{"id":30921,"date":"2022-09-10T15:09:49","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/loving-your-neighbor-and-neighborhood-more-vital-than-ever\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T15:09:49","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:09:49","slug":"loving-your-neighbor-and-neighborhood-more-vital-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/loving-your-neighbor-and-neighborhood-more-vital-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Loving Your Neighbor and Neighborhood More Vital Than Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
Scott Blake photo – Unsplash <\/p>\n

By Tobin Perry<\/em><\/p>\n

When Alex Dennis began planning to start a church in Surprise, Arizona, in the middle of 2019, COVID-19 wasn\u2019t on his radar. God had called him\u2014clearly and unmistakably\u2014to reach the Asante community of Surprise with the good news about Jesus.  <\/p>\n

Dennis wanted to launch big with a community engagement event called \u201cFam Jam.\u201d Early 2020 seemed like the perfect time to do it. <\/p>\n

Then came the worst pandemic to hit the world in a century. Businesses closed. Schools closed. And nearly every church in the world stopped meeting in person for a period of time. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had put all of this time into planning Fam Jam, and then COVID hit,\u201d said Dennis, who started Asante Church in the middle of the pandemic. \u201cWe realized we were going to have to do something to engage our community. Now community engagement has been the real story of how we launched the church.\u201d <\/p>\n

Since COVID-19\u2019s arrival nearly 20 months ago, the young church\u2019s core team has worked hard to serve and help the community. As isolation and boredom took its toll on Asante during the early days of the pandemic, congregants painted 1,000 rocks with hopeful messages and placed them throughout the community. Each rock also had a URL for a church website where a devotional walked the finder through the gospel. The activity went viral. Someone who didn\u2019t even attend the church created a Facebook group where people posted about finding them. Other people began painting rocks and adding them to the search.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf\u00a0we\u2019re about Jesus, we needed\u00a0to meet people as Jesus did.\u201d \u2014 Alex Dennis, pastor of Asante Church Click To Tweet <\/p>\n

The church put together a scavenger hunt to give the kids something to do. They collected food for people in the community hit particularly hard by the pandemic. When a rare monsoon hit their Arizona community, knocking down a third of the trees in the nearby three neighborhoods, the church rallied its members to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re about Jesus, we needed to meet people as Jesus did,\u201d Dennis said. \u201cAnd we needed to meet needs so we can then share Jesus with people when that time comes. We saw it as our responsibility. This is why God has put us here\u2014for this time. Let\u2019s get after it. We can\u2019t back off. We need to step it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of Asante Church serving in their Surprise, Arizona community. <\/p>\n

What has happened in Surprise through the ministry of Asante Church during the pandemic has been multiplied in communities across the United States. According to a recent Lifeway Research report, 51% of Americans say churches in their communities were helpful during the pandemic. Among younger demographics, those numbers were even higher. The report showed 63% of people ages 35 to 49 and 56% of people ages 18 to 34 said churches were helpful to their communities. <\/p>\n

Scott McConnell, executive director at Lifeway Research, connects the church\u2019s service during the pandemic to Jesus\u2019 call for followers to serve their neighbors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Jesus instructed\u00a0His followers to \u2018love your neighbor as yourself,\u2019 there were no strings attached." \u2014 @smcconn Click To Tweet <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Jesus instructed His followers to \u2018love your neighbor as yourself,\u2019 there were no strings attached. It wasn\u2019t to love them so they escape poverty, so they become Christians, or so they notice your good deeds\u2014though any of those may result,\u201d McConnell said. \u201cThe ever-present call to meet tangible needs of those around us is simply to express love. This research showed such service from churches continued during the pandemic and should be a priority as churches emerge from the effects of the pandemic themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before the pandemic, community engagement was a critical part of any church\u2019s mission, as well as its pathway to health. Mark Clifton, senior director of replanting at the North American Mission Board (NAMB), says it\u2019s a much more important metric for church health than traditional barometers like attendance and giving. Growth and giving may follow community engagement, but a church that makes disciples will make its community better, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe always say the church should make the community noticeably better,\u201d Clifton said. \u201cIf, at the end of the day, the community isn\u2019t noticeably better because the church\u2014not the building but the people who follow Jesus in the gathered place\u2014is there, then we\u2019re not being the church.\u201d<\/p>\n

If, at the end of the day, the\u00a0community\u00a0isn\u2019t noticeably better because the church is there,\u00a0then we\u2019re not being the church. \u2014 @johnmarkclifton, senior director of replanting at @NAMB_SBC Click To Tweet <\/p>\n

Clifton says community engagement is particularly important for the struggling churches he and his team at NAMB serve. Clifton\u2019s book Reclaiming Glory: Revitalizing Dying Churches<\/em>, lays out his strategy for restarting struggling churches. This strategy includes a strong focus on community engagement.  <\/p>\n

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See also  What Sparks Evangelical Generosity? Discipleship<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cMost replants are neighborhood churches that years ago quit connecting to the neighborhood,\u201d Clifton said. \u201cSo if they are really going to be replanted, they won\u2019t be a large regional church that will compete with the big churches that have great youth programs. They\u2019ll have to be contextual and incarnational in their neighborhood again. In replanting, if you\u2019re not going to be contextual and incarnational in the neighborhood, then don\u2019t even bother.\u201d <\/p>\n

While community engagement has always been an important part of the church\u2019s mission, the pandemic presented the church with a figurative fork in the road. With public events shut down, the church could fade into the background or embrace its mission to serve the community in a time of dramatic need.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0replanting, if you\u2019re not going to\u00a0be\u00a0contextual and incarnational\u00a0in the neighborhood, then don\u2019t even bother. \u2014 @johnmarkclifton, senior director of replanting at @NAMB_SBC Click To Tweet <\/p>\n

Ed Stetzer, the dean of Wheaton College\u2019s School of Missions, Ministry, and Leadership, notes that the \u201cculture is groaning under a host of miseries\u201d currently, some caused by the pandemic, and some exacerbated by it.  <\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been many lives lost from COVID-19; we have experienced the miseries of racism and political division, and the erosion of a unifying center,\u201d Stetzer said. \u201cThere is the looming immigration\/refugee crisis as well as growing concern over mental illness, food insecurities, income gaps, fear of cancel culture, and much more. On top of all of that, there seems to be an identity crisis around issues of gender and sexuality. This is such a critical time for the church to step up and show how the good news of Jesus is the hope for all the world. Thus, a prayer of mine for the church is to not let the moment we are in derail us from the mission we are on.\u201d<\/p>\n

"This is such a critical time for the church to step up and show how the good news of Jesus is the hope for all the world." \u2014 @edstetzer Click To Tweet <\/p>\n

L.A. City Baptist Church, in a mostly Hispanic community in Los Angeles, chose to step up and embrace the moment even with minimal resources to leverage. When Korean pastor Min Lee first arrived at the church in 2019, the church had only 12 members. After COVID-19 hit his low-income neighborhood particularly hard the following spring, Lee mobilized the church to provide food and supplies, even dipping into his own wallet to help pay for it. <\/p>\n

As local stores closed, neighborhood families often didn\u2019t have access to transportation to get to places where they could get what they needed, so Lee led the church to bring the supplies to these families. The idea caught on and two larger nearby churches partnered with the church to create a monthly food bank for the community.<\/p>\n

L.A. City Baptist Church members out in their neighborhood <\/p>\n

\u201cI had a sense that God hadn\u2019t just called me to pastor the church members but to pastor the community God had called me to, which is an inner-city neighborhood within the city of L.A.,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIt was a community whom God had given me a heart for, and I really wanted to have my heart broken for those in the community who were broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a sense that God hadn\u2019t just called me to pastor the church members but to pastor the community God had called me to." \u2014 Min Lee, pastor of L.A. City Baptist Church Click To Tweet <\/p>\n

This also gave Lee opportunities to share the gospel with neighbors. That\u2019s a dynamic Stetzer believes will happen increasingly as churches meet practical needs in their community\u2014even after these communities emerge from the pandemic. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the mission becomes alive and active in the life of men and women who profess Jesus as Lord, then the proclamation of Jesus as the only Lord and Savior becomes plausible,\u201d Stetzer said. \u201cMost of us have experienced great service at a restaurant. Think about Christian service as preparing the table to receive the most incredible meal they have ever experienced\u2014that being the good news of Jesus.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Tobin Perry<\/h2>\n

@TobinPerry<\/p>\n

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Tobin is a freelance writer in Evansville, Indiana.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n