Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside Your Door

It’s odd. Although I covered relationships and hospitality in my dissertation and have read dozens of similar books on the topic, I’ve never taken the time to review any of them. I think I got burned out! Guess that’s why there’s so many reviews of novels on this blog.

My pastor chose The Art of Neighboring as the first title of 3 for a book study he’s organized with our ministry intern. It’s not one I read during my own studies, but I think the topic is spot-on. In this review, I’ll note a few highlights from each chapter—hopefully enough to whet your appetite, but not enough to give away all their secrets!

Chapter 1: Who Is My Neighbor?

If the second greatest command is to love my neighbor as myself, then who is my neighbor? This question sparked Jesus to share the story of the Good Samaritan, and his answer has caused us to generalize “Everyone’s my neighbor.” There’s a fault to this generalization, though, because if everyone’s my neighbor, then no one is! Yet we all do, at some distance, have actual, real-life, flesh-and-blood, next-door neighbors. The back-cover blurb describes the thought behind this book’s main topic: “What if Jesus meant that we should love our actual neighbors?”

Chapter 2: Taking the Great Commandment Seriously

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is the Great Commandment. Not to love my next-door neighbor is actually to do the opposite, so what are we thinking when we ignore those people that God has providentially dropped outside our doors? Pages 36-40 offer one of the major offerings of this book, a means of mapping your neighborhood (like you see imaged on the book’s front cover) and tracking your effectiveness in meeting and befriending your neighbors.

Chapter 3: The Time Barrier

I interviewed one missionary who honestly lamented: “After a long day of peopling, when I finally get the chance to sit down and veg with some mindless TV, and someone knocks at the door, I seriously want to pretend like I’m not even home! But that’s where the rubber meets the road, if I’m going to have the mind of Christ or not.” There’s got to be a balance in our time-management, yet we ought never excuse our lack of love on having “not enough time.” This chapter greatly warns of 3 lies that busy people tell themselves: 1) Things will settle down someday; 2) More will be enough; and 3) Everybody lives like this (45-46). But it also offers 3 great life-balancing principles we can all follow: 1) Make the main thing the main thing; 2) Eliminate Time-stealers; and 3) Be Interruptible (54).

Chapter 4: The Fear Factor

We live in a time and country where bad news is apparently the only good kind of news (61). This is true of both us and our neighbors! We need to break that ice, and that doesn’t mean going door-to-door. The authors recommend such simple things as moving your family activities from the back yard to the front. This can also mean participating in neighborhood social networks like the Next Door app or The Ring groups. It’s all about breaking down barriers that keep people from ever wanting to meet you.

Chapter 5: Moving Down the Line

This chapter offered a great visual that suggests we need to move from:

STRANGERS –> ACQUAINTANCES –> FRIENDS (75)

According to their plan, this movement can involve first a block map and then block parties. It’s a simple strategy of being intentional about building relationships. The goal isn’t to make everyone on your block your best friend, of course, but at minimum to know their names, talk with them, and get to know them on a deeper level.

Chapter 6: Baby Steps

The key idea of this chapter is to begin with what you know: do what you love to do but invite your neighbors to do it with you. Be honest and genuine and let them be part of your life. Also be willing to expand your interests—like being the guy who knows nothing about cars learning from the neighbor who’s been rebuilding his Corvette for the past decade.

Chapter 7: Motives Matter

We viewed this as perhaps the best chapter in the book. I’ll itemize the things I learned.

• Most poignant for me was the concept they borrowed from Swanson and Williams’ book, To Transform a City (2010): the difference between ULTERIOR motives (I’m befriending you, because I want you to get saved) and ULTIMATE motives (I’m befriending you, and I hope you someday get saved). This distinction is so important, yet I’ve never heard it articulated this way before. People are not projects, and they can see through your motivations!
  
• Loving the neighbor means befriending them even through the months and years that they reject the Gospel. “The Social Gospel” gets a bad rap, and deservedly so, if it means showing but never speaking the Gospel. But if you’ve had the opportunity to share what you believe with your friends (at least once), they now know it. The seed is planted. Now live it! Water that seed with a godly life that still loves the neighbor often and through friendship, even though they’ve not yet repented.
  
• The authors write: “When we are around people for any amount of time, we begin to share with them the things we love. If you love Jesus, then he will naturally come up in your conversations. It happens as we share the substance of who we are.” (107) My pastor described it as being a sponge filled with Truth: we take it in, and whenever pressure comes, that’s also what pours out. When you’re “doing life” with your neighbor and this happens, they’ll see that your life matches your beliefs—you don’t need to share the Gospel every time you speak, but you do need to live it.
  
• They also write: “If we live out the Great Commandment, an environment is created where the Great Commission can be effectively obeyed.” (111)
  
• What about those neighbors who have been burned by religion (or worse, by Christians) in the past? The authors write: “People are suspicious of those who have a message that doesn’t align with what they have experienced. This kind of inconsistency can lead to perceptions of phoniness, ultimately hindering any hope of a real relationship.” (112) What matters is acknowledging their pain and angst. Hurtful people from all religions are real, horrible, and unbiblical. But the neighbor also needs to recognize that he can’t blame God, Jesus, the Bible, or the Church for his bad experiences, but rather sin and sinning people. He may never attend a church, but he’s befriended you, and Matthew 5:16 suddenly becomes your very real mission!

Chapter 8: The Art of Receiving

This chapter spins neighboring on its head a little, suggesting that we should not only focus on showing love to our neighbors but also be willing to receive it. Don’t rob them of the blessings to serve you. Don’t treat them like a project. Look to Jesus, never a moocher, yet still the ultimate example of vulnerability.

Chapter 9: The Art of Setting Boundaries

Unsurprisingly, unsaved people behave like unsaved people. While we shouldn’t hold them to our own standards and we should be willing to be uncomfortable at times, we must also know limits within neighboring—limits to what you condone and participate in. While Rosaria Butterfield tells us that The Gospel Comes with a Housekey, these authors also warn of the foolishness of giving unsaved neighbors free reign over your property and time! Neighboring requires balance and boundaries.

Chapter 10: The Art of Focusing

The authors closed Chapter 9 with this great lead-in to this chapter on focus: “The hardest part about loving others is that you can always do more. You can always give more time, energy, and money to those in need. But you can’t be everything to everyone, so stop making yourself feel bad about not doing more.” (142) The goal here is to befriend truly the neighbors with whom you really click but connect with the others as an acquaintance so you can find ways to help them when they need it.

Chapter 11: The Art of Forgiving

They give the example of dealing with a loud dog next door. You can call the cops. You can leave a note. But nothing works quite as well as meeting the neighbors face-to-face, knowing them as people, and learning that you can handle a lot of noise when it comes from a friend. There are many applications to this—when you’ve befriended people and know their stories, it’s a whole lot easier to handle their quirks.

Chapter 12: Better Together

This final chapter describes the power of neighboring. If we do it, we can change a neighborhood. If multiples neighborhoods do it, we can change a city. If multiples cities do it, we can change a state, country, and world.

Final Comments

Times have changed. We live in an era when people are wary of anyone knocking at their door. We need to find new and smart ways to meet and befriend those whom God has placed at our doorstep. This book is a great introduction to how that can happen, and I encourage small groups intent on reaching their town to give this method a shot!

The only thing that really annoyed me about this book was the authors’ attempted sarcasm (which doesn’t translate well on paper). They write: “We are discovering that Jesus was actually really smart. You could even say that he was an is a genius.” (25) This line rubbed me the wrong way and initially tainted my reading of the book—and I wouldn’t have noted it here, but they say this same thing like 7 times throughout the book! I’m not even sure if it is sarcasm, to be honest! So, if they ever update this book, they need to lose those lines which feel (to put it mildly) disrespectful to Jesus.

All in all, this was a great book and strategy for reaching one’s neighborhoods for Christ. Good for small groups or pastors needing to stretch themselves, I think it could help you brighten the corner where you are.

©2024 E.T.