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“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
“Respect, I think, always implies imagination—the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls. If we aim to be ‘one nation indivisible,’ the capacity to imagine ourselves as members of one another, despite all that separates us, is essential.” -- Parker Palmer with reference to Wendell Berry
For centuries, churches have been the anchor of neighborhoods and communities. In many places they have existed not only as places of worship, but have maintained a presence of sanctuary, and an aid in the neighborhoods that have surrounded them. Go into any small town and you will likely see the center of town organized into different blocks with churches of varying denominations situated at a corner or in the center of the block. Go into a city and you might see whole neighborhoods centered around a church building that either was or is thriving and meeting the needs of a particular community. Take a drive through the countryside and you will see churches of different denominations on the roadsides where people come in from surrounding farms or outlying fields to worship together and to hold community lunches and suppers and festivals and gatherings.
In the history of our country, churches have served the needs of many different immigrant communities, who without knowing the dominant language of this American culture, could go where people spoke as they did: German, Polish, Gaelic, Italian, Spanish, Hmong, Vietnamese. Churches were the places where people could speak freely and organize and provide help for newly arrived members and neighbors. Goods could be gathered and distributed according to people’s need. Churches and the neighborhoods that surrounded them were inseparable.
Now, I am not trying to idealize the role of the church in our society. I am aware that many of those neighborhood churches are now coffee shops and boutiques. I am also aware that there are those who have coopted the church into being a self-serving place of judgment of anyone who is not like the people already inside their doors. I am aware of the ways that certain so-called Christian movements have sought not to help others but to instead hurt and punish those who think and pray in a way different than their own. But I do like to think that we in the United Church of Christ keep working and striving to be a Beloved Community, dedicated to love and justice in sanctuary, neighborhood and world and I like to think that we, among other denominations, are focused on being the very heart of a civil society.
The point that I am trying to make is that our churches, and the neighborhoods surrounding them, share a joint history and while that history has perhaps faded with the changes in our culture -- family structure, work-life issues, technological advances, economic, class and racial differences, and political divides -- there is still something to be said about the relationships between our churches and the neighborhoods that surround them. And where it used to be that churches could just keep their doors open and people would flock in, we now find ourselves isolated from the neighbors around us and seen as only a place where invited people (and often older people) go to worship. We also find that while many of our present church members “grew up in the church,” those members themselves now drive in to the church from a more distant neighborhood and so don’t really know what the neighborhood actually looks like and experiences now. This causes the once strong reciprocal relationship between church and neighborhood to break down. So how do we find better ways to enter into relationship with the neighbors around us? And what might we do as church members and church leaders to bridge the gaps that have been many years in the making?
Jonathan Page, director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, notes that we need to be mindful of our mission as church and that we need to consciously make changes to the ways that we might have always done things. In his first letter as new director of the Lewis Center, he says this about the church’s role in supporting the ideas of Beloved Community:
"Leaning into this requires a rejection of some former ways. Specifically, there has to be a shared understanding of the primary audience for the work of the church. There is a popular financial institution in the mid-Atlantic that runs a number of ads, most of which end with the slogan “our members are our mission.” I have found that far too often, this is the implicit mission of the church – to satisfy and placate membership over and against building multidirectional discipling relationships in community."
A Neighborhood Inventory
One way to begin to look beyond our church doors and the ways we’ve always done things is to make it a church project to conduct a neighborhood inventory. This can be done as a group, or individuals can take individual parts of the inventory and then come together as a group to “map out” what is in the neighborhood, what some of the key issues might be, and what resources exist in the surrounding area. Some questions to address may include:
- Who lives in the neighborhood? Are there updated census records that we could look at? Who do we see when we are walking down the street or driving through the area?
- What is the housing in the neighborhood like? Is it well maintained? Are there places that could use a little help or updating? Are there new housing units? Are there houses or apartments or condos? Do people tend to rent or own their housing?
- What are some of the key resources in the neighborhood? Are there community gardens? Are there food pantries? Homeless shelters? Clothing banks? Refuge for survivors of domestic violence? Head Start or other preschool options?
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What are the schools like? Have schools closed? Which ones? Have schools merged? Are there separate elementary, middle and high schools? Is there a school board? Who is on it? How many families are home schooling their children? What are the higher education opportunities in the area? Tech schools? Colleges?
- What is the average income of the people living in the area?
- How are people employed? What employment opportunities are around?
- What is the condition of roads and streets?
- What other churches are in the area? What kind of churches are they? Can you see any potential for engaging in work with any of those churches?
- Who are the elected representatives or officials in the area?
These are some of the questions that can be addressed in a neighborhood inventory. There are likely others that your church membership will think to ask or explore. Once the inventory is taken, a conversation over how to share the information gained will be helpful to all involved. Sometimes creating a large visual, such as a neighborhood map, can be helpful. Some may choose to place all of the information in a neighborhood portfolio. A summary of findings might be distributed to the entire congregation along with a talk given by some of the folks who collected information.
Once an inventory has been completed, a next step might be to establish neighborhood priorities as part of church life. In my own church, the council president has suggested that we visit some of the key neighborhood agencies, followed by lunch or dinner together at a neighborhood restaurant. This can act as a “dive-deeper” kind of introduction that can be both non-threatening, educational and fun. I was at another church recently where I was impressed to see a list of domestic violence, trafficking and shelter information on the inside of the bathroom doors. Still another church in the area offers a very popular clothing bank for those living around them. These activities help to engage members in both learning about and serving the surrounding community.
Maybe your church would like to host a neighborhood trivia night, where people gather in teams and are asked questions about different events in the neighborhood or features of it. Maybe you’d like to have an “open mic” music night where neighborhood musicians and poets are invited and the whole neighborhood is encouraged to come. Maybe you want to provide food at community concerts or booths at your neighborhood farmers market. Maybe you want to join in local protests as a church group to show that you are really wanting to be the Beloved Community. Perhaps you could start a community garden for your neighbors to have their own gardening opportunities, and if anyone in your church is a great gardener, maybe they could be helpful. Maybe you’d like to start a Communiversity of classes like cake-decorating, or crocheting, or fish fly-tying, or beginning carpentry -- something that uses the talents of your church members to reach out into the community during Wisconsin’s long winter. Think of the resources you have as a church, and see how those might be matched with the people around you.
Of course, the neighborhood is just one of the places where church members can observe the greater community around. Extending mission to create a peaceful, loving and justice-seeking congregation will serve to give light and life to its members for a long time. This, combined with reflection on how this work enlivens the heart and soul of ministry, can address both long-standing church and community needs.
Questions to Consider:
- As you consider your own church -- its history, its present state, its sense of mission -- what do you see as the biggest opportunities for engagement?
- How would you describe the area surrounding your church? Rural? City? Suburban? What challenges do you think an area like this faces?
- What are the obstacles that you see in engaging in a neighborhood inventory? How might you overcome them?
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