyone in my family has had more interactions with our neighbors in the past five months than in the past four years.

Do you, too, want to get to know your neighbors when the entire structure of society seems stacked against you? Then I prescribe you a dog.

Last night, there was a soft rap on the door. Seventeen-year-old Mebratu stood in the darkening shadows of my front porch holding a vessel of home-cooked Eritrean goodness. This was the third time this week that my neighbor Semira made us a meal. Having learned I was down with the flu, she was determined that I would be fed!

I often talk about how sharing life to embody love in the neighborhood cultivates God’s healing presence in our everyday lives, healing our deep fragmentation, isolation, and disconnection. This wide hospitality of God’s kingdom extends to our neighbors—and yet it also extends to us…even to me.

I desperately need my neighbor.

What a humbling experience it is to be cared for by my neighbors. This wasn’t the first time I’ve been the recipient of beautiful hospitality. After a foot surgery, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of my neighbors, who brought me delicious, home-cooked meals. To be perfectly honest, it was both uncomfortable and glorious all at the same time. Surely, I didn’t need this extravagance of riches (we could have mustered something up). But what an astonishing thing to receive such abundance!

Another time, my husband and I had opened our home to strangers in the midst of crisis. We were feeling especially exhausted and overwhelmed when a neighbor came by providentially with a dozen freshly made tamales left over from a party. We almost cried.

I remember being introduced to this idea of “receiving the hospitality of our neighbor.” I was captured by Alan Roxburgh’s words in his book, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, as he explored what it means to be the church amid upheaval and cultural shifts. He talked about the narrative in Luke 10:1-12 of the seventy-two being sent out as an important hermeneutic for joining God’s work of healing in the world. The disciples were sent out as strangers without baggage who would be in need of hospitality from people of the small villages. It challenged my thinking in the best possible way.

“We cannot ask the question of what God is up to in our neighborhoods and communities when we think we already know… In a time of boundary breaking, when settled assumptions of how God ought to work and what the church is supposed to be are undermined, when our assumptions about how it was all supposed to turn out are no longer viable, then we must take a radically different road. We must leave our baggage behind and be willing to become like a stranger in need of the welcome and care of the other if we stand any chance of answering the questions, What is God up to in our world today?” (Roxborough, p.127)

As Christians steeped in a Western imperial worldview, we often strategize about what we can do or offer to love our neighbor. I am no exception. I am a “hostess with the mostest” and frequently plan all kinds of neighborhood dinners and parties. Yet Jesus is always reversing the script. In the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan, the neighbor is not the expected religious guy but rather the surprising outsider (who may have been categorized as the “unreached” or one in need).

What if we are the ones desperately in need of “salvation” (healing salve) from the harm of individualism? What if we are the ones robbed by consumerism and hurt from frenzied distraction, lying on the side of the road? What if it is we who are being invited to repent from the ways we have ignored the common good and our interdependence as neighbors? What if we are being asked to give up the privilege of distance and leave our “baggage” behind?

I believe the gospel invites us into the surprise and mutuality of a new community of radical belonging broken open by the boundary-breaking Spirit into the lives of our neighbors.

For we are tempted to forget our great need for one another—that we are hard-wired for community, communion, and collaboration. We live in a time of exile, often disconnected from the land, our bodies, our local economies, our political will for the common good, and most importantly, our connection to God and one another. We are tempted to forget that we belong to each other.

For our flourishing is bound up in the flourishing of our most vulnerable neighbors. These are the ones Jesus centers—the poor, the broken-hearted, the hungry, the meek, the merciful, the humble, and the abused. These are the blessed ones who receive God’s kingdom of love and liberation (Matthew 5:1-12). I strongly suspect that we have far more to learn and receive from our most unlikely neighbors than we have to give. I know this is true for me. In talking with my friend, Semira, who by her tax status might be deemed “poor” and yet who is the most generous person in the neighborhood, we decided that we were rich, very rich indeed!

The good news is that we are invited to receive the gift of our neighbor.

I am reminded of this in many small, ordinary and yet extraordinary moments in my neighborhood…in autumn pumpkins and beautiful flower bouquets showing up unexpectedly on my porch…in surprise “taste-testing” deliveries of fresh donuts or rosemary focaccia…in hand-written cards delivered by my neighbors with disabilities…in the gift of my neighbor’s truck to haul not one, but two loads to the thrift store after our rummage sale…in countless kindnesses, texts, and conversations…every time my 80-year-old neighbor, who is one of the “pure-in-heart,” passes by my house, she tells me, “Jessica, you are so beautiful. I love you.” And these words heal me, liberate me from my captivity, and make me whole.

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As most of you know, “Rule of Life” as a distinct religious term emerged with the rise of monasticism. Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictines in the early 6th century of the modern era, presented the most articulate Rule of Life of his time for his nascent community, setting the standard for the many monastic orders that would follow. But in principle, a Rule of Life is nothing new and was already expressed by the earliest Christians. (Look up the term “Haustafeln” in relationship to the primitive church.) But it goes back even further. A half century earlier in the flowering of Greek philosophy, the Stoics, Cynics, Epicureans, Platonists and every other philosophical school had a Rule of Life, even if they didn’t name it so.

Rules of Life are born out of a human instinct and answer a very simple but hugely important question: “How do I live and arrange my life in such a way that I consistently express my deepest convictions, the things I believe are most important?” Phrased differently: “How do I arrange my time and activities so that they consistently reflect my worldview and take me toward the fullest expression of that?”

In essence then, we can think of a Rule of Life as a tool for taking both the “Life of the Mind” and “Life of the Heart” and integrating them more fully and intelligently into the “Life of Body.” It’s an intentional movement toward unity. In the language of the Enneagram, it’s about working in the top Triad (aka, sexual / gut / instinctual/ somatic) so that you mark up your little corner of the world in a way you believe is best.

If, like me, you carry the conviction that neighborhoods present one of the greatest opportunities to actually love your love your neighbor; and if you believe as I do that neighborhoods are fundamental, non-negotiable ecologies for human thriving; and if you agree with me that always driving elsewhere for the life you want just sucks (am I just lazy now?)—then you need a Neighborhood Rule of Life. This is especially important for people like me. I’m an Enneagram 4 with a dominant 5 wing. Enneatype 4s are better observers than actors, and Ennetype 5 are the world’s greatest observers. So with my combo, I’m hosed if there’s nothing to hold my feet to the fire. My top six strengths on the StrengthsFinder test are all strategic (strategy, ideation, intellection, future, learning and input), but where’s the execution, achievement and all those “get-it-done” qualities that I’m prone to envy in other people? (We 4s are well versed in envy.) For me a Rule of Neighborhood Life, reviewed daily, is a non-negotiable if anything is to get done.

For the sake of illustration, I’ve attached two pages from my own Neighborhood Rule of Life for you to inspect. (And special thanks to Jeff Printy in Rochester NY for sitting with me recently for a day as we discussed Neighborhood Rules of Life and put pen to paper.) It’s just a list of actions I commit to, but consistent action is a saving grace for me. I hope it nudges you to craft a Neighborhood Rule of Life tailored to your own unique context, taking into account your desires, street-level realities, and availability.

Peace to you. Or as Benedict would say, Pax vobiscum

Next Tuesday, Feb 17, 7:00-7:45pm Eastern, Jessica Ketola (Seattle) and David Nixon (Columbus) will be hosting an online meeting for those interested in joining our upcoming cohorts in the School of Neighborhood Life. If the following dovetails with where you find yourself right now, we’d love for you to join us.

• I believe neighborhoods are potentially one of the richest ecologies for human flourishing

• I believe the most natural and accessible opportunities to actually “love my neighbor” exist right outside my front door

• I’m no longer interested in or drawn toward the big deal, the latest and greatest

• I think the current and dominant model of church (brick & mortar, attempting to draw in people from a wide geographical area) isn’t working well in building community and making disciples

• The prospect of a simple gathering in my home (or a home I can easily walk to) with a few other believers to share a meal+ eucharist, meditate on Scripture, pray for one another and our neighborhood is very appealing to me

• I’m more interested in loving my neighbors unconditionally than in figuring out how to talk to them about Jesus

• The bait and switch approach—get to know others for the purpose of sharing the gospel—feels disingenuous to me

• I’m already making some modest efforts to connect with others where I live

• I often think about how to draw in and include others relationally

• I often wish I could learn from and be encouraged by others who are already doing this

• I often wish I could be in a community of like-minded people who carry this same vision

• I think it would be awesome to see coordinated efforts like this flower into a movement that re-energizes the Church

Zoom

Meeting ID: 849 2544 0923

Passcode: 227838

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84925440923?pwd=qr2RE4d8Pv3hxYYgQ3DOh9B9A3vr0G.1

For RVSPs or questions, please contact us at snl@sustainablefaith.com.

We hope to see you at our meeting!

Dave Nixon, Co-Director

Jessica Ketola, Co-Director

The School of Neighborhood Life

Part I: 9/11

When the towers fell on September 11, 2001, our little team of church planters— our two co-pastors and about a dozen people (mostly young families, couples, and singles) from our neighborhood in Queens, NY—had already spent the summer laying the groundwork for a new neighborhood church. Many of us already hosted home groups as part of a large, established church in Manhattan, but we had a vision for a daughter church where we lived. At the time, our little area on the East River was an up-and-coming neighborhood, slowly transforming from a historically Greek enclave with pockets of Middle Easterners to a diverse mix of young people who wanted proximity to the city, lower rent, and less crowded streets.

As the church launch team, we had regular meetings in a member’s home to plan and dream together. (The home was an ancient, neglected property that the owners had bought and were in the midst of refurbishing. One night, several months in the future, a huge wooden beam used to prop up the ceiling crashed down—right where our sleeping baby had been only a few minutes ago.) We had soft-launched with a small worship night, but had not met yet for a regular service as a congregation. And we had another worship night planned for Wednesday, September 19th that we hoped would bring more people.

Then September 11 came. My husband worked in the East Village of Manhattan and watched the South Tower fall from his workplace’s roof. He drove home quickly before the bridges out of Manhattan closed to car traffic. (I was eight months pregnant and not at work that day.) By the time he made it home, the North Tower had also fallen. The city shut down all public transportation—buses, subways, ferries—and many of our friends had to walk miles on a mass-exodus out of the city, not arriving home for hours. This was before everyone had a cellphone, and people spent all day trying to account for their loved ones. None of us lost anyone close to us, but for so many that wasn’t the case.

One of our friends on the launch team worked in the World Financial Center, right next to the Towers. He saw people jumping from the upper floors to avoid being burned alive. Another was a bank executive in the South Tower. A general order went out to stay put—not to evacuate—but she ignored it and let her whole office down more than 80 flights of stairs to safety.

By nightfall, some of our home group and their friends in the neighborhood had already gathered for companionship and comfort. My husband and I had a little one bedroom apartment with a hole in the ceiling where a mouse had chewed through, yet all of us crowded together in our living room for the sake of being with each other. For the next week or two, when none of us could go to work, we didn’t know if there would be more attacks, and the list of the dead kept growing, we spent every day with our nascent church family. We were in each others’ homes, praying, sharing meals, watching CNN’s endless coverage. Our worship night, a week after the towers’ destruction, became a quiet, holy time to gather, mourn, and intercede for our city and world. And to be thankful that God had brought us together before this tragedy happened, so we all could be there for each other.

Our church was formed in those two weeks of confusion, fear, sadness, and togetherness. We were already neighbors and, to varying degrees, friends, but the events of 9/11 bound us deeper, faster than anything else could have. The hospitality of gathering in different homes—not just for official church events but nearly every night of the week—became a pattern that built the church and defined who we were: people who lived together, day by day, in generosity, mutual dependence, and gratitude for what God was doing in our neighborhood and lives.

Part II: Finding a Home

At the time our church launched in our Queens, NY neighborhood, my husband and I were poor, young, and about to be parents. We were renting a one-bedroom apartment in a two-family house owned by elderly Greek immigrants with two large (thankfully gentle!) Rottweilers. With my husband working for a homeless mission and me in graduate school, our prospects of home-ownership were . . . not good.

The church’s co-pastor and his wife were also having housing dilemmas. They needed to move into the neighborhood and were similarly strapped for cash. My husband had a crazy idea. What if we purchased a two family home with the co-pastor and his wife, two lovely Christian people we had nevertheless just met?

This was not a smart thing to do. Our lawyer strongly advised us against it. We also had no business getting a mortgage, either together or separately. But this was in the thick of the sub-prime mortgage boom, the one that would soon cause a financial crisis, and someone was willing to give us over 100% financing. And we were desperate enough—or perhaps you might say audacious enough—to take it. Together, we bought a little two family house with an additional basement apartment. We lived on the second floor and attic; the pastors lived on the first floor and part of the basement; and my sister moved into the tiny basement apartment with her splenetic cat.

This house was not nice or well-built. It had been constructed as a “tenement alternative” and it was, in fact, not as bad as a tenement. Our kitchen cabinets were rotting and the bathroom tiles had large gaps that the roaches came through. The floors were done in filthy vinyl squares. The second floor sagged in the middle. The house was right next to a tile warehouse, and between us and the warehouse was a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire.

But it was ours. And it had a large front yard, something quite uncommon in NYC. And we quickly discovered that we and our new co-owners had something in common: We liked to have people over. A lot of people, all the time. And we all liked to barbecue. In fact, they were Brazilians, so they really liked to barbecue.

Within no time at all, it seemed like folks from the church began to nearly live at our shared house. When weather permitted, we grilled outdoors. When it didn’t, we gathered in one or both of the main apartments. Between our co-owners and us, we often had people over 6 or 7 nights a week. Most Sundays, we would leave church and come to our house with whoever we were having over. During the summers, we had movie nights, projecting films onto a white sheet we attached to the barbed wire fence. For our daughter’s first birthday, we crammed so many people into our apartment that we were afraid the sagging floor might actually collapse.

We stayed in that house for 4 years. We sold it—thanks to God’s special protection for fools and children—just before the bottom dropped out of the housing market. But we were there long enough to cement the pattern that began in the weeks after September 11th, a church of neighbors who shared daily life together, with gatherings taking place in different homes throughout the week. And our co-owners became dear, lifelong friends who are now godparents to our three children. We even continued living with them after the house sold, moving into a two-family rental in a different part of the neighborhood, where we continued our joint hospitality/church ministry for several more years.

Because of the foolish risk we took in buying a home together—and because God took care of us in our desperation and need for housing—we formed our closest friendships and continued forging a neighborhood church of people who were truly part of each other’s lives. From the ashes of 9/11 and in a ramshackle house with a big lawn in an iffy neighborhood, God created a beautiful community.

Photo by Soly Moses

There’s something new in the air on Hansen Ave.

For winter solstice, we hosted our neighbors around a fire pit. Dave invited anyone who’d like to share something they hope for the new year. There was the initial uncomfortable silence, but it hadn't lasted but a minute when someone chimed in with a simple, practical hope. Then another chimed in, then another who shared she hoped her cat would be more friendly. And then somehow, our neighbor who is typically quite hesitant to join these neighborhood gatherings let alone speak aloud in front of everyone, shared that she hoped we could all act out of kindness— just be kind—and gave a mini, three minute talk about the importance of kindness. Whoa. From there others chimed in about hoping for more love among people in general, more acceptance of those not like you, etc.

Wow.

In the couple of days following, I looked out my front window and saw a lady who lives a few houses down carrying a cookie tin to another neighbor’s house. Then she went home and got another tin and walked farther down the street. At some point she brought a cookie tin to our house as well. Then I saw another neighbor walking house to house delivering Christmas cards. I learned from my son that my daughter-in-law, who lives next door, had been baking cookies for a few days to share with the neighbors. I’ve lived here for 10 years and I’ve never seen anyone walk up and down the street sharing Christmas goodies. I used to make treats every year for the neighbors, then go deliver them. We never got anything in return, and I got tired over the years, so last year I did nothing.

This year, as I saw other neighbors spreading cheer, I decided I should get in on it as well. I spent a day making chocolate sauce and bagging it up. Yesterday I went out to deliver, walking up and down the street. After delivering the last one, I was walking home and I saw a single guy who lives down the street with his elderly mom waving at me from his front door. This guy has been quite a recluse in past years, yet this year he began emerging and attending the coffee hours that Dave has hosted on the front lawn. Dave has welcomed him so warmly and spent time listening to him, and he’s begun to smile and wave at us when he sees us outside.

And now he was waving at me. He asked if I had a minute, and I walked over. He told me thanks for the gift, then handed me a box, and said he wanted to return the kindness. I was so touched; I told him thank you so much and Merry Christmas. Dave and I opened the box at home and found a huge tin of mixed nuts. It was obviously being “re-gifted” as it’d been opened already, but honestly, the gift was the smile on this man’s face as he extended a kindness in return for kindness.

Then last night as we drove home from an outing, we saw a young family walking down the street, going door to door, handing out little bags of cookies. The little girl’s face beamed as she handed my husband a bag, saying she’d helped bake them herself.

This is all new. This is all precious. This is all so full of hope. This is all because one man decided he wanted to love his neighbors, to bring them together in simple ways, to give them an opportunity to know each other by pouring them a cup of coffee on the front lawn. People want to be seen and heard. Kindness and inclusion brings hope.

This week, between Christmas and New Year’s, when everyone is wandering around, filled with cheese and not knowing what day it is, often feels like a lull, or a collapse after the exhaustion of festivities, or even the end of the season as the presents are unwrapped, leaving behind only the scattered remnants of glitter and bows. But in truth, this pause is a holy pause as we celebrate the twelve days of Christmas.

Christ has come, our Emmanuel. God is with us. God, who came with skin and sinew, flesh and blood, as the Son of Man, the Human One, moved into the neighborhood to live with us. Jesus, who came in weakness and need, humility and dependence, a babe in a manger, entered the gritty particularities of our banal experience to show us what it means to be human.

This mystery of the incarnation is astonishing, breath-taking, confounding, and worthy of our contemplation this week and every week. For we are tempted to focus on the divinity of an all-powerful God while easily ignoring the scandal of a God who revealed his true nature through vulnerability, solidarity, proximity, and presence.

Presence.

This is the true miracle of Christmas.

Amid the deep fractures of sin, violence, and animosity between God, self, neighbor, and the rest of creation, our salvation comes through Christ’s healing presence, Love with skin on, reaching out a hand to us.

For isn’t this the one thing we all long for and cannot do without? We all ache to be seen, known, and loved. In fact, there is no greater suffering than to feel alone and discarded. We cannot thrive without human touch and connection. We are hard-wired for love and relationship.

Whether in times of celebration or heartbreak, the thing we long for most is for those we care about to show up. And to show up big, right?

Just the mere fact that they are present speaks volumes: the vibration of their voice, the comfort of their embrace, the assurance in their eyes, the fragile emotion reflected back to us in their faces — all visceral signs that we are not alone. No matter what we face, it is somehow less egregious if we face it together.

This is the gift of the Human One, who looks deeply into our faces with his tender, loving gaze, sees the unseen, and touches the untouchable.

Yet today, the suffering of the unseen and untouched is great in our neighborhoods. Amid societal fragmentation, deep divides, and an epidemic of loneliness, Jesus invites us into the ministry of presence.

We are invited to give up our privilege of comfort and distance to enter into the worlds of our neighbors—to share in the hopes and aches of a particular place and people. Christ’s solidarity invites us to see those who are overlooked and to reach out our hands to one another and not let go.

In my neighborhood, we are learning what this means. Admittedly, it is challenging. As we share life in proximity and seek to accompany our vulnerable neighbors, we experience the disruption, hurt, betrayal, forgiveness, wonder, joy, and inconvenience of love. It is so costly. Love demands all. Yet at the same time, love is our salvation. For love begins to heal our great fragmentation, our calloused hearts, our indifference, our isolation, and our wounds…as we move through fear toward solidarity and presence.

This is the good news that the angels sang and the shepherds proclaimed. We are not alone or forgotten. God has come close. Peace is here. Wholeness is possible. A stitching together of what is torn. A healing of what empire fractures. A restoration of flourishing for those who’ve been cast aside. Jesus has come in the ultimate act of solidarity to enter into the darkness of our suffering, revealing a new humanity—a humanity healed, reconnected, and restored to God and one another.

This is the greatest gift we can receive and offer—the gift of presence.

For it has the power to heal us all.

This week, I find myself profoundly grateful. Gratitude bubbles up like effervescent hope, bursting open like the celebration of sparkling wine that many will pop open around Thanksgiving tables. I am grateful for the many gifts of neighbors, the goodness of community emerging, and a long-held dream coming to fruition.

This dream wasn’t always visible. A dream that I believe is God’s dream. I could see it with the eyes of faith, and I tried my best to find language to describe it. Yet in truth, it sounded like babble to most.

For this is not the way life is structured in the twenty-first century—oriented around our autonomy, fierce individualism, hypermobility, and personal freedom that trumps the common good. Amid the relentless barrage of technology and information, our screens are a poor substitute for true friendship and connection. In the fragmentation of life, we often travel in isolation, confined to cages with wheels, from garage to work and then back to the garage again.

So this idea of loving neighbor and sharing life together in a way that heals our fragmentation is both shockingly foreign and deeply familiar, beckoning us back to the community we are made for. Yet how do we begin to weave together a fabric of love that supports vulnerable neighbors, redistributes resources, and embodies God’s vision of the beloved community where everyone belongs and has enough? How do we envision heaven here on earth?

The Word became flesh and blood,
 and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
 the one-of-a-kind glory,
 like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
 true from start to finish…
We all live off his generous abundance,
 gift after gift after gift…
No one has ever seen God,
 not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
 who exists at the very heart of the Father,
 has made him plain as day. (John 1:14-16 MSG)

Admittedly, our story of The Practicing Church is light-years away from idyllic, full of the kind of heartbreak, betrayal, drama, long-suffering, grit, and redemption found in the best stories. Yet I see glimpses of heaven here on earth, pushing up from the dark soil of our neighborhood. New life. New connections. New ways of belonging. Gift upon gift upon gift. God’s love made plain as day.

For these gifts and more, I am grateful.

For gifts of a wide table.
As we gather regularly for neighborhood dinners with around 20-30 of our neighbors, we share a meal and our lives. This week, I made a vat of butternut squash soup, and our newest neighbors brought over an abundance of delicious Eritrean food. There was the jostling of babies, raucous conversations, siblings playing slapjack, and a lively intergenerational game of Apples to Apples. What a beautiful picture of the kingdom of God. From the tots to the white-haired, from immigrants to longtime residents, from engineers and therapists to baristas and truck drivers, the one thing we share is this place. We are neighbors learning how to belong to one another. For this, I am grateful.

For gifts of generosity and mutual care.
As we came together recently to create the Common Good Mutual Aid for our Richmond Highlands neighborhood, we raised over $10,000 to help with move-in costs for a family of six needing housing, rent for an elderly neighbor facing multiple crises, and support for an immigrant single mom and her son. As we open up our homes in radical hospitality to welcome the stranger, our hearts are opening up too. We are beginning to believe that we have a responsibility to take care of one another, recognizing that we each have unique needs, strengths, and resources we can use to support each other. Our flourishing is bound up together. For this, I am grateful.

For gifts of communion in shared life.
As we live in proximity and share life together, it is anything but easy, but worth its weight in gold. As the saying goes, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty” (Theodore Roosevelt). The easy life is never an enviable one. Thus, community is achingly hard and beautiful. We worship together every week, rehearsing our Story, praying prayers, and singing songs of hope into the darkness. We share meals and rides, sugar and eggs, TV shows, saunas, wakes, and lots of baked goods. We watch each other’s kids and pets, offer hospitality, and show up for the everyday celebrations and losses. We witness many miracles of housing amid the high costs of our city, favor with landlords, people buying homes and settling down, and new and bigger visions for hospitality. We are committing to one another, beginning to draw the circle of family wider than before. For this, I am grateful.

For gifts of new imagination.
What was only a dream is now being made real here on the ground. Oh, the faithfulness of God to be found amid a flawed and flailing people! Amid soup nights, accompaniment for asylum seekers, trash clean up, tutoring, neighborhood murals, and block parties, Love is made visible, Love with skin on. Christ’s presence is embodied in real people in a particular place for the healing of all. For this, I am grateful.

A beautiful invitation.
So as you gather around the table this week with family and friends, neighbors and strangers, may gratitude bubble up and overflow. And may you open up your hearts and your lives to remember that you belong to one another. And may you continue to dream….

And if you, like me, have a similar dream, a similar ache…maybe you feel alone in it… Perhaps you feel a growing discontent… or maybe you don’t even know if it’s possible. If you cannot shake this dream of a shared way of life together to embody the love of Jesus in your neighborhood, I hope you will consider the School of Neighborhood Life. We are currently accepting applications for our learning communities in 2026, and I am convinced that the Spirit is out ahead of us with a stunningly beautiful invitation.

If you’d like to invest in this dream, support our work.

Gypsy

“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. That man knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of humanity than those who live in a city.” G.K. Chesterton.

Gypsy, as she preferred to be called, has been dead for seven years now. She was our next door neighbor for four years, and I still miss her. Some of the people who knew her best have also passed on, so only a few people in the neighborhood would remember her. But she was memorable. Growing up in rural Kentucky, she had that tough, gritty, no-nonsense, down to earth, and sometimes stubborn spirit I often see in people from Appalachia. She was plucky.

Ninette (her real name) was the very first person to greet us when we moved into our newer neighborhood. I was in my front yard, and she came out to her front porch to introduce herself and then say “We’re neighbors on this street, and we look out for each other.”

I think about that moment. What more could you ask for? She gave us a welcome, gave us her name, declared we were neighbors, and spoke of a commitment to mutual care. We had done nothing at this point to earn her trust or goodwill, but there she was, taking the initiative.

She had lived alone for years after divorcing her husband decades prior. According to her, he had been an alcoholic for all their married years. The wear and tear broke them apart, and eventually he died. They had both been heavy smokers all their adult lives, and she now had COPD and emphysema, so breathing came hard. Even so, she allowed herself one cigarette per day, usually smoked outside while she listened to bluegrass music with her white Husky and two large German Shepherds lying at her feet.

She lived frugally, likely more out of necessity than by desire, and she rarely left her house, which was falling apart. (She hadn’t had air conditioning for years after her system went down.) On her fixed income she was paying someone to mow her lawn, so I offered to take that over free of charge. It took a little convincing, but she finally said ok. She must have watched me from behind her eternally closed blinds, because whenever I finished, she’d come out immediately and thank me profusely, sometimes trying to stuff a $10 bill in my hands. Those moments often lead to longer and deeper conversations, which is how we got to know one another. Sometimes we’d pray briefly there on her porch if she was struggling with something. (A typical exchange was “Gypsy, how are you doing?” “I’m circling the drain,” she would often reply.)

Jody would cook her meals from time to time; we’d help her with errands here and there; and we’d talk regularly. She eventually trusted me enough to let me into her house to look at things that needed fixing, and when one of her big dogs was at death’s door, lying on the cold basement floor in a puddle of urine, she asked if I could somehow get it up the steps and outside to her van so that she could take it to the vet to get euthanized. I vividly remember hauling that helpless 40-lb dog up the narrow basement steps as it peed and shit all over me. Then to the vet. Then standing beside Gypsy while we waited for the dog to take its last breath. Then our embrace.

Not too long after the second of her three dogs died, Gypsy went quickly downhill, ending up in the hospital with her lungs, heart, and kidneys all failing. I saw her as much as I could, and during my last visit I pulled out my phone, placed it by her ear, and played the album “Revival” by bluegrass artist Gillian Welch. We listened together as I held her hand and quietly prayed. She couldn’t respond with anything other than a smile and slight squeeze of my hand. After she died her sole sister asked if I would do the funeral. That was an easy yes, and it felt less like a way to honor her family (who were few in number) and more like an opportunity to honor a neighbor I had grown to love.

There are three things I often think about when she comes to mind. First, we practiced for her what she said about our neighborhood the day I met her: “We look out for each other.” Second, having her as a neighbor meant having a messier, more complicated life – another yard to mow, meals to cook, errands to run, porting a large dog to the vet. Third, we unexpectedly came to own her beaten down house, and our son (who has a harsh genetic illness) and his wife became our new neighbors after a full-scale renovation. Gypsy’s only sister, who inherited it, sold it to us on the strength of our relationship with her sister. That opportunity would never have come about if I were a typical American neighbor.

I’ve lost all imagination for living apart from my neighbors. As challenging as it can be at times, it’s for my good. Local life, my very own neighborhood, has been one of the more powerful ways in which God has formed me over the years and taken me outside of my little world, cultivating virtues and loves that enrich me and are experienced as immense, unmerited gifts.

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As I begin, I’d like to start with the story of my journey into the wilderness of the neighborhood. It is a story of the foolish and audacious yes—a glorious and daunting tale of saying yes to what the Spirit is birthing here in our community and in communities all across the globe. It comes with a warning. This journey is not for the faint of heart. Yet I believe with my whole heart that this is what the Spirit is up to today. Beckoning us to leave behind what is familiar, the Spirit of God invites us to cross the threshold into the wilderness. For amid all the shaking and turbulence of society and church today, the Spirit is wooing the church out of her captivity—to leave behind what is dead, lifeless, co-opted, and compromised to step into newness.

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. – Isaiah 43:19

We are invited to move from the rampant fragmentation of our individualistic and consumer culture to authentic community, faithful presence, and embodied faith—letting go of our small, individual stories to be invited into a much larger story that is so compelling, it is worth giving our lives to.

foolish and audacious yes #1

Twelve years ago, my first foolish and audacious yes was to sign myself up for a learning community led by the Parish Collective (love these folks). I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that I was desperate to find a way forward and to explore new practices and paradigms for church. For I was well aware that our current models were largely failing us, yet still very much immersed in them.

At the time, I was the associate pastor of a small but vibrant Vineyard community church in Shoreline, Washington, where I also served as the director of our local nonprofit. While there were only a few who lived in the community where our church building was located, we purposed to be a presence for good in our neighborhood. We were following the missional conversation and longing to practice the way of Jesus. We did a lot of listening—opening up our building to host a cold weather shelter, joining community round tables, starting a food bank giving garden, birthing a nonprofit, and investing in immigrant youth and families in the neighborhood. Yet in spite of all this, we began to see that our model of church was often actually working against us—working against the embodiment of our faith to live the teachings of Jesus in a transformative way.

Over the course of that year, I began to have a new imagination for what the kingdom could look like in my neighborhood, and it set me on a trajectory that has forever changed the course of my life and our faith community.

foolish and audacious yes #2

My second foolish and audacious yes was to the invitation of the Spirit to move into the neighborhood. We sold our home, uprooted our family of six, and took some huge risks. We weren’t entirely convinced that this neighborhood stuff would really work in our suburban/semi-urban neighborhood. Our context didn’t look like the more urban, walkable neighborhoods where others had been experimenting. Would it work here? And would our commuter church have an imagination to root in our neighborhoods? Was this even possible?

I wish I could tell you that it all went glowingly. But as we followed the Spirit into the unknown, we found that life comes out of death. New paradigms are birthed out of disorientation. New assignments are born out of scattering and wilderness. This is the way of the Spirit, of transformation, of death, and of birth.

Our first attempts at neighboring were pretty much a flop. Who knew it was so hard to get to know your neighbors? We held barbecues in our front yard that no one came to. We baked cookies as offerings of friendship that were never returned. And I have vivid images of my husband who would literally run after the neighbor’s car down our driveway in an attempt to say hello.

foolish and audacious yes #3

Our third foolish and audacious yes was to disrupt the status quo in our faith community. And this is where it got real. We were becoming increasingly discontent with how our lived experience as the church was forming us and how irrelevant and disconnected we were from our neighbors. So we entered a community discernment process. We decided to move our regular worship service to dinner church, and the whole thing blew up in the worst possible way. I mean, for real. The ugly church stuff that even its bare mention causes PTSD symptoms in those who have lived through it. Half of our community left. I know this may not be exactly heartening to you, but it is what happened. It was absolutely horrible. Awful. Heartbreaking. I cried every day on my way to work and back. At times, our lead pastor and I considered giving up, throwing in the towel, and going to work for Amazon. We felt disillusioned, bereft, betrayed, and disoriented. Yet somehow through it all, the Spirit sustained us.

foolish and audacious yes #4

It was less than a year later when I said my fourth foolish and audacious yes, the biggest yet. (You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now.) Our beloved pastor of twenty years was forced to resign because of congestive heart failure (literally broken heart syndrome). This was another huge blow that left us reeling, yet I said yes to the invitation to step in as lead pastor. It was utterly foolish. Utterly audacious to believe that there was still hope for our struggling and now traumatized congregation.

Yet I had this crazy good dream, this fire in my belly. You see, I had no interest in doing church if it meant more of the same religious activity. In fact, I wanted nothing to do with it. But this dream captured me. A dream of shalom being cultivated in neighborhoods to seek justice for those without power and privilege. A dream where everyone across difference, race, and class come together to seek the flourishing of the community. The hope of seeing God revealed here in us, the body of Christ—where our neighbors begin to see that God is for them, where church is experienced around the table, and hopes are shared on the bus and at the coffee shop and community forums. This, this was compelling.

now here is where the story gets crazy good.

As Easter people, we know there is no dead end, sorrow, tragedy, or death that is beyond the power of resurrection. The agony and despair of the tomb became a womb for God’s redemptive purposes. It has now been eight years since we relaunched The Practicing Church in our living room with a dream: to incarnate Love in the model we saw in Jesus—to reinterpret the gospel so that it was actually good news to our neighbors. Admittedly, it has been the most arduous and glorious of journeys. I have been crushed in the cruciform of leadership and humbled by my many failings and learnings along the way. Yet as we incarnate love in the everyday life of the neighborhood, something beautiful is emerging. Most of us share life in proximity and faithful presence. Ten members live right here on our block. Another twenty live in the neighborhood, and several others come from adjacent communities. And I am ruined for anything else.

As we are faithfully present to the stories of our neighbors and our neighborhood, we are learning to listen deeply to God’s redemptive story being woven here in the everyday. As we share regular neighborhood dinners, host parties, and open up our homes and lives to asylum-seeking families, we practice the radical hospitality of God. As we set up new apartments for families moving out of homelessness, beautify the neighborhood, and tutor immigrant students, we join in Jesus’ work of creative liberation (Isaiah 61). As we practice the way of Jesus together, embodying love in real time and real space with real people committed to the flourishing of a particular place, we pray our lives translate the gospel so that our neighbors can see God’s goodness as plain as day (John 1:18).

This wilderness is beginning to feel like home. Yet it is wilderness nonetheless. This is why we invite you to join The Commons Revival, to learn from and connect with others who find themselves staring into the darkness of the unknown, waiting for the Spirit to lead us on. We believe with all of our hearts that the Spirit is birthing something new in the church, inviting us to live as the beloved community into the dare of the gospel.

So the question remains.

Will we be just foolish enough?

Just audacious enough?
​
To say yes?

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’” -God Knows by Minnie Haskins

Seventy miles. If you walked every street in Norwood OH, that’s about what you’d cover. In 1993, as a young church planter in that declining, blue collar city of about 20-25K inhabitants, that’s what I did. It seemed important to me at the time to begin exegeting my neighborhood with my eyes wide open and soles on the ground, so I began systematically covering blocks of Norwood on a near daily basis. As I walked I prayed the same three prayers day after day and block after block: 1) Lord, help me to see what you see; 2) Bless the people on this block; and 3) May your kingdom come here as it is in heaven.

Decades later, after landing unexpectedly in our new digs, it seemed spiritually wise to do the same thing, though this time on a much smaller scale. Our neighborhood has 3 streets and 103 homes, and I can pass every neighbor’s house in under 15 minutes. The same three prayers still seem the best, but since I now know a couple dozen neighbors, blessings often get specific names and needs attached to them. Sometimes I simply tell God why I’m thankful to know so and so.

In writing just now, it strikes me that it has taken close to a decade of intentional work to get to know about 25% of the households in my neighborhood. That’s humbling because the number seems so small and trivial, and for all I know I might be dead before I come to know half. Being a catalyst for community, a conduit for the “kingdom come” in one’s own neighborhood, can occupy a lifetime.

I’ve easily been around my block over 10,000 times in the last decade. This comes to multiple hundreds of hours of being outside, which I suppose makes me a fixture. Hunkered in their homes, neighbors I haven’t yet met would easily be able to identify me, and down the line, that may be worth more than I can imagine.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently conducted a survey in which they determined that Americans now spend over 90% of their time indoors. So spotting neighbors is sometimes a little like a birdwatcher in Michigan looking for the Kirtland Warbler. But the more I’m out and looking, the better my chances, and by faith I carry the conviction that my prayers matter.

If someone came to me and said, “I want to build community in my neighborhood. Where do I begin?” Here’s what I’d say:

• Walk where you live on a regular basis, almost daily.

• Pray you’ll see what God sees; pray blessings over your neighbors; pray for the kingdom to come.

• Greet every person you happen upon, even if it’s just a wave.

• Whenever possible, introduce yourself and learn your neighbor’s name.

• Greet your neighbor by that name the next time you cross paths.

• If you have something you can offer, do it. (My line is, “Hey, if you ever need a tool, I’ve probably got it, so please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m happy to share it.”)

• Create a map of your neighborhood’s homes. (A simple drawing will do.) As you meet new neighbors, add their names to the mapped houses; build a picture.

• If someone new moves in, be bold; go to their door, knock / ring, introduce yourself, welcome them to the neighborhood, and offer a small gift. (I like a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine, but that’s me.)

• Learn to ask simple but meaningful questions of your neighbors. (We’ll likely have an entire article on this at a later date.)

Three days ago I invited a neighbor I’m just getting to know to join me for coffee from 8-9 am. I set out three lawn chairs at the end of my driveway down by the sidewalk and brewed up a pot. MG showed up and we had a nice conversation. He’s slowly opening up. Twenty minutes later MR wandered over and joined us. The conversation heated, and together we talked about how what we had in common dwarfed what made us different, and how working around those often superficial differences made us better. It felt like a sharing of hearts.

At the tail end of our time, MG noticed our neighborhood’s newest “rare bird” emerge onto his front porch for a few brief seconds before going back in. TA had moved in 2-3 months ago but was rarely there, and I hadn’t even seen him yet. Since we were done, I told the others I was going down to knock on the door and introduce myself. MG asked if he could come along, and as we walked down the street he divulged, “For all my life I’ve been too cautious about approaching people. Growing up mom always warned us about wearing out our welcome and imposing on others. I don’t think that helped, and I want to overcome that.”

As it turns out, TA was delighted to meet us and said he wanted to come to our next morning coffee. MG then eyed some discarded kitchen cabinets on his driveway and asked TA about them. “You want them?” TA asked. “If so, they’re yours. I’ll even help you move them today.” I said my goodbyes and walked back home, but the two of them lingered for several minutes talking about God knows what . . . apart from me. There was a sharp joy in the moment. To light a fire and step away, to watch life go on without you (as it eventually will) is a skill, desire, and way of being that’s worth cultivating.

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Photo credit: Jeol Trick of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters - Endangered Kirtland’s warbler (Dendroica kirtlandii). Creative Commons License 2.0.

This is a vignette about a multi-year journey from disregard and dismissal to embrace and acceptance. In 2015, after 23 years of establishing a community and home in Norwood OH, we were, by necessity, swiftly and unexpectedly uprooted from a neighborhood and community we thought would last us a lifetime. Within 24 hours we were repotted two hours up the road in a 50-year old former suburb of Columbus that had been absorbed into the growing city.

When trees get replanted, they go dormant for a while as they recover from the shock and orient themselves to their new location. That’s what it felt like to me. When you have a ​​serious​​ crisis within the family, you don’t have time ​to process and adjust by degrees. You simply respond, and quickly at that. The rest can be sorted out later.

So there we were, in a new house, not because we loved it but because it connected to the backyard of our daughter’s house. And for the next couple years I went dormant, feeling largely numb and disconnected, holding a welter of questions, and frequently pouting because the place we now lived wasn’t what I chose.

But that’s life, yes? Some things we choose, and some things choose us. I find it easy to make room for God in the former and exclude God from the latter. But if I can’t find the grace to consent to what comes unbidden and then undergo a spiritual alchemy where B​​, excluding God, ​becomes A, ​inviting God in, then my spiritual development, my life in Christ, is arrested. I finally got there — thank God! — and later I hope to tell you how​.

​For now I’ll simply say that a powerful catalyst to making that passage is connecting to what’s right around you . . . which leads me to this short story.

When we moved in, our immediate neighbors on one side seemed to shun us. We were older whites, and they were middle-aged blacks. For months on end I would greet them with “Good Mornings!” and “Hi’s” without any acknowledgment other than a sometimes mumbled “Hi” back. There was never any eye contact. Eventually the man moved out for good, and only M was left. I introduced myself and got her name. From then on I could say, “Good Morning, M!” or “Hi, M!” but for months she never said my name. (I even found ways to retell her my name in case she had forgotten it.) It was just “Hi.” Occasionally, when she wanted to tell me something minor, she would just shout “Hey!” to get my attention. It took 2-3 years for her to say my name with regularity.

M’s fence was listing horribly toward her yard, and in places it had collapsed, so one day I offered to tear it all down and build a new fence on my nickel. She studied me for a moment and then gave a very tentative yes. In the following days she’d come out and watch me to see what I was up to. I sensed she was maybe suspicious of her newer white neighbor working in her yard completely unattended. When the old fence was down and the new fence ready to go up, she approached me and said, “My neighbor said I should ask you whose side the new fence is going to be on. He said to make sure it’s on my side.” I said, “This will be your fence, so it will be on your side.” Again that cautious look.

In this whole process she slowly warmed up to me and I to her. We chatted about this and that and we started to learn more about each other. One key piece I discovered was that the older white couple from whom we had bought the house had not been kind to her at all. She told me many stories that​ confirmed that. (E.g., they had trained their security lights in the directions of her house.) An older white couple replacing a previous white couple made the initial frosty disregard understandable.

​​But every moment can turn into a thin space where heaven comes tumbling down. For me that came in 2020, a full 5 years after moving in and cultivating this relationship. M and I were in our backyards, talking over the new fence, each about 2-3 yards back. It was lockdown season, and she was telling me what she was watching on TV. I thought, this sounds like a woman who would enjoy Breaking Bad, so I asked her if she had seen it. Cha-ching! She had, she loved it, and we gabbed about it at length. Then I asked if she’d seen The Wire. (Because if you like Breaking Bad, you’ll love The Wire.) She hadn’t, and as I told her she’d love it and said a little about the plot line, she grew strangely quiet.

​“M, are you ok?” I asked. ​“That was my life,” she said. “That’s what I grew up with. It was filled with poverty and drugs and gang violence.” And then like someone having a flashback, she began sobbing. ​At this point I bet we were 6-8 yards apart. All I knew to do was hold out my arms as I approached the fence, not knowing what she’d make of it. But she moved in my direction, and we leaned into each other. I held her as she wept.

It took 5 long years to get there. Nothing in between was inconsequential. Prayer, patience, perseverance, kindness and love won the day. And God used M to warm my heart toward a neighborhood and circumstances I had not fully accepted. She has in the meantime become an even greater gift to us and is now numbered among 24 other families we’ve gotten to know.

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I want to launch this Substack channel with a musing on worship. After all, in the Christian tradition, worship of the Trinity is our truest calling and highest good. We were made to sing, reflect, and exude the majesty of God in all quarters of life. This is a point on which all Christians can agree.

In the Christian communities of which I was a part for nearly two decades, worship was often referred to as the 20-minute set of carefully arranged music where we sang prayers and declared the attributes of God. (We had three parts to the service: worship, message and ministry in that order.) That’s important stuff to be sure, and it can be deeply formative in the life of faith, but true worship touches every quarter of life. Consequently, I now see worship more as an expression of humility wherein I agree, in word and deed, that the way God has composed life itself (which includes the way he has composed me) is proper and good. My agreement, which is a confession, certainly starts with some level of mental assent, but it finds its mature form in a life that’s purposefully shaped by the ramifications of that assent. Flesh incarnates spirit.

I once had the great gift of spending a day with Gordon Cosby, the founder of the extraordinarily influential Church of the Savior in Washington D.C. I can still hear him, in his southern gentlemanly tone, referring to “the Isness of life.” He was referring to what life was really supposed to be like in God’s economy. In recalling that line, my own thoughts frequently go toward the truth about human relationships. In every single metric of what it means to thrive as a human, meaningful relationships are in the top tier along with a sense of purpose, good physical health, and having our fundamental physical needs cared for.

Yet meaningful relationships, measured by quality of conversation, frequency of time together, levels of encouragement, shared joy and laughter, grief and pain, and much more, have been eroding at an alarming rate for at least the last 5-6 decades. Broad social surveys show that we are more lonely and more disconnected than ever before in human history. It’s in the air. We all feel it. In short, we’ve moved and are still moving away from “the Is-ness of life” in relationships.

The Church, in it’s most current and dominant expression, does very little to stem the tide of this social deterioration. Weekly public worship meetings of, say, 90 minutes, may be great at building a common worldview and fostering a sense of being on the same team, but they don’t fix the problem that we’re mostly strangers sitting next to each other with only the most tenuous of connections. Weekly small group meetings (Life Groups, Community Groups, etc.) are an attempt to address this, but the time together is short, the people gathered almost always live apart (making it extra effort to be together beyond the weekly), the mix of people often shifts (especially if the groups are seasonal), and there’s seldom a missional focus. They’re modalities for the purpose of spiritual connections – Bible study, prayer, sharing – and they foster a tangible good, but in the tidal wave of disconnection that has toppled the ship of relationships, I think of them as lifeboats – absolutely essential for when the ship is going down, but not something you can live on forever.

But I think our neighborhoods are places where we can land and regain our bearings. I think neighborhoods are where we can cultivate connection and life and find fertile ground to express our faith. I think our neighborhoods offer the ripest opportunity for pouring out the love of Christ. We can focus our prayers, blessings, and encouragement on those among whom we live; we can access our neighbors without driving across town; we have a massive opportunity to know well a small cast of characters; we can discover needs and leverage gifts for the good of all; we can show love day after day in small but significant ways; we can witness the Kingdom slowly taking root right before our eyes.

Slow is the word we should note in that last line. There’s nothing flashy or quick about it. With each new day you simply offer the weight of your love and the focus of your prayers to those up and down your street, knowing that in God’s timing a small but important miracle will occur. I bore witness to a miracle decades ago in a small, gritty, urban, parish church that I planted with others. I bear witness to it now taking place again in this old, diverse, middle income (or lower), once-suburban neighborhood I moved into 10 years ago in Columbus, OH.

If the Church as we mostly know it were to capture a vision for training people to see this great opportunity and to love well in their places of residence, I’m convinced there would be a renaissance of faith and the tide of disconnection could be stemmed more forcefully. Perhaps it could even be reversed. As Jesus said, all things are possible with God.

Loving thy neighbor has never been so uncommonly radical.

Yet we believe it is the healing remedy for our deep societal fragmentation. If you long for a counter-cultural way of life that invites you into wholeness, presence, and love of God and neighbor…

Exhale. You are not alone.

Join the revival of the commons.

Welcome to The Commons Revival, a publication of the School of Neighborhood Life, by me, Jessica Ketola and my fellow urban monk, David Nixon. We are incurable dreamers, avant-garde practitioners, and surprisingly hopeful despite our melancholic proclivity. Here, we will explore what it means to return to presence in an age of fragmentation (because let’s face it, it hurts to be alive these days). We will wrestle with Jesus’ provocative invitation, calling us out of our cultural captivity into a revolutionary way of love—to reclaim an embodied faith as we are woven together in Christ’s way of love and justice in our neighborhoods.

There is another way to live.

Many like you feel the Spirit’s invitation to leave behind the big event of church to be the church in the everyday life of the neighborhood. To move from disembodiment and disconnection toward solidarity, proximity, and presence—joining in God’s healing work in your place.

This is the journey we are on—along with fellow practitioners across the country. And while we don’t have it all figured out, we’ll be sharing what we’re learning and wrestling with, along with stories of hope from the ground.

The Commons Revival is dedicated to accompanying you on the transformational journey toward faithful presence in the neighborhood—providing support and encouragement for those tugged toward an expression of church life that's simpler, more local, home-based, relationally strong, and missionally oriented. Here you'll find: 1) stories from the frontline to inspire you; 2) theological reflections to ground you; and 3) practical, how-to articles to resource you.

“The seeds of the gospel are really small. They’re really about meeting God at dinner tables and in living rooms and in little towns that may not be known by the rest of the world. But it seems like that’s exactly what happens when God moves into the neighborhood in Jesus…It’s that which I think we’re invited into is to grow into a neighborhood, to plant ourselves somewhere and to get to know people there, and to see the seeds of the kingdom grow there” (Shane Claiborne qtd. in Sparks et al., The New Parish, 2014).

We hope that our words will be sustenance for the journey as you grow in faithful presence in your neighborhood.

- J + D