Jeremy Hoover

Peter Lovenheim, In the Neighborhood (Perigree, 2010).
ISBN 9780399535710

In Luke 10, after sending the 72 out on an evangelistic mission, Jesus teaches about neighborly conduct. In Jesus' understanding, being a neighbor is, or at least opens the door for, the mission.

Yet, we often would like to take the evangelistic mission without the charge to be a neighbor. After all, does it really matter? If we preach or teach and the person makes a decision, isn't that enough? But it was this mindset that Jesus challenged when he taught about being a neighbor. When we seek to justify our behavior we have missed Jesus' mission. Being a neighbor means being proactive and involved--the Samaritan used his time, resources, and money to help someone who, under different circumstances, would have been an enemy. We are encouraged to go and do the same.

Peter Lovenheim wrote an interesting book called In the Neighborhood. After hearing about a neighborhood family involved in a tragedy (a murder-suicide while the children were still in the house), he realized that he did not know the family and that likely no one in the neighborhood did. This realization set him upon a goal of creating a community within the neighborhood he lived in, to enable and help physical neighbors become real neighbors to each other.

The book is very enjoyable and a quick read. Lovenheim sought to learn more about his neighbors by spending more time with them, even including sleeping over at their homes! As he began to meet his neighbors more he began to become aware of needs and he was able to make neighborly introductions between neighbors.

One neighbor he met had cancer. He realized that to be a neighbor to her he was going to have to help her. One chapter is devoted to this quest. In that chapter, he states that "the real measure of success of my whole effort [to neighborize the neighborhood] would be if someone who previously did not know Patti...woud join me in helping her out. If that could happen...we would have a real community" (204). Thanks to Lovenheim's work, it did happen. Patti and several other neighbors connected and Patti did not have to struggle alone.

I really enjoyed this book. It left me with several ideas I am thinking through:

• Being a neighbor to others is hard work. It takes time and sacrifice to get to really know someone. We cannot be real neighbors to people we see simply on a casual basis. (Wake-up call to churches here--if we spend only an hour a week with each other, and most of that in passive listening, how are we being a neighbor to each other?)
• It takes dedication and persistence. Once we have sacrificed time and made a real effort to get to know someone, it takes time and effort to maintain the relationship! Sometimes, we may have to call a neighbor whose mail appears to be piling up. We may need to finish mowing our yard and then spend another hour at an elderly neighbor's mowing hers. This is what we're called to when we embark on a goal of being a neighbor to others.
• It is more than merely "being nice." We are not a neighbor to someone simply because we say "hi" when we're both out collecting our mail. Being a neighbor is a mindset; we need to be thinking and acting neighborly to actually be one.

Lovenheim concluded his book with a statement from someone else. It's a fitting ending to this post:

"If we all cared about our neighbors, we could change the world one street at a time" (236).

Let us go and do likewise.

These are study questions, notes, and application ideas from Acts 2. Please use and distribute these (or link to them) if you find them useful.

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Below are study questions on Acts 1 broken into 5 different themes.

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I read a report of a survey that indicated, out of 800 people, only 16 percent viewed churches as a place to meet up with or make friends. As a minister, this disturbs me. In this 8 minute audio, I discuss the survey, my thoughts about it, and a way forward. Please leave your comments below, on Facebook, or at Twitter.

Group Publishing Survey: The Friendliest Place in Town

Yesterday we tried a social media experiment. We've been using our Facebook fan page and Twitter account mainly for distributing information. For Sunday worship, we tried to create a backchannel for discussing the sermon, both live and after the worship event. This is how we did it:

1. I sent out a message on Facebook to church members, asking them to access our Fan Page after worship and leave a comment, question, or insight about our worship.

2. On Twitter, I asked our tweeting church members to live-tweet the sermon, and to use a church-centered hashtag (#hrcc) at the end of their tweets. This means that as they had an insight, question, or response to the sermon, they posted it to their Twitter account as the sermon was being preached.

3. In connection with this, I sent out two introductory tweets from the church account. The first was a summary sentence for the sermon and a link to my sermon outline online. The second tweet was a link to the study notes I provided online.

4. During the sermon, one church member tweeted the main points of my sermon along with a link to the online outline and the church's hashtag (#hrcc).

5. After the sermon, I went back to Twitter, searched the #hrcc hashtag, and responded to the tweets so we could continue our dialogue. (You can read these tweets for yourself by going to Twitter Search and entering #hrcc.)

6. On Facebook, I read some replies that came through the messaging system as well as the comments that were placed on our Fan Page. I responded to these, again in an effort to keep the dialogue going.

We don't have a high percentage of members on Facebook, and even less are on Twitter. I'm still happy with our experiment and I plan to keep it up. I think it helped people engage the material better and it will facilitate community outside the weekly worship as we create a backchannel through which we can continue talking and tweeting with each other about God's word and its impact in our lives.

For those who were involved, what was your opinion? What feedback do you have? If you're just reading this, what questions do you have?

This is my first stab at an audio book review. It's a little long, around 12 minutes. I tackle Jesse's book and some of thoughts about his material. The book may not be what you think it would be about.