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Sep 17 2020

Holy Attention: Seeing your neighborhood with new eyes

By Steve Matthews


“If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors’ prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities – and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.
(pg. 59, “Racism and the Economy”)” 
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays


What do you know about your neighbors?  What about the neighbors around your church building?  Is your knowledge based on your intuition, some good research (hopefully utilizing some of the excellent data available to you through FaithX)?  Is your knowledge more anecdotal, based on passing observations or the stories of others?  Each of these lenses offers some perspective on the neighborhoods around your churches, but they are only part of the picture.  

Another valuable way of learning more about our neighbors and neighborhoods is the scientific practice of direct observation.  What can we learn by simply noticing?  There are many ways to notice.  When I walk in my neck of the woods, I can marvel at (or criticize) landscaping or in- process home renovations. Sometimes I notice people and offer a greeting.  Most of the time though, I am simply on my way somewhere and not really paying much attention.

In my work with local clergy, I often invite them to take an hour long walk with me through the neighborhoods surrounding their churches.  Sometimes, people know their neighborhoods really well. Sometimes they are completely surprised by what they find.  For example, one priest discovered a path from the neighborhood through the woods toward the church.  We followed it and while there was some litter, it mostly seemed to be a place of exploration used by neighborhood kids (whom she had never met).  One priest discovered a silk screen artist just around the corner from the church.  He said, “I wish I had known he was here, because I just ordered t-shirts for the church carnival online.”  Our neighbors and neighborhoods are filled with pleasant surprises and treasures, if we only have eyes and hearts to see.

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: FaithX Blog · Tagged: COVID, COVID-19, COVID19, direct observation, Neighborhood, neighborhood walks, neighbors, Wendell Berry

Apr 30 2020

Nurturing community in your neighborhoods… even now!

by Steve Matthews
Nurturing community


This blog post is part of a series on strategies and tools for helping congregations survive and thrive in the face of the COVID crisis.

Click here for the previous post


True confession: in my pre-COVID days, I always had good intentions about being a good neighbor and nurturing community.  I thought about joining the neighborhood association, had casual conversations like “wouldn’t it be great to have a block party” but never made it happen, met people with whom I intended to get together but never did, but mostly, I would raise my hand and speak when passing, pick up trash when I saw it, and disappear into my backyard sanctuary for solitude, gardening, and fellowship with friends (most of whom are not neighbors).

This kind of describes a lot of pre-COVID churches I know, too.   They are friendly to their neighbors (the people and business owners), they care about the appearance of the neighborhood, they offer assistance to those in need… but often, friendly church members park in front of the church, enter the church doors, and find meaning and fellowship with people like them inside the walls, and work to grow and nurture what they find there.  

I can almost look back to those church days with some measure of nostalgia.  While it always felt uncomfortably comfortable, it was familiar, it was easy, and it was stable… or was it? It’s time to get real and let go of our attachment to what is comfortable, familiar, easy, and stable.  Those days are gone for a while… for a long while (or perhaps it was just a myth).  We are now pilgrims on a new journey.  We may not know where we are going or how we will get there, but we have left the building… and we have left the building together.   

[Read more…]

Written by Ken Howard · Categorized: COVID-19, FaithX Blog, FaithXperimental Spotlight, Posts by Ken Howard · Tagged: collaborative ministry, Coronavirus, COVID, COVID-19, COVID19, neighborhood outreach, neighbors, pandemic, pilgrimage

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