I mentioned recently that I am in a class that is studying John Perkin’s ideas on community development. We are reading Restoring At Risk Communities: Doing It Together & Doing It Right, edited by John Perkins. I am already familiar with Perkin’s ideas on community development, and would agree with his principles. One that has been on my mind a lot though, and that this class has brought to mind again, is the idea of Relocation. This central component of Perkin’s community development model argues that the only way to really understand the “felt needs” of a community, and therefore the only way to address the issues of a community, is to live in that community. At some level, this may seem like a “duh” statement. But, as with so many things, easier said than done.

Perhaps putting the label “community development” makes this concept seem remote from our daily lives. After all, especially those of us in college, we aren’t really community developers, are we? And after we graduate, only a few of us will probably feel “called” to do “community development,” right? If we aren’t called to that lifestyle, then this concept doesn’t apply to us, does it? I would argue that line of thinking is wrong. As Christians, we are called to share Christ’s love and Good News wherever we are. We are called by Christ to love and serve our neighbors, a command that is only preceded by our command to love the Lord our God. This is a part of the Gospel that I don’t believe is addressed frequently enough (or really, loving God for that matter).

Let’s review this a bit, shall we? Though this principle is affirmed in several places in the New Testament, let’s look at Matthew 22:34-40:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “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.”

I’m always particularly struck by that last sentence. The entire Old Testament Law, hopefully I’m not oversimplifying here, can be summed up in the idea of 1) Loving God & 2) Loving your Neighbor. Which, if you’ve spent time in the Old Testament, does perhaps sound familiar. Now couple this with the Great Commission, and specifically Christ’s charge to his disciples to “[teach] them to obey everything I have commanded you.” I don’t want to make this too simple, because there is so much to the Gospel, but I believe it’s fair to say that, as Christians, we not only have a mandate to share saving message of salvation to the world, but we also are to do this through the “lens” of loving God and loving our neighbors. Remember the old hymn, “They Will Know we are Christians by our Love?” Seems appropriate.

So where does that leave us? With a pretty big mandate, if you ask me. I could talk about so many things on this topic–it’s been on my mind for well over a year now. But I’ll try to focus on the idea of relocation, since that’s where I started.

How we show Christ’s love to our ‘neighbors’ will probably look like quite a few different things in the daily-ness of life that we go through. But what better place to start than with our actual neighbors? How many of us even know the names of the people on our street? Interact with them, especially on a regular basis? Naturally, we can only connect with so many people in our lives. But if we don’t even know the names of our neighbors, perhaps there is a problem. One immediate challenge I have felt studying this idea is simply to pay more attention to the people around me. Wave when I drive by. Say hi when I’m checking the mailbox. It isn’t the full extent of what I think Christ means when he says to love our neighbor, but one does need a starting point.

The real challenge, however, comes when you bring the idea of relocating into the mix. I will guess that most reading this will be similar demographically to myself–white and middle class. Where do we live? With white, middle class people. Exceptions? Of course–there is an exception to every rule they say. But most from the American church come from a background not unlike this. And starting with our neighborhoods of middle class people is by no means a bad thing. But Perkins challenges us to something more when he proposes the idea of relocation. Are we best functioning as ambassadors of Christ by living in American suburbia? A provocative quotation from Restoring At-Risk Communities says that “The American Dream became the practical theology of the people of faith and upward mobility became a sign of God’s blessing upon the faithful” (p. 77). In other words, living a middle class life equals doing what God wants, right? We forget where Christ spent his time, perhaps. It sounds cliché, but if Christ were born in our society, today, and was beginning his ministry, where would he be? Would he be visiting us in our homes? Based on the fact that most of his time in the gospel accounts seems to be spent with the lowest of society, I think it’s fair to say he wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in our suburbian churches.

Does that make our nice, clean way of life invalid? I don’t think so. But if we are to follow Christ–what the word ‘Christian’ means–perhaps we ought to at least consider where he’d be.

>>> Nearly a thousand words, and I’m still not done Stay tuned for part 2…