The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside Your Door

by Jay Pathak

The journey begins when we choose a lifestyle of conversation and community over a lifestyle of busyness and accumulation. It’s about making room for life and choosing to befriend those God has placed around us.

Jesus said the most important thing we can do is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are discovering that Jesus was actually really smart. You could even say that he was and is a genius. When Jesus was asked to reduce everything important into one command, he gave us a simple and powerful plan that, if acted on, would literally change the world. This simple plan also offers us a different

and brings peace to people’s souls. Whenever we center our lives around the Great Commandment and take very literally the idea and practice of loving our neighbor, there’s great freedom, peace, and depth of relationship that come to our lives. By becoming good neighbors, we become who we’re supposed to be. As a result, our communities become the places that God intended them to be.

Sometimes it’s easier to see how not following the brilliance of Jesus can hurt us. Imagine what happens when people love each other well. Now imagine what happens when we don’t love those who live next door. Odds are good that we will experience the following: Isolation. We will live lonely lives. It’s far too easy to leave our house every morning with our head down. We grind it out at work, come back home, and hurry inside. We never get to know the people around us, and they don’t get to know us. Fear. We will be wary of our neighbors, and they will be wary of us. Whatever is unknown is scary. So when we don’t know our neighbors and they don’t know us, it’s easy to imagine

the worst. Misunderstanding. When we don’t know our neighbors, it’s easy to get the wrong idea about one another. For instance, a friend of ours had a neighbor whose house was run down. The garage door was falling off the hinges. Two dead cars sat out front. So he called code enforcement, and officials came by and ticketed the house. A few days later he was talking to another neighbor about the blighted house. “Yeah,” said the neighbor. “I guess the woman who lives in that home lives alone, and her mother has cancer. She had to stop working to care for her mom. She’s been by her mom’s bedside twenty-four hours a day for the past few months.” You can imagine how horrible our friend felt once he got the full story.

That’s how neighboring starts in our hearts—we develop flexibility and compassion.

tell ourselves. After all, we can’t be expected to really love everybody, can we? The problem is, however, that when we aim for everything, we hit nothing. So when

insist we’re neighbors with everybody, often we end up being neighbors with nobody.

It’s vital to take a step back and ask ourselves if we live at a pace that allows us to be available to those who live around us.

“In this life, we can do only a few things really well; I think it’s a good idea to make certain that one of those things is what Jesus says is most important.”

wants for our lives. Author John Ortberg has coined the phrase “hurry sickness.” As he says, “Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don’t have.”[3]

So if our lives are out of balance and we don’t have time to get to know the person next door, the solution is clear—identify and eliminate the nonessentials. Following are three life-balancing principles that will help you do just that: (1) make the main thing the main thing, (2) eliminate time stealers, and (3) be interruptible.

The idea of being interruptible is being willing to be inconvenienced. It means developing a mind-set

Important questions to ask yourself, then, are, Do I live at a pace that allows me to be available to those around me? And if not, are all of the things I’m doing more important than taking the Great Commandment literally?

Balancing our fears and discernment is another issue that we all must confront. When it comes to meeting your neighbors for the first time, you don’t want to abandon your discernment. And certainly caution is justified when you encounter strangers.

Stranger → Acquaintance → Relationship

Then my wife and I started to do something very important. We wrote down the names we were learning on a simple block map that we taped to the side of the fridge. This may not seem like a big deal, but it was. Once we put the chart up where we could see it every day, we found ourselves thinking more and more about the neighbors that we knew by name and about the ones we needed to introduce ourselves to when the opportunity arose.

Block parties are natural environments in which neighbors will often take steps from being acquaintances to actually being friends. Parties create space for us to talk to others we already know and to meet people we don’t. Maybe this is the reason Jesus spent so much time at parties—he knew the power of a party. He understood they were an important means for people to share their lives with one another in very real and practical ways.

With this in mind, when we consider gathering our neighbors together, there may be others who are better suited to host the party. If so, look to partner with them rather than trying to plan and host a party on your own. If not, then maybe God wants you to be the one who initiates the gathering. Either way, as Christians, we should be playing a part in throwing the best parties in our neighborhoods—not sitting on the sidelines being irritated because the music is too loud.

So start asking yourself, What would it be like if we were to make a commitment to take the next step with each of our immediate neighbors this year? What would it be like to make a commitment to throw at least one good block party every year, and then to sit back and see how God uses it on our block?

If an eleven-year-old child can figure out a way to match up her gifts with the needs of her neighbors, then so can you!

But Jesus says being a good neighbor is exactly the kind of life that can change the world. This simple truth can change everything: small things matter. They really do.

When you give away what you have, Jesus will give you more to give. Even if what you have isn’t enough to solve the whole problem, just do what you can in the moment—give it anyway. Trust that God will fill you up with enough to supply the need that’s right in front of you, and assume he will do it again for the next need as well. If you don’t give, you don’t get a chance to see God do a miracle.

You were built to connect with other people. So be who you are, and relationships will grow out of that.

One of the easiest things to do is eat together. So it’s easy to say, “You’re eating; we’re eating; let’s eat together.” Yes, that does require some intentionality. But it’s not hard to invite others to join you because you are already going to eat anyway, right? Just try it. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is.

seminar. All it requires is that you take a step back, think about things that you already love, and invite your neighbors to join in.

It’s simple: just share what you love to do. Make small steps. Give the little you have and watch God do a miracle.

We want to be clear about something when it comes to the art of neighboring. This is not an evangelism strategy. And if evangelism is your only motive, then you won’t be a very good neighbor. However, if neighboring is done with the right posture, then people who

don’t know God will most certainly come to know him.

We have both been greatly influenced by the book To Transform a City by Eric Swanson and Sam Williams (Zondervan, 2010). In their book, the authors use the phrase “ulterior versus ultimate” to describe common motives in building relationships with others. Ulterior means something is intentionally kept concealed. An ulterior motive is usually manipulative. It’s when we do or say one thing out in the open but intend or mean another thing in private. Ultimate means the farthest point of a journey. An ultimate goal is an eventual point or a longed-for destination. Examples are when a person begins college hoping to become a physician one day or when a kid starts playing basketball with dreams of one day playing in the NBA.

The ulterior motive in good neighboring must never be to share the gospel. But the ultimate motive is just that—to share the story of Jesus and his impact on our lives. There’s a

We believe that Jesus provides real solutions for people and that orienting our lives around him is the best way to live.

We believe that Jesus answers the ultimate questions of life and has the ultimate answers for our cities and neighborhoods. Our hope, dream, and desire is that everyone will have a meaningful relationship with Jesus.

relationships. We don’t love our neighbors to convert them; we love our neighbors because we are converted.

And the truth is, many Christians have been taught by well-meaning people that they should do nice things solely for an opportunity to have a spiritual conversation. But Jesus never called us to use a bait-and-switch approach, where we become friends with people only to share spiritual truths with them. We are called to love people—period. Whether those people ever take any steps toward God is beside the point. We are called to love our neighbors unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. The Great Commandment says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The commandment ends there, with no other expectations given. Thus good neighboring is an end in itself.

The difference between ulterior and ultimate motives involves much more than semantics, and the bait-and-switch paradigm for evangelism i...

more deeply than we realize. Most believers want the people they know to have an authentic relationship with Jesus. But if our friends choose not to enter into that relationship, we should still desire to be friends with them. Obviously we shouldn’t cut someone loose because he or she isn’t interested in Jesus. So the questions arise: When it comes to neighboring, how do we best share our faith in Jesu...

When we take Jesus seriously, we really do want to share with others what we love, what we enjoy, what we believe.

It’s about authenticity. It’s honestly talking about how your walk with Jesus makes a difference. Your story should reflect not only your life before your encounter with Jesus, but also what your life has been like after your newfound

relationship with him. Those around us need to hear how someone’s faith in Jesus has made a world of difference. God’s story isn’t forced;

The goal is to faithfully tell your story, God’s story. Then listen to their story and ask God to lead you.

all begins with a strategic framework. Start by reaching out and becoming acquainted with everyone in your neighborhood. Learn names. Throw a block party. Invite people into your home. Then be intentional about where you spend your time. Remember, Jesus was constantly surrounded by crowds of people but was intentional with his time. He focused on a few people with most of his relational time. He didn’t invest his energy in everyone equally.

When Jesus sent out the seventy-two, he gave them instructions that offer us insight into how we can best engage our neighbors. The seventy-two were called to teach, pray, and serve, and were given specific instructions on how they were supposed to do so. Jesus didn’t just send them out and say, “Go and make a difference in people’s lives.” Instead he challenged them to look for something specific in those they met. Jesus instructed them to find a certain type of person in every city they entered—a person of peace (Luke 10:5–6). You may wonder what this has to do with neighboring. The term person of peace refers to someone hospitable and open to becoming a friend. Once the disciples found a person of peace, Jesus told his followers to stay with that person. He told them specifically not to move around. At first glance, this seems odd. Shouldn’t the disciples have moved around as much as possible? Wouldn’t it have been best for them to stay with several different people throughout the towns? Certainly this would have allowed them to have a wider impact.

But this was not the path Jesus chose for the seventy-two. Instead, his desire was for them to set up camp in one spot, specifically in a house where the owner welcomed them. This allowed the disciples an opportunity to form deep friendships with those who were gifted at relationships themselves. Not only did they connect with the host of each house, but undoubtedly they were also introduced to the host’s entire network of friends. If a person of peace was someone skilled at being hospitable, then logically they were people who would have very large networks. By directing his disciples to look for the person of peace, Jesus directed them toward those in each city who were the best neighbors.

To get started, ask yourself, Who are the two or three households in my neighborhood with whom we really connect and who really connect with us? By “really connect” we don’t mean that the relationship is always easy. We mean that they’re really open to having a relationship with you, and you with them. Identify these people and then invest in their lives. The idea is simple: purposely limit yourself to a few close relationships. Aim for a deeper relationship with a narrowed focus. Wise relational investing does not mean going an inch deep with many. It means going deep with a few. The principle of focusing, in a nutshell, is simply this: Be friendly with everyone and be close to a few.

We need to remember that we must forgive people in our heart. We choose to bless those who curse us and pray for those who hurt us. In all circumstances, Jesus challenges us to have a heart that forgives and goes the extra mile. We aren’t called just to do the right thing but to allow Jesus to change our heart in the midst of difficult circumstances. This is hard but it is the only way to live a free life and to continue to love deeply and freely.

With this in mind, we suggest some steps to take when you have problems in your neighborhood. Identify the issue and assess its severity. Then begin from a posture of humility. Maybe the conflict is just as much your fault as it is your neighbor’s. Ask yourself, Is there anything I could have done differently in this situation? Start with yourself when trying to identify the issue. Choose to obey Jesus’s command to pray for those who are your enemies. Begin to pray for your neighbor’s well-being. Pray that God will make a way for you to be reconciled. Pray that God will change your heart and convict you of anything you could have done differently. As you pray, think about all of the people you have hurt in the past. Think about the kind of prayers they’ve prayed about you that you would like God to answer. If you’re convicted by God of wrongdoing, look for an opportunity to apologize for your part in a matter. A genuine apology can be incredibly disarming and go a long way toward restoring relationships and bringing peace to a situation. Go the extra mile. Ask yourself what it will take to continue to live near your neighbor, to genuinely lean in and love this person unconditionally. Ask yourself: What’s the most loving thing I can do for this person? And then do it.

Find an indirect way to bless people. Sometimes engaging with a person face-to-face simply won’t work. It will only escalate a tense situation or bring about more hostility. So is there a way to be a blessing to your neighbor without having to meet in person? Remember, you don’t always need to resolve old wounds to be a good neighbor.

Our journey began with a group of people sitting in a room asking, “What could we do together that we could never do alone?” To truly neighbor well, this is an important question that everyone should consider. If we’ve learned anything since our journey began years ago, it’s that partnering with others makes a big difference. This is true when it comes to partnering with others in our neighborhoods, and it is true when it comes to local church partnerships as well.