Checkpoints - Invite - Luke 10:25-37

Well, good morning, South Sub. How's it going? As Daniel said, my name is Dave Runyon. Um, I serve as the executive director of CityUnite. We help churches work together in the Denver metro area. Um, focusing on the brokenness of our city. U, before I was serving in this role, I was a pastor for 10 years um, up in Arvada. worked at two great churches and then I had like a a series of kind of crises that led me to this point. Not like bad crises, but kind of I think good crises um that led me to doing what I'm doing now. Um while I was serving as a pastor, I got obsessed with this one scripture with actually with one chapter of the Bible. Sometimes that can be a good thing. Um sometimes uh you don't want to get too locked in on just like one actual verse. But um I started reading John chapter 17 and this is this incredible chapter. It's Jesus's last recorded prayer um while he's a free person. And in this chapter he prays for himself for what he's getting ready to go through. He prays for the disciples and he prays for all of us. Prays for every believer um that was living at that time and every believer to come. And in this incredibly crucial moment of his life, of all the things that he could pray for, for us, Jesus prays for unity. He says that when there's oneness, he says, I pray that that my people, the people who follow me would be one. He said that when there's oneness, that people that don't know him will be drawn towards him. And as a pastor, I sat there thinking about this and like dwelling on this idea of unity. And I was thinking about all the different things I was doing as a pastor. Um, and not a lot of them were focused on unity. Um, at least not explicitly. And so I began to think and to pray about what it would look like if the the believers in our part of the city began to like actually experience unity. if we worked and and how we started to think about that early on was like what would it look like if all of the different like Jesus you know following congregations in my part of the city started to like know each other and then go out and serve in the city together and so I started to meet with a lot of other pastors uh that were in town and I started to realize that this was something that um wasn't unique to me that God was doing something that there was a thirst among a lot of the other faith leaders um in the Arvvada out of area to to begin to work together. And so um we started to get together and to pray and to think and to dream. We realized we didn't know the city as well as we should. Um and so we started to have these little community conversations. We would invite in the police chief or the city manager. Um we would put, you know, 25, 30 um faith leaders in the room and then we would just say, "Hey, tell us a little bit about your story. How did you end up here?" And we would always ask this question like, "Okay, if you could if you could wave a magic wand and change something in our city, what would you change?" We were looking for like, "What's the thing that we should rally around?" Um, and so a number of years ago, I was sitting in one of those rooms with our mayor and he shared some of his story and then we said, "Okay, you know, if you could wave a magic wand, you know, what would you do?" Uh, and he pulled out this piece of paper that he had like written down all of his answers on and they were all like great stuff. He's like, you know, I want to live in a city where there's no single moms living below the poverty line. Um, where there's no financial debt, um, where there's no isolated elderly. And he went through this list of incredible things that were on his heart. And then he he took this piece of paper, he put it away. And then very much in passing, he said to us, he said, you know, if you if you guys want to have the biggest impact in our city, you should start some kind of a neighboring movement. And then you just went on. He was going to like talk about somebody else. And we were like, "Hey, can you go back to that? Can you say more about this idea of like neighboring?" and he said, 'You know what we're learning is like we start all of these programs at the government level um trying to offer services to people in need, but what we've learned is that if people are known by the people that they live right around in their apartment complex, at their condo, in their cul-de-sac, on their street, if they are known by the people that live around them, that most often times they don't need any of the programs that we're raising all this money to start. And he said, you know, that that kid who needs a Boys and Girls Club, if that that kid is known by other healthy adults that live around them, some of their needs get cared for. That person who's growing older and doesn't have family living around, um, we can create services for isolated elderly or if they're known by the people who live right around them, they don't need us. And he said this beautiful line. He said, "What we're learning at the city level is that relationships always trump programs." Now, I want you to put yourself in that room. It's a bunch of like faith pastors who like get paid to like help people, you know, like orient their life around God and Jesus and like know what this book says. And I want you to imagine what it feels like when God uses your mayor to tell a bunch of pastors that the smartest, most powerful thing they could do is like, you know, one of the main teachings of this book. This idea of like love your neighbor. We're all sitting there in this room going, "Oh no, our mayor's telling us to do the Bible." Yeah, that's how we felt. It was like this awkward laugh and they were like, "Oh no, this is very, very convicting. And we prayed for him, you know, we asked him, we was like, "Hey, can we say a prayer for you?" after he shared and then he left. And we all sat around in a room looking at each other going, "Okay, who who in this room is actually doing this in their own life?" Like, who's actually like taking this idea of loving their neighbor literally and seriously. And I will tell you of the faith leaders or the pastors that were in that room, it wasn't a lot. And I wasn't one of them. Like I I remember driving home from that meeting and I had like a thousand thoughts going through my head and and one of them was like, "Oh my goodness, is like is it possible that when Jesus gets asked to boil the entire text down to one thing to the idea of love God with everything you have and love your neighbor, is it possible that Jesus has given us a very simple strategic plan that if believers everywhere did it, it would change their neighborhoods and communities and cities overnight?" So, that's one of the thoughts I had. The other thought I I had was driving home as I realized I wasn't doing it. Like, I was serving on the boards of three different nonprofits. I was working at church and like pouring into everything that was going on there. And like I would pretty much come home and like I would get back to my home and I would just try my best just to be like present and to be like dialed in with my wife and my kids. And then I would wave to a few people that I saw out there. But like my home was had just become like a place to like take a breath and crash, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I wasn't engaged in my own neighborhood. And and that like that in then contrast to what the mayor had said about the power of literal neighboring and then knowing everything that that God and Jesus says about neighboring started to like bother me. it started to like, you know, and I remember my wife was like, "Hey, how was the meeting?" And I told her about what happened. I was like, "I think we're like supposed to get like way more engaged in our neighborhood than we are." And she already was, so she was like, "Well, yeah, you let me know how that goes." Um, and so, um, and I'll tell you more about what's happened in my neighborhood, but let me tell you what happened to this group of of pastors. So, we met that day. We prayed with the mayor. We kind of had this moment of like going, "Yeah, none of us are really doing this like super well." And we said, "What if we just started to take some baby steps towards that?" And then let's meet back in a couple of months and let's let's just talk about what God's putting on our heart. And when we met that second time, two months later, I invited this lady u Vicky Ryer into the meeting. Um she was our assistant city manager. I'd been going around and annoying city leaders with this like magic wand question for a long time of like, you know, what could we get all of the the different churches to do and and Vicki would like Vicki would always go, "Hey, next time it snows, why don't you get all the people that go to all those churches to shovel their neighbors driveway?" And I remember going not like I was thinking like some like you know I had like the churches of our vet are going to eradicate homelessness or something like massive. But so then she had been telling me that for years. So the mayor says the neighboring thing and I am like oh Vicki's been trying to tell me this and so I invite Vicki to come and and like just share with us a little bit about neighboring um what is that what does that look like? What have you learned about it? And she comes in and she's just like hey listen this is why neighboring really matters. And she talked about crime rates that when people know the first names of their neighbors that the the crime rate she quoted this guy Robert Putnham and said the crime rates are 82% less in neighborhoods where people know the names of their neighbors. She talked about the fact that in natural disasters, the systems get overwhelmed and your neighbors are most often your first responders. She talked about the fact that people live significantly longer. Um, and shared with us all of this data around loneliness and connection. And the whole time she's sharing all these things, we're writing them down like that's good, that's good. But in the back of our mind, we're thinking, "And Jesus said to do this." And then we have this we have another moment where very much in passing, one of the pastors asked her a question and and she shared this like very very powerful line. She said, you know, and she wasn't trying to be mean, but she just said, "From the city's perspective, there isn't a noticeable difference in how Christians and non-Christians neighbor in our community." Let me say that again. from the city's perspective, there isn't a noticeable difference in how Christians and non-Christians neighbor in our community. And when she said it, like a couple of us were like kind of pushed back a little bit and then we stopped and we realized she's right. And and I've shared this quote from her in rooms with civic leaders all over the country. And never once have I had a civic leader, a mayor or a police chief come up to me and go, "Oh, Dave, in our city, the Christians are the best neighbors."

Now we like again I I started to really wrestle through this because I am sitting here going okay everything in this book if you only do one thing love God with your heart soul mind and strength love your neighbor as yourself and I so we've got that on one hand and on the other hand what we know is true is that like in our cities in our neighborhoods we as Christians aren't obviously distinguished as like better neighbors than people who don't have faith. And as I started to wrestle with that, you do you ever see something on the news and it makes you mad? You're like, you just see something, it starts to like create something like you just get like frustrated and irritated. I'm sure that's never happened to anybody in this room recently. Okay. Like that's the feeling that I was experiencing was I just like starting to get like irritated. And then I started to like ask this question of like I I wonder how I went like h how was I a pastor for so many years and not like genuinely engaged in my own neighborhood? And when I started to ask that question, I went from like being irritated and frustrated to reflective and convicted. And I started to read passages that I had taught multiple sermons on that I had read hundreds of times and they just began to to take on a new light. Um and so that's one of the text where we're going to be today is in Luke 10. So if you want to open there you can. U as I've shared my journey with others I've come to realize that many of us especially those of us that have grown up in the church have become inoculated to the great commandment. It's one of those things that we hear over and over and over again, but many of us have lost touch with what it looks like to take it literally and seriously. And I think sometimes we we put things on like bumper stickers and t-shirts, but don't actually live them out. And that's what I was doing in my own life. And so, um, I think the Bible has something very interesting to say about our tendency to do that. And so we're going to pick up a story that if you've been around church that you've heard many many times, I'm just going to ask you to like put on some fresh lenses, okay? And to to look at this story that you've probably heard before um through with a new light. So it's found in Luke uh 10:25. We'll pick it up. It says, "On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the law?" He replied, "How do you read it?" He, the expert-law, answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself." You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this and you will live. Just think about, we could just spend the whole rest of time just thinking about that. He says, "Do this and you will live." But look at this. Look at this little phrase here in verse 29 that comes up next. says, "But he wanted to justify himself." So he asks Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" This guy comes to Jesus. He asks a very straightforward question. Jesus does this a couple times in the text. He gets the person asking the question to answer their own question. He knows like, "Oh, there's something bigger going on here." So he invites the person to answer his own question. And he does. He gives the perfect textbook answer, like the exact right answer. And Jesus affirms him says do this and you will live. And then what does this guy do? His first thought is how do I get out of this? Like like but he want it says but he wanted to justify himself. So he asked Jesus and who is my neighbor? You ever do this? You like go I wonder if I can like just kind of define that word in a different way or like I'm going to like really press in on the definition of the word hoping that like maybe it gives you a out. Okay, that's what he's doing here in this text. He he's looking for a loophole.

And then Jesus does something beautiful. He tells the story of the good. He just blows up the definition of neighbor on this guy. He goes, you know, he's assuming that this person is already loving his own kind of like Jewish neighbors, the people right around him. And so he just he just gives him like graduate level neighboring. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. And and the story of the good Samaritan is that like no like whenever whenever you care for the person in front of you, no matter who it is, no matter who's doing the caring or who the person is, that it's an act of loving your neighbor, even a Samaritan. Okay? Now, he's just saying like, listen, this neighboring thing goes way bigger, you know, than your just your geographical boundaries.

And and in doing that he just you know he tells this this beautiful profound story. Now let me tell you how most of my life I interpreted the story of the good Samaritan. I read the story of the good Samaritan and I thought to myself, you know what that means? It means everybody is my neighbor. Do you like that? Like everybody's my neighbor. And then I just kind of drifted into a place where I'm like, you know, I'm doing a lot of good stuff. I'm kind of just like loving my neighbor all the time. You like that? You like that little mental like jump right there? That is how you end up as a pastor who doesn't know most of his neighbors names. I'm I'm doing a bunch of Now, I want to be really clear about something clearly in Jesus's economy. When we go down and we serve at a great nonprofit in here in town, when we go to the other end of the world and we're caring for people, when we're at work, when we're on the soccer field with the other, you know, parents or grandparents and we're building relationships, clearly all of that in Jesus's economy is an act of loving your neighbor. But here's the deal. All of that doesn't sprinkle like magic fairy dust over our actual neighbors. And all of a sudden, Jesus isn't talking about them. And I drifted into a place where like that's how I was living. I I kind of like I had this like metaphoric love for my metaphoric neighbors. And metaphorically I was just killing it. And in real life there's people who are sleeping like 40 50 60 feet away from me and I didn't know their names. And so as I started to go through this um crisis of like like trying to reconcile all of these different things, I started to go maybe I don't need grad school neighboring right now. Okay. Maybe like there's something powerful about just going back to the basics, going back to elementary school and like drawing a circle around the places where God has put us and then beginning to work out from there. And so we as like a little group of pastors started to like go back to kindergarten when it came to loving your neighbor. And Vicki, our assistant city manager, uh we we did this incredible little exercise that I want to do with you because it it propelled me into um some really neat things in my neighborhood. So if you have this if you have your thing, your checkpoints u we're on checkpoint. We're on invite. We're going to talk about that here in a second. Um but if you have this, just draw. I want you to to you probably don't have any notes written down in it yet. You're like, "What is this guy doing? He's just like talking about himself and his story the whole time." Um, so you can I want to ask you this. If you have a pen, take out this. And this little exercise was the key to me and my friends and then so many more people beginning to like take some small steps in their own neighborhood. So, just draw a tic-tac-toe board um looking like thing. I think we have one up here on the screen. Yeah, yours doesn't have to look that, you know, fancy. Just draw a tic-tac-toe board in the middle. Okay? Or if you don't have a pen, you know, a piece of paper in front of you, can do this in your head. But I want you to imagine, so your house is in the middle. That's your house. I want you to imagine you walk outside the front door of your apartment, your condo, um your ranch, your home, wherever you live. Walk, you walk outside the front door. So, this doesn't have to be literal. I just want you to imagine the eight closest households to you. Okay? Okay. What are the eight eight most logical households to you as you walk outside your front door? And now I just want to ask you like right here in the service, I want you to write down the names like write down the first names. You just do adults if you want. Write down the first names of as many people as you can in those eight households that are right in front of you. Okay.

Some of you are cheating. You're asking your spouse. I like that. Now, I want you to keep I want you to keep doing it. Those of you, keep writing. When I first did this, I could only write down both adults names in two of those eight households. I had met all of those people before, but I could only write down the I could only remember the names of two of of both adults in two of those eight households. And when I did this exercise for the first time, I like wrote in guy with blue truck

annoying lady. [laughter] Okay. So, don't do that. Just leave them. Leave them blank. Okay. Now, how many of you if like how many of you can do all eight? Like raise your hand. Okay. That's a lot. That's like 15% of the room. Okay. How many of you right now, if I ask you to come up, you can do five or more? You're going to write down five or more of the of both adults names if they have two adults in all those units. Go ahead and raise your hand.

30% of the room. Okay. So, when you walk out today, you're going to get this refrigerator magnet so that you can like do this all at home. Um, we have handed out 670,000 of these magnets. Okay? I've sat in a lot of rooms like this. Never once have I been in a room of Christians where more than half of the room raises their hand and say that they can do five or more of their neighbors names. I've sat in rooms with a lot of people. Never have I been a room of Christians where more than half the room goes, "Yeah, I can I can write down five or more I can fill five or more of those in." That should mess with us. Okay? And here's why. In order to love somebody, it's helpful to know their first name,

right? And what I learned in my own life is that like when I first put this up on my fridge, I had like a napkin and I wrote in like the tic-tac-toe board and I had those two and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to I'm going to just look for opportunities to organically fill in these names." Um, and my wife, by the way, like could have filled in way more and she just didn't because she's mean. She's like, "You you're going to go do this." And I entered into a a couple of weeks of having a series of mildly awkward conversations with my neighbors because I started to go and initiate with them. Like one of my neighbors, I remember I was sitting outside and he was mowing his lawn um and he's like kind of like across the street in one house um to the left and he was mowing his lawn and all this stuff was going off inside of me. And you're going to have a moment like this in the next week, okay? All this stuff was going off inside of me and then I I'm out there and he was mowing and I'm like yeah that's one of the guys like he's one of the blank squares and I'm like I'll go over there right now and just you know reintroduce myself and then I I stop. I'm like no that's so weird. He's like mowing he's in the middle of mowing his lawn and I said well I'll just kind of like hang out here in the front yard and wait till he's done. I'm like that's weird too. Um and then I actually had this thought. I'm going to I'm going to go back in and I bet when I come out he'll be done. And I realized I'm like I am just looking for any excuse not to do this. And so um I still remember like taking the first step like down my driveway and walking across the street and him looking at me and then turning off the mower and I was like, "Hey man." Um I always called this guy, "Hey man." My other neighbor was bro. Felt like I was doing really well. kept them kept them really so like, "Hey man, this is really embarrassing. I know I've lived next to you for two years and we've met multiple times, but I forgot your name." And I said, "I'm Dave." And he said something awful. He goes, "I know." Um, [laughter]

he's like, "I'm Matt. My wife's Jan." And we had like a 20 second interaction. And then I went back inside my house and I did something incredibly important. What did I do? I wrote it down. I wrote it down. After about six weeks, this whole thing, this little napkin on my fridge was full. And all of a sudden, I knew their names and I then I just started to use their names when I saw them. And and I'm telling you, so like some of the stuff on neighboring, it's like you're it's like you're stepping on one of the moving sidewalks at the airport. It's like you just have to get like so much of it is just momentum. And all of a sudden it went from hey man to hey Matt to hey Matt like did you see the end of that Broncos game to hey Matt like I've just got this thing I need to move in my garage. It's like you know like 20 ft. Is there any way that you could help me to hey you guys are going to be watching the game and we're going to be watching the game like let's throw something on the grill and just watch it together to hey you like so your son's car is back all the time. Did he move back in? Like how's that going to sitting across dining room table like sharing about our stories and our upbringings about the things that we care about like this like I mean by the way that's like that was like a 18-month or two-year window that doesn't just happen overnight but this thing like I I got like this thing that I had like dreamed about experiencing about like really knowing other people, knowing people who who are coming from a different worldview than me. Some of them coming from the same worldview than me that I didn't even know. This thing that like I had like set up concerts inside of my church like hoping that people like this like might walk in the door and yet it was sitting right outside my door the whole time. And so like we're in the you're in this series around checkpoints. And this week we're talking about this idea of inviting. Um, you know what's really helpful to do when you you invite somebody to something is to know their name, [laughter] you know, and like so much of like inviting is like we need to be living at depth with people and not and not like s like just a little bit below the surface with others in order to be able to invite them to the things that we're passionate about. And so sometimes like when you see this word invite at checkpoint a lot of times in churches we're like oh that means we're supposed to invite them to church. Maybe what if that word invite also means I'm just supposed to invite them into my home. I'm just supposed to actually be able to or to invite somebody to come over and to like help you move like this big like toolbox thingy that's not on wheels 20 ft in your garage. All of those invites count. All of those invites count. And so oftentimes I think it's those little things over time that end up making a big difference. That's what I learned for sure in my own neighborhood. Now, um, so I've got these like eight boxes filled in. They're sitting there. I start using some people's names. What I started to learn is like some people didn't want to be my friend. Some people I like learned their name. I did the whole mildly awkward thing of like I I we've met multiple times before and like they're super busy and they like just like they go to work really early in the morning and they come home late in the afternoon, they pick up their kids and then they run all over the place like different club sports and practices and do all that kind of stuff. Then they come back home at night after they grab like some fast food and the garage door goes up and it goes down and then they detox from all of that and then they do it again the next day and like I kind of like lean towards them and they were like, "Yeah, I'm good." Okay. And like I have a lot of grace for that because I think that's how my neighbors experienced me for a long time. But I learned like chasing those people like stalking them is not like very productive. I'm just going to save you a lot of time right now. And what I also learned is this. Some of my neighbors I leaned towards them and I could tell that there was like genuine curiosity coming back. Some of your neighbors are are are dying. They're they're they're like looking for connection and something more. They they like the idea of like rediscovering the art of neighboring is something that just like it just sings to their soul. Those are the people that like when you see something like that that I would encourage you to just those are people that go, "Hey, maybe you can come over and like let's just watch the game together instead of like watching it individually. Um, I also learned that like there's times where you want to have some like boundaries like there, you know, like if you're like a single woman and you don't and like you have a check in your spirit about something, like listen to it. Like it doesn't mean like just because you start to like engage in your neighborhood that you put all discernment to the side. Does that make sense? But over and over and over again, what I learned and what I have learned over the last decade is that when believers start to show up in their neighborhoods really believing that that God has invited us to like like when they see like their neighborhood as a lab to live out the New Testament that beautiful and profound things happen all over the place. Um I I started to to realize through this whole journey that like I didn't I had lost a theology of place. I just like I think a lot of us have a lot of us today in in the North American church. We've lost a theology of place. All through the Bible it's clear that like God cares about places that there there's sacred spots that that he gives land to different people. But like I just started to like treat my neighborhood like it was just a a stopping off point. And I started to in all of this, I started to read through different texts and and to rediscover a theology, a place. One of them is in um one of them's in Acts chapter 17. It's this beautiful uh moment where Paul is in Athens. They take him up to Mars Hill right above the marketplace. Um and he gives this incredible sermon about the nature of God. He does something amazing to start the sermon is like he has been walking around and he sees all these different idols all throughout their city and instead of like condemning them about all of their idols, he actually uses one of them as a bridge to talk about God. He says, "Hey, like I noticed you're really religious group of people. I I was walking around your city today. I and you have so many idols, I even found one to the unknown God." And he says, "I want to tell you today about the God that you do not yet know." and he just like he just unloads this beautiful summary of of the story of God. And one of the things that he says when he's describing the nature of God in Acts 17, he says this. He says, "From one man, he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he determined the time set for them and the exact places where they should live." God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. though he is not far from each one of us. He determined the time set for them in the exact places where they should live that like I started to realize that like there's something sacred about where I live like I don't live where I live by accident. I don't live where I live because like, oh, you know, we always wanted to have like three bedrooms so all of our kids could like have this or that or because of the school district or because of the curb appeal or because it's I'm just renting and I can't really afford the place that I'm supposed to be living in. I live we live where we live because God has placed us there. This is a this is a powerful. If you if you believe this, you it will change the way you drive in and out of your neighborhood. I started to realize like like it's real ministry when you learn your neighbor's first name. It's just as valuable and profound. Like I want people to like come here and show up and like do kids ministry and high school and be greeters and be on the like all of that is like really really important. And so is what we do in our front yards. Like what what you do in your front yard counts. It's real ministry. And that was like a huge shift for me, for a lot of my friends. And what it has led to is more connected communities, deeper relationships, people that don't know God, people that do know God, spending more and more time together. And what comes out of that is a thing that all of us like hope for and and wish for is like we get to learn other people's stories and what they care about. and they get to learn what we care about as well. And if you love golf and you and your neighbor spends time around you for a couple hours, they're probably going to know that you love golf or cooking or whatever it happens to be. And if you love Jesus, I hope that that's is that's true as well. That if if you love God that when you get to know people, it's just going to naturally leak out of you. Now, what I want to invite you to consider doing is to do what happened to me and to a lot of my friends. As you study through the text, as you think about this season that South Sub is in, um, I want to invite you to like go home and put a little tic-tac-toe board on your fridge that's going to haunt you. And, and maybe it'll be an encouragement for some of you in this room. you're just going to like have this thing like written out and and maybe these people like will just be a little bit more visible. Maybe they'll get inside of your thoughts a little bit more, inside of your prayers a little bit more. That's what happened to me. Now, what I'm not asking you to do is go home and like love all of your neighbors. That's like crazy Jesus stuff. It's really intimidating and really hard. All I'm asking you to do is like, would you commit to learning and retaining and using your neighbors names? Would you make a commitment to say, "You know what? Okay, I can do that." Now, here's the deal. It's like a Trojan horse. If you if you do that, you what you're starting in motion with some of those people is an opportunity for organic relationships to happen. But like I what I'm trying to do today is like set the bar so low that you can't crawl underneath it. Okay? I'm giving you a refrigerator magnet that your church has nicely like provided for you. Okay? I'm not asking you to go love all these people. just saying like would you just make a commitment to learn and retain and use the names of the people that live right around you and the re like the bar is right here. So like could we do that? to like like and I want you to think about like the amount of people that would be impacted if like just the people right here in this one service we're like okay um Jesus says if I only do like like love him with everything I have love my neighbors myself I don't know some of my neighbors names that's problematic not in a bad not in a shameful way just like in a conviction way and so I'm going to go and do it I'm going to go and just learn these people's names and then stay open to what God might have next. Because if you'll do this, if you'll do the block map, and then if you'll start to say this dangerous prayer, which is God, what's the next small step that you want me to take with one of my neighbors? Like, so like when you when you pray that prayer, when I pray that prayer, when I get quiet before God and I just say, "God, what's the next small step you want me to take one of my neighbors?" like the thoughts that that he like brings to mind, the the people, the situations, the circumstances, I am always surprised and delighted by and then the key is will we actually go and do it. Like one of the things that I learned in all of this and I should have known this as a pastor for a long time is like the way that Jesus talks about living is actually the best way to live. Like the way that Jesus talks about living is the best way to live. And when we begin to like read his about him and and to look at the way he lived, the things that he taught, if we're willing to actually take those seriously and to not find loopholes out of them, like I I mean, that's what I did, especially in this area of neighboring is I had found a loophole just like this guy. I like, you know, I was I had found a way to justify myself and to not do like actually do the most basic thing that it takes to love our neighbor. And and it confronted a lot of things for me. It confronted like I I mean I'll be honest like I didn't want to be on some [clears throat] of those nonprofit boards. I was just like on there way too long and it I was like great I got my thing to get out of this. Um and they and like I love the boards. I love nonprofits. But they like they went on without me and they did just fine. But I had to make some decisions because every time I went to a board meeting that was another night of the week that I wasn't actually present in my own neighborhood. And it turns out like in order to be a good neighbor, you have to actually be in your neighborhood a little bit. It's really helpful if you're interruptible. It's really helpful if you're visible. Like dogs and kids are cheating when it comes to neighboring because it makes you more visible. But I was so busy like running to so many different things that I was I really wasn't around. And so, um, God did this beautiful work in me of helping me like really do an audit of like am I living at a pace that is sustainable and that would allow me to be engaged in my own neighborhood.

But again, I don't like don't go down that road yet. Got like you'll get there eventually. But for now, would you just be willing? Would you just be willing to do this this one thing of learning and retaining and and knowing that this is putting you on a pathway to actually living out the great commandment?

If if just the people in this room like said, "All right, we're going to do this." Like, I want you to think about the number of different people that like just 8x every single household right here in this room. That is the impact that it would have. And I'm encouraged like I know that the leadership here like believes in this deeply because I went out to lunch and heard about it. Like this is this is something that that is like deep into the hearts and soul of the leaders here. And I know that that if you will continue to do this, if you'll be willing like the whole key, like do you know what it takes to become a good neighbor? It takes the the the courage to lean into the willingness to lean into mildly awkward moments. It's mildly awkward to invite um somebody to your house for the first time. It's mildly awkward to go and have that conversation when you walk down the road and say, "Hey, I'm Dave." And they say, "Yeah, I know." [laughter] [snorts] But like here here's what I had to come face to face with at the end of the day. like for much of my life, my neighbors, most of my neighbors weren't important enough for me to remember their name. And like, so if you're like in this room and you're feeling like I hope it's like if you're like me, if you were like where I was when all this stuff started, I hope it's not like shame. I hope it's just like a little bit of like conviction and a lot of like what could be what could be possible if I just literally if I took the most basic teaching of Jesus and said all right I understand that it's bigger than just this but what if I just drew a circle around the place that I am and began to work out from there and what if I became a person who was willing to invite others on all different levels to invite somebody to help you. That, by the way, that's one of the biggest qualities that you can have is like the the art of receiving is a big deal. Like I when I first became like like into like when I first like started getting into this, like I started to think of like who am I going to go serve? I got to put on my superch Christian neighbor cape. Um, and what I realized is like that creates like a one-way street relationship. like being a person that can receive is a really really valuable part of any kind of relationship and that goes to for our neighborhoods. And so like just like going and like borrowing something instead of taking a 25minut trip to Target or King Supers or Safeway or whatever it is that's like a small act of invitation like inviting somebody to actually be able to like provide for a need inviting somebody into your home. inviting somebody into your small group. All of these things are important. That's why it's one of the checkpoints, one of one of the core values. But I think like in order to do that, we need to be living in a way in which we're connected to people so that when we invite them, they may it's not like jumping off like a high dive. It it's like just taking like the next small step in a relationship. Does that make sense? So, my hope and my prayer as you walk out of these doors tonight is that you grab one of these, you throw it on your fridge, and you start taking the next small step that God's putting in front of you to take the the great commandment literally and seriously. And I promise you, like I could sit up here and tell you story after story after story about what God has done in the community that he has built around me and around the the the group of people um the 30 or so people that that have become our neighbors. It's something that like I knew that I kind of wanted and I thought it'd be nice, but it's something that like has been a thousand times more powerful and profound. Let's pray. Um, Father, thank you for your word, Lord. Thank you for um the the way that that we can encounter texts that we've seen many, many times before and that that sometimes if we're open, um, they just take on a whole new light. Father, help help give us the courage to lean in to mildly awkward moments. Father, help us to take everything in your word

with seriousness, Lord, and help us to to get to know and build meaningful relationships with the people that you've placed right around us. In your name, amen.