Jan 15 2017 - Making a Difference in our Neighborhoods

Marianne – I have been praying for my neighbors – Pray4everyhome.com – I get 5 addresses every day – and I pray for my neighbors. This site keeps track of who you pray for. They even give you a prayer you can pray. As I said – just 5 a day – and then you can go to your page and you’ll see the names of those you’ve prayed for. Once it gets through a set of neighbors – it repeats. Then you start to think of different ways to pray for people. I pray that they’ll experience God’s love and grace – and that they’ll see Christ in me. As I am out and about – certain neighbors – where there is an open door – I let them know I’ve been praying for them and all the neighbors. Some whom I had not known – as I get to know them – they are quite pleased. In the last couple weeks – I have seen some fruit – one wanted the web address to pray for our neighbors as well – and the other – someone called and asked if I would pray for a coworker of theirs – “You’re all about this praying thing, right? Would you pray for a coworker of mine – I don’t want to throw this on you…” Throw it on! Would you like me to pray with you for your coworker right now? I don’t think so, she said. I’ve been seeing God move in our neighborhood – and I encourage you to try this – you can be praying for your coworkers and neighbors and bowling team.

Mike Marette: Thank you Marianne... - Several years ago I heard about this – in a suburb of Denver, a group of pastors got together to meet with their mayor. We have been doing this for years. They met with him – and asked – how can the churches serve the city?
Here are some of the things the mayor said: The majority of issues our community is facing would be eliminated or drastically reduced if we could figure out how to become a community of great neighbors.
The guy who wrote the book said, “Am I the only pastor here who is a little bit embarrassed? We were asking how to serve the city – and his response is to obey the second half of the Great Commandment – get your people to actually obey Jesus!”
The assistant city manager told them – “From the city’s perspective – there isn’t a noticeable difference in how Christians and non-Christians ‘neighbor’ in our community.”
The outside world doesn’t see a difference. Let’s pray.
Lord, as Marianne shared – she is an encouraging and good example – not like what the assistant city manager said – help each of us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Teach us how to do that. It should be the priority of our lives – so easy to neglect and ignore – not that we’re against it – we are all for it – but it is easy to not really do it. Teach us how to do that.
Matthew 22:36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the great and foremost commandment.
The religious leader may have said – that is good – we could stop there.
39 The second is like it,
(Essentially – this is how you do that – these go hand in hand)
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
In the Luke version – the guy asks, who is my neighbor? – and then there is the story of the Good Samaritan – where we see that our neighbor is anyone who needs us. But one thing that can happen – if anyone is our neighbor – then no one becomes our neighbor. This is not profound – I have some very unprofound statements here: Your neighbors are first – your neighbors. The people you live near. And the bible tells us to love them. That is what the mayor was saying to these pastors. What has happened in Denver – the community has been transformed in many ways. And our mayor wants us to do this too. The places we inhabit – we need to love the people there. Plus our workplace, and school – and it can be, every neighborhood is different – some have 1 neighbor or none – but you may need a created space – like the Natatorium or kids’ sports.
In order to love our neighbor, we must first know our neighbors. Ask yourself that. Do you know their names? That is the beginning point. Beyond knowing their names – do you know them? Some things about their lives.
If you take your house – and put it in the center of a tic-tac-toe board – you may have as many as 8 neighbors whose property is next to yours or across the street.
If you just take that and average it out – if 2.5 people live in every house – think of all the people – including your work – that you have the opportunity to love and display Christ to – and maybe get to share with.
In our church, this year – if we tried to display Christ’s love to our neighbors – it would be about 700 to 800 people –to whom we could display Christ to.
That is an average.
A lot of times – as we think of the Good Samaritan – yes, we need to be neighborly to those who need our help – but when we think that – we think of going WAY OVER THERE somewhere. You think you have to go to downtown Akron. But what I think you’ll discover – there are a lot of people close by who have real needs.
Years ago, there was an elderly couple next door – and the husband died and the wife was struggling with – what’s the word when you get old? Oh yeah – dementia. And our family became her family. We would mow her grass. Each of my kids got a chance.
So – right next door – was a person who needed a Good Samaritan – and someone who needed someone to live Christ out in a public way.
This is piggybacking on the our purpose and vision and values –
A little theory I would like to explain – and like I talked about last week – becoming The Better Place. The World is a bad place – and we need to show people how to get to heaven – but in doing so, we must become a better place – doing God’s will here on earth as it is in heaven. . We will never do it fully. The verse from last week:
2 Cor. 5: 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
The world is an antagonistic place. We need to be different – making relationships right – marriages, political relationships – being example of how all those things can be made right. And then we have the word of reconciliation – not only to live it – but to speak it – to live Christ, and to proclaim Christ. If you are not living Christ – no matter how many times you share the gospel – you are not proclaiming Christ.
Step 1 to becoming a better place – a place of reconciliation. We need to become a CLOSE community. Close not closed. Some churches become closed communities – not allowing others in. A CLOSE community, the Bible uses several metaphors – the first of which is family. To be a family, we must go way beyond simply being friendly and having fellowship times together. When we think of our family – we don’t just think of friendly and welcoming. There is a lot of resistance by people to consider church their family. But that is what the Bible teaches. It is hard to get away from that.
The second step to becoming a better place: When we meet together – people who are outside of the community must be welcomed in. The doors must be open for others to come in. and then when they come in – we must want that as a church. We must want our family to be filled with outsiders when we gather together. Then when they do come in – it is actually important that we be a better place. That we aren’t just as antagonistic as the rest of the world. It is sad to say – that some churches are some of the most antagonistic places. We need to work hard to being a better place. We need to move from focusing on what we do at church – to focusing more on WHO we are. First. That is why we talk about values and standards and purpose – because who we are will determine if we are a better place. Our being is more important than our doing. We must be the people God has called us to be – in our relationships.
When people come into our church – there are those who do that – reasons why that happens – a social demographic sidebar: One of the big reasons – people move into the area – at some point – they say, we should find a church – they drive by – they type in church in Cuyahoga Falls – and ours pops up – and they think – oh hey – that might be interesting.
The second way – the 'dones'– the nones (no religion) and the dones – we have dones come in. A person who is DONE with religion. Because of this that or the other thing – some conflict at a past church – they are DONE with that – but down the road, they realize that they still believe in God and Jesus and want to give it one more try – and they look online or someone they know tells them.
Third – a traumatic life event happens – and a nonreligious person realizes he or she needs God.
People who aren’t interested in church don’t typically wake up on Sunday morning and say – I need to go to church.
When people show up – we need to be a better place. Not better than the church next door – but a better place.
Third – the better place needs to move out of the building and into the wider community. We need to learn to be better in our workplaces and in the community. We need to gather and scatter. Gather to get encouraged, and then scatter throughout the week – out into the world. It is important to learn how to scatter together. It can’t be an individual thing. It is learning, as church, how to go out into the world together. The garage sale is an example of that – it gets other people – neighbors – involved in something at our church.
If you are lucky – we have neighbors who are in our church and neighbors who are Christians. We had cookouts and block parties and went to fireworks together – and there was a scattered amount of us Christians around. We had Bible studies in our neighborhood for a number of years.
One situation – there was a couple we had all gotten close to in our neighborhood – and they would never come to church – but they started having relationship issues and the wife asked if we would come over and talk with them. It was a little awkward. The husband wasn’t real interested in what was going on – and the wife said these words to him: Mike and Cindy love us and they want to help! That has never left me. And I thought – Yes – this is it!
Recently their daughter got married – we went to the wedding – the pastor got up – and I knew him – he was the youth pastor at Northampton – took the youth to Guatemala – he was doing the wedding – and then he starts talking about the groom’s faith – how he was close to the groom’s family – talking about his faith – and then talking about the bride’s family – and I asked the pastor – has she come to Christ? Yes – she has!
If we learn how to neighbor… it may take a long time. Her parents still don’t care for church – but a seed is planted.
5-6 years ago – a kid – cattycorner – Mr. Marette – I need to talk to you – I went to college and I got saved! I need to tell Tony – what’s his number?!
One last little practical way of thinking of this – Cindy has been a good example of this in her workplace. There are probably other Christians you work with who go to other churches. That is okay! There are always a handful of Christians who teach and want to live Christ in that school and have done their best to do that. Just recently – well, back 15 years ago – there was a young teacher – who recently said to Cindy – you have been my mentor as a teacher and my mentor as a Christian.
We have so many opportunities right in front of us – multiple opportunities. Let’s pray.
Lord, help us – we ask You to speak to our hearts. Teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Please teach us how.

Generous Grace – welcoming people as they are in order that they may grow in relationship with Christ.
Bearing others’ burdens through generously giving our physical, emotional, and spiritual resources

Matthew 18:12

Matthew 18:18