Who Is My Neighbor?

I noticed them when they arrived. 

The pleats of her skirt made a feminine flounce out of the stiff fabric. Her hair was perfectly coiffed. He wore slacks and a sports jacket, the unassuming tailored affair of the wealthy. 

They were seated at our table. His smile spread warmly across his face, sparkling in his eyes as he firmly shook my hand in introduction. She was quiet, but she leaned towards me in friendly confidence as she spoke with her face close to mine of their recent travels in Europe. 

She asked if I’d gotten to travel much. I told her of my year in Belize. Of my travels in China. Of our time in India. With this last mention, her eyes grew wide as she sat away from me in her chair, her chin tilted. 

“So you’ve been to India,” she said. “What did you think?” She spoke with a hushed frenzy, as if about to hear a piece of juicy gossip. 

I smiled as I remembered our brief trip. I told her of the precious friends we’d made, of the welcome we received. I told her of the delicious food, the beauty of the sea, the rich history. I told her of the incredible ministry and development work we observed, of the people who are tirelessly and creatively working to improve the lives of the children and the poor. 

As I spoke, my mind walked through my memories, transporting me to the other side of the world. We were sitting around the table with our newly made friends. We passed around the bowls filled with the Indian dishes I had watched being made in their kitchen earlier in the day. I had tried to take notes enough to replicate it at home. So many good conversations around that table. So much laughter. My heart swelled with fondness, with a desire to return, with longing to be with those precious people again. 

“We traveled there several years ago,” she said. “I desperately wanted to see the Taj Mahal. So, my sweet husband,” here she smiled across the table at him, “surprised me with a trip.” 

I smiled, nodding. I love hearing about the adventures of others, particularly to places I’ve been, particularly to places I love. 

“Well, I will never go back there,” she said, with breathy disgust. 

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This was not what I was expecting. I tried not to let the confusion show on my face. It was clear I wouldn’t have to ask for the details of their disastrous trip.

“One day, they were driving us around, and they took us through the poor part of the city. The way those people lived! I have never seen anything like it. So much poverty. The dirt. Those children…” 

In my mind, I was on the back of a moped, clinging to the waist of the caseworker as we wound through the streets to the small slum where the transient construction workers were living with their families. The children would spread a tarp under the shadow of the rising concrete facade of an apartment complex and sit at our feet. They brought me their notebooks with deliberately traced letters. I pointed to the figure. “A,” they would say. Then the next. “B,” they would say. I could feel the curious eyes of their mothers as they peeked out from their doors at my back.

I was hearing the voice of the caseworker as we walked away—“I was once one of those children. But people came who cared about me, and they made sure I got an education. Now, I can do the same thing.” I thought of the money she was saving to care for her ailing father. 

My attention returned to the woman beside me, now leaning in again as she spoke. “When you get to be my age, seeing things like that changes you.” She shuddered and shook her head—as if the mental image were on an etch-a-sketch and she could shake it away. 

The Four Tables

This week’s resource again comes from a presentation I heard by Neil Hudson entitled “No Time for Mission? Cultivating a Missional Imagination for Over-Busy Christians” at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in April 2016. Learn more about Neil Hudson, the Imagine Church Project, and the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity in my previous post and on the LICC website.

My last couple posts have been focused on the idea of the frontlines we find ourselves scattered to throughout the week. Thinking about frontlines, as I’ve said before, leads us to consider where God has already positioned us to be used. [If you missed my original post explaining a frontline, you can read it here.] 

As we go about our lives on our frontlines, we rub shoulders with a wide range of people. We have an opportunity to engage with them and build relationships. How do we do this? And what do we do when we begin to build a relationship with someone who isn’t a Christian? 

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Fruitfulness on the Frontline: A Resource

Yesterday I shared about the idea of a “frontline.” If you haven’t read yesterday’s post, give this one a pause, and take a moment to read it here. 

Are you left wondering what to do with your frontline or how you can be faithful in it? That’s what today’s resource is about. 

Mark Greene’s book Fruitfulness on the Frontline (another LICC resource) lays out a “6M” framework for fruitfulness on your frontline. Please note that I am simply pulling the basic framework of this resource and sharing it with you. For a much more in depth exploration, get a copy for yourself. The adapted 8-week DVD series would be great for a small group to study and discuss together.

When we talk about our frontlines, it’s easy to reduce their importance to one thing—who can I share the Gospel with? While this is important and definitely something we should consider with more boldness, this is only one piece of how God can be using us and working in us on the frontline. He can use us in ways beyond just a simple sharing of our testimony. 

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Your Life on the Frontline

What role do you have in the mission of the church? 

Does this question immediately make you think about what you do related to specifically church sanctioned activities and ministries? Does it make you feel guilty that you aren’t “doing enough”?

If so, you probably aren’t alone. 

Traditionally, we have focused on the "gathered" church. We focus on the Sunday morning worship gathering. We focus on the paid church workers and the programs sponsored and run by the church. Being a part of the mission of the church comes to mean volunteering leisure hours to join what church workers are already doing. 

But seeing the mission of the church only in this gathered sense becomes stunted. This is why Neil Hudson, in Imagine Church, urges churches to reclaim a vision for the scattered life of the church. This is the Monday to Saturday life of the church—individual believers scattered into their homes, workplaces, and leisure spaces. This is where ordinary mission happens in the every-day. It’s not about doing more (joining more church-related activities) but about doing everything in “normal life” through the lens of mission. We are sent out to our “frontline”.  This is the scattered life of the church.

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How Many Hours of Your Week Are Dedicated to God?

I remember the sessions from my high school days, a moment intended to create a self-evaluation of the use of my time (good), which ended in guilt (not-good). 

“How many hours are there in a week?”

Twenty four each day, times seven days. One hundred sixty eight hours.

“How many of those hours do you spend sleeping?”

If I’m trying to get eight hours of sleep a night…fifty six hours.

“How many of those hours do you spend at school or work?”

About eight hours five days a week…forty hours, maybe more.

“How many of those hours do you spend doing extracurricular activities? . . . How many of those hours do you spend recreationally, doing something fun with friends?”

On and on it went, with the activities and responsibilities of my week slowly chipping away at the hours allotted to me each week. 

And then of course came what was to be the climactic question: “How many hours a week do you spend dedicated for the Lord?” 

Two hours at church on Sunday, two at church on Wednesday night, and maybe 30 minutes for devotions each morning…

My teenage self looked at the meager sum. Not even eight hours a week.

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