When N-E-I-G-H-B-O-R Means Neighbor

Tonight I was driving home from my parents' house with my kids and Garin asked me what "N-E-I-G-H-B-O-R" spelled. When I told her, she then read the rest of the slogan: Meet Your Neighbor at PeeWeeVille. This is the tag-line for one of our favorite churches in the area. She went on about her business and I began to think about that. They don't really mean that you will meet your neighbor at their preschool program. What they are saying is that you will meet a friend at PeeWeeVille and that will be your "neighbor." It's a play on the town theme of the whole program - and it's a good program.

At the Springs, we could actually employ the same tag-line: Meet Your Neighbor at The Springs. The difference being that we actually mean your physical neighbors. We have been meeting on Sundays since October and many of us have actually met our neighbors at the services on Sunday. Cameron, our lead pastor, actually had 11 neighbors at church last weekend. I know a couple in our Table that has had 2 different neighbors attend a service and our Table, and another family in our Table who has had a couple of their neighbors also attend. Our children's director has seen her neighbors come to a service and also to the ladies' bible study. Same with us. There is something richer and more meaningful about church when you actually "meet your neighbors" there.

When Jesus said that the greatest commands were to love God and love your neighbor, he didn't use the generic word for people. Jesus meant neighbor ("a person living near or next door/any person in need of one's help"). Proximity and help. So often, we talk about loving others and look right past those living next to us. We read the New Testament through 21st Century lenses and forget that the relationships that we read about in the Bible were pedestrian-scale relationships - they walked to each others' homes. We can choose to believe this was solely due to the transportation issues of the day, or we can ask ourselves if there might be more to it than that.

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam indicates that for every 10 minutes we spend in a car our social capital is decreased by 10 percent. If I drive home from work in 30 minutes, I arrive home with 70% of whatever social capital I had when I left the office. That 30% makes all the difference in whether or not I am willing to engage in a neighborhood relationship. Go a little further and see that of that 70% that I get home with, I then lose more when I jump back in the car and take my kids to ball practice. By the time I arrive back home at night, my own family doesn't even get anything from me, much less my neighbors.

Contrast that with the man who takes a job closer to home, so he gets home before dinner. He is refreshed because he didn't fight traffic for 30 minutes. He puts down his brief case and goes out to the front yard as the kids circle back around on their bikes. As he stands outside asking them about their day, the neighbors also begin arriving home. As they get the mail, the exchange pleasantries and ask about the week. The neighbor's wife is making a pot of stew and asks him to bring his family over. After checking with his wife, the family walks down two doors and enjoys a nice little meal with their neighbors. They walk back home and still have time for bed time readings and day-caps. After tucking in the kids, he and his wife open a bottle of wine and sit down to relax. It's been a full day - it's been a good day.

I realize that the two stories are extremes on both ends, but their are families all over our country experimenting with both, and their are families who are living everywhere in between the two stories. The main difference that I want to point out is that the second family has made room for relationships and the first one is just trying to make it through the day. How are we going to be a people who loves our neighbors unless we begin to make it a priority. "My neighbors don't want to know anyone." Not true. "My neighbors are rude." Maybe so. "My neighbors...My neighbors...My neighbors... We all have excuses, but in the end we all know what those are like, right? It's a priority issue. Until we love our neighbors enough to place priority on them in our lives, we will miss the second most important part of being a Christ-follower...and we might even be missing the first part as well.