Don Everts: What’s it Look Like to Love My Community?

So we just moved into a new neighborhood.

Yes. And one of the best things, I don't know what you're going to say about this new neighborhood, is not the house. It's not even the location. It's our neighbors. It's Roman and Helen.

I was going to say Roman. Yes. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today.

You know, we're pulling in and we're moving boxes in. Actually, it might have even been before that, our neighbor right across the street, who looks exactly like Anthony Hopkins, comes walking down to the end of the driveway with this big smile. I mean, I think he genuinely was excited to introduce us to the neighborhood. And he's become a really good friend. Really good friend. He came here when he was 18 years old from Poland, got to hear his story, how his wife's from Poland, from the village he grew up in.

And they didn't even know each other, but they met here in the United States and got married. Yeah. And now every time our garage doors open, he texts and says, Hey, your garage door's open. Just that guy watching out for us. And here's what I thought. I thought... And our other neighbors, too, have been great.

Yeah. And I thought the way we feel about Roman, just this genuine love-filled man, does anybody feel that about Dave and Ann Wilson in this neighborhood? Because I think that's what we're supposed to be.

The light of Christ as we come into a new area, we should represent that. So we're going to talk about that today. But I also think, Dave, we've gotten really lazy. Like back in Michigan, you know, sometimes it's easy just to pull in the garage, put the garage door down and go in without talking to anybody, especially if you haven't had a very good day.

Yeah. So today we're going to change that. We're going to change us and we're going to change others. We've got Don Evertz back in the studio with us. Don, welcome back to Family Life Today.

Always love being with you guys. Now you're sitting over there smiling. I mean, you've written a book called The Hopeful Neighborhood.

The subtitle is What Happens When Christians Pursue the Common Good. So you're over there smiling because what we're talking about is exactly what you're hoping happens, right? Well, and I'm smiling because I just moved into a new neighborhood, too. And by the way, this is your 31st neighborhood.

It is my 31st for those who are keeping track at home. That's right. That's right. I've moved around a lot and maybe it'll be my last. I'm hoping.

I'm hoping. But yeah, we just moved in and it's been fun to get to know the neighbors. And, you know, we moved into a 135 year old Victorian home and we and we live in a kind of funky place. There are homeless people who come up to our door now. We live in a different neighborhood than we've ever lived in. So I'm smiling because we're kind of navigating the same thing of like, what is my relationship to this neighborhood going to be?

Am I going to have a relationship? I think that's a good question. And should we have? And should we? No one expects me to.

Yeah. It's culturally normal to not. And yet, you know, with the research we've done on neighborhoods and digging back into the scriptures and what the scriptures have to say about how we're meant to be a blessing to the people in place right around us. I think actually God invites us to. Life is more beautiful if we kind of become a part of this like web of people and place and pets and trees and streets and sidewalks and all the things around us. So I'm smiling because what a wonderful thing to be thinking about. You just alluded to what happened of what made us stop being outside and what took us inside.

I was curious, like, what are those things? I think there are a wide variety of reasons. I think one interesting one here in the modern era is we have a huge emphasis on evangelism, which I'm a fan of. Like, most of my books are about evangelism. So, you know, but I think that we have equated like being a faithful Christian and relating with the people around us is mostly done by sharing the gospel message. Now, is that a way of loving people? Totally, absolutely.

Now, do most people trust us enough to hear it from us? No, they don't. But it's interesting because in the early church, an interesting thing was said about the first Christians. It was said that they had eloquent behavior.

Think about that for a second. It wasn't that they had eloquent words. They had eloquent behavior. That's an early historian in those first centuries when they were being persecuted and yet they were loving the people in place around them in gorgeous ways, in beautiful ways. Early historians said that Christians had a strange way about them that drew people to them.

Well, that strange way was Jesus's way of laying your life down for other people and lifting others up and seeing their dignity and blessing them and picking kids up. So, I think one of the things that has changed is I think that maybe because the culture around us is shifting and we're kind of this post-Christendom era where like the culture is less Christian around us. And I think some people are kind of tempted, I'm going to close off and every now and then I'll just lob an evangelism grenade out, you know, and hopefully, you know, God can use it.

Probably I'll be persecuted and they, you know, they won't respond. If that's our most engaging, winsome picture of how we're supposed to be relating with the world around us, no wonder we're kind of isolated and closed off and we pop up from our home and we run over to a Christian huddle and then we pop up from there and go run over to another Christian huddle. So, I think we can huddle up like that and we've lost this picture, this biblical image of, I mean, it's right there in the garden. Keep and care for the people in the place right around you. We see it in God's laws, even after the fall where God's laws are like, here's how to love the people around you and the animals around you and the land around you.

All that's mentioned in the law. We see it when the Israelites are in exile. They're in exile, right? I mean, they've been taken prisoners and they're being tempted like, well, we just need to get out of here and some people are telling us God's going to bring us back to Jerusalem.

What does God do? He sends Jeremiah and he says, write him a letter that says those people are lying. You're going to be there for a long time. And so, what you need to do is pursue the welfare of the city that I've sent you to. Peter in the New Testament, where they're being persecuted in Asia Minor and they're being tempted like, ah, you know, to close themselves off. And Peter writes this gorgeous letter that says, oh, guys, guys, you are elect exiles. You're elect by God right where God wants you.

It feels like you're in exile. So, love the people around you. I think we just need to be reminded again. It's like God's people every now and then, you know, the Latin phrase is incurvatus in se, we curve in on ourselves.

And we corporately do that as well. And that's why God just sends people from time to time with prophet and apostle, you know, whatever to say, remember, we're supposed to be loving the people in place right around us. So, people like us moving into new neighborhoods, God actually does have an opinion about whether we should have a relationship with our neighbors.

Yeah, and it's interesting. I mean, I think a lot of us, you know, we want to get our neighbor to our church. You know, Christmas is coming or Easter's coming.

We're going to make an invite. And it's the only time we ever talk to them. You know, it's like, who are you again? You live next door. It's like if we were over there helping them in their yard or we saw there was a need and we showed up with no agenda, we're just there showing up.

They don't feel like they're a project that we are working on. And then when we make the invite, they're probably going to go, yeah, I know you. I trust you. What are you talking about, church? What? That's right. But if you just lob the thing and they're just, they're probably going to say no. And you're going to think it's them and it's probably us.

Yeah, that's right. And it's interesting in Peter's letter, for example, we talked in the last episode about how he encouraged them to pursue the common good. You know, I just love people like do nice things for them. A little later, he says, when people ask you the reason for the hope that is inside of you, be ready to talk about your faith. It's like as you are laying your life down and you're living a beautiful upside down Jesus life with the people in place right around you, they're going to ask you at some point. Like you're going to build trust. You're going to have gained a hearing. And he's like, so be ready.

I mean, be ready to talk about it. And that's the other way we can love our neighbors is like to be ready to say we're like this because we follow this weird ancient rabbi who, you know, and we live this life for him because of my wife and how incredible she is. Our neighbors are already coming to our church, but it's not because we invited them to church. It's because we invite them over for a meal.

It's that D.L. Moody quote that says out of 100 men, one will read the Bible and the other 99 will read the Christian. Your neighbors have been reading your wife.

They've been reading you, Don. They've been reading your family and they're thinking, hmm, I haven't read my Bible, but what I see in that family is something that's attractive. You know, some people think we make a good testimony by pretending we have it all together and all that. That doesn't convince anyone of anything. I mean, it's being authentic and having people in your life and loving them in practical ways.

That is what makes a difference. And, you know, our research told us, we asked non-Christians, is there anything in your community or your neighborhood that you think churches or Christians could be helpful with? And they said yes. So there are actually things that they're like, yeah, actually Christians could be helpful. The other encouraging thing is that in general, they don't trust churches or Christians generally, but they have a high trust for people who live in the neighborhood.

Interesting. If the last era, the era of Christendom was maybe an era of like church-centered programs or, you know, massive programs and that sort of thing, people don't want those right now. They're non-Christians, but they want, but someone who lives in their neighborhood, they'll trust them because they live in the neighborhood. Now, have you done anything like as a family in your neighborhood? Oh, yeah. I'm putting you on a spot. Yeah, tell us some of the things your family's done.

Well, I mean, being married to Wendy is a little like cheating. So we did basement church for a while, just having people in our church. We turned our garage into a hockey rink. You know how a lot of people have a fire pit?

Well, we put ours in the front rather than the back. And people come by all the time, hey, you want a hot dog? You know, and people stop by going to our neighbors and inviting them to holiday type things.

Hey, we're doing this for the holidays. So all those kind of preceding kinds of things, block parties are great. All those things are ways of getting to know your neighbors, starting to be a blessing there.

We make it a practice to just sit on our front porch rather than the back porch. Yeah, and that's just a simple thing. Simple.

It's an outward focus. When we first, when I was a kid, nobody had trampolines. Nobody back in the day.

But my family did. I don't even know how my dad got this square. It was a square trampoline. The first day we moved into the neighborhood, we took that square trampoline and we put it in the front yard. Wow.

Purposely. My dad said, you guys want some friends? Put this out in the front yard. Every kid on our street was in the front yard.

I like that idea about your fire pit. Yeah. You know, because people are just walking by and you can say hi to them.

That's right. So there's little things that we've done. You know, there's bigger things too. We've invited neighbors to move in with us when things have happened. You really have done that. Sure. When there have been situations where they need help, where, you know, things are going on in life and, you know, come on over and your washing machine doesn't work.

Come on over. But the prerequisite for a lot of those things, and this isn't rocket science, but it also is challenging, is to actually know people. So like, you know, when we did this research with Barna at Lutheran Hour, we said we need to make some tools that can help people get to know their neighbors better. So this will be silly, but like, because it's hard. If you've lived in the neighborhood for a long time, it's hard to re-engage and go, I totally forgot your name. And I know I say hi to you like all the time, but I've forgotten your name. It's like, how do you re-get to know people? So like we've created this neighborhood map, a simple little thing people can do to go and try to get to know people. We created this thing called neighborhood bingo.

And so it's this bingo board and there's little things that you have to do to create a thing. And, you know, whether it's like ask them what the name of their pet is, tell them you forgot the name of their pet. So there's little things that we can be doing just to begin to re-engage with our neighbors. For those of us, if there's people listening who are like, I'd love to do things to love my neighbors. I don't know any of them. Well, then start there.

Yeah. Just get to know them. And I think one of the things I hear you saying is like, have eyes. Eyes to see your neighbors. It's easy, even as a pastor, I saw my people at my church and my eyes were on them.

How can I serve them? And you know, like I'm a shepherd there, but it's like, well, we're shepherds. We're the light of the world in our neighborhood and we need eyes to see. I'll never forget one day I get a phone call from Ann.

She's driving home and I find out and I don't even know how the story's going to end that she picks up some lady on the side of the road. That's Dave and Ann Wilson with Don Evertz at Family Life Today. We'll hear Don's response in just a minute. But first, all this week, when you help reach more families with God's truth by giving to family life, we want to send you a copy of kind of a unique book about how to teach your kids when they have questions about the Christian faith. Hillary Morgan Fair has written a book called Mama Bear Apologetics, and we want to send you a copy as our thanks when you give this week at familylifetoday.com or when you call with your donation at 800-358-6329. That's 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

All right. Now, back to Dave and Ann's conversation with Don Evertz. Let's hear what happened when Ann picked up a random stranger on the side of the road. Yeah, this was, I'm driving home, and when I get up in the morning, before I turn off, right after I turn off my alarm, I say a quick prayer. Jesus, I give you my life today.

I give you everything in me, and I pray that you would give me your eyes, you give me your ears, and you give me your mouth to be able to speak. And so, you guys, God hears those prayers and answers those prayers. And so, I was driving home from work one day. I'm talking to my mom and dad, who were then in their late 80s, and I talked to them every day.

That was a big thing. They wanted me to call them every day, so I called them. My mom had Alzheimer's, but my dad's really quick, and I said, Hey, I just went by someone that sat on the sidewalk. I'm going to turn around and go see what's up. Because I could see she was older, and she just sat down in the middle of the sidewalk on a busy road. And my dad, this is so like my dad.

This is so her day. Hey, keep me on the phone. I want to hear what's happening. Because he was curious or because he wanted to protect you? No, he was curious.

He's curious. It's an older woman. And so, I turn around, I go to this woman, and she's sitting, and I can tell she's probably in her late 80s as well. And she has a huge bag and a purse. I sit down on the sidewalk with her, and I said, Hey, I noticed that you sat down.

Are you okay? And she said, she's so funny. She says, Honey, I am tired, and it is hot, and I have a ways to go to get to my house. And I said, Well, This is probably five or ten blocks from our neighborhood. Yeah.

It's pretty close. So, yeah, she's pretty close to us. And I said, Well, I'm on my way home, and you don't know me, but I am so happy to drive you home.

And she said, That would be wonderful. So, she gets in my car, and now I have to introduce her to my dad and my mom. Hey, Dad, this is Betty. They're on the speakerphone.

They're still on the speakerphone. So, I say to Betty, Do you have an address? And she said, Honey, I know where I live. I'll just tell you where to go. So, I start driving, and she tells me a street, and I just kind of type it into my phone. I'm thinking, I don't know where that street is, and this is my neighborhood.

And so, we're driving. She says, Take a left, take a right. And then she says, Hmm. And she starts crying, and she said, I don't know where I am. And I can tell, because my mom has dementia, I thought, Oh, oh, something's up. And so, I know that there is an assisted living home close to this place.

So, I drive to that parking lot, and I said, Does this look familiar? And she's crying even harder. She says, No. And I said, Well, you know, maybe you have your ID in your purse, because she can't even remember her last name now. And so, she says, Leah, let me find something. So, she has this big bag and a purse. But the only things in this big bag, she pulls out a wig, and then she pulls out this huge thing of makeup. And then, this is the most funny thing. She pulls out this huge alarm clock, a black big alarm clock with the bells on the top.

You know, that goes ding, ding, ding, ding. And I said, Betty, you are super prepared. And she said, Honey, you never know what you're going to come across.

You always need these things with you. And then, I find a wallet, but there's nothing in the wallet. But at the very bottom of her purse, in a pocket, I find a card, and it has a name on it. And I said, Do you know this name?

I read the name. And she said, Yeah, that's my daughter's name. And so, I Google the daughter's name, and I find out, Oh, she's in the neighborhood. I know this street.

The daughter's street is near where we are. And so, I drive to this, it's pretty close to us, this home. And in the driveway is a police car, a fire truck, and the sirens are going off. And Betty says, Oh, no, I think I'm in trouble. And so, I pull into the driveway. This man comes running out, and he yells, Ann Wilson, you have my mom.

And I said, What? He goes, Of course, of course. We have been praying, Father God, find our mother. And it was his mother-in-law. And he said, She's been living in their home just a few weeks.

She has dementia. He knows Ann because they go to our church. They go to our church. And he said, We prayed God sent an angel to find her and bring her home. And he said, Thank you for finding her and seeing our mom. And it makes me teary thinking about it. She passed away not too long after that. And they asked me to come to the funeral and share that story because they said, We want people to know that God always sees them, that there's someone in the neighborhood that's watching out for them, that God will send his people to you.

I thought that was the sweetest story. And the beautiful thing, Ann, what I love is that it started because you sat down next to her. Ann saw her. You saw her.

You sat down next to her. People listening like, How do I engage with my neighborhood? Just look.

Just watch. And there are going to be opportunities to be light. There are going to be opportunities to just be friendly.

There are going to be opportunities to just have fun. And that is eloquent behavior. That's what they called it in the early church. And there's a reason why Jesus said, Let your light shine and people will give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

You know what you did? You let your light shine. But the glory goes to God. People are more impressed by God because of what you did.

And so that's kind of the hope. If people are listening, they're like, I want to share the gospel with my neighbors. I don't like them, but I want to share the gospel with them.

Well, maybe start by liking them or getting to know them and being kind and loving them, pursuing the welfare of your neighborhood. And then God will give you, you'll gain a hearing over time. If he's pursuing someone, there'll be an opportunity to share the gospel. And eloquent behavior draws people in and they go, Why are you hopeful? Yeah, I think it's so easy to see and move on. Like, I'm honestly thinking if I was driving that day and saw this woman, I would have kept driving. Like, yeah, there's a woman sitting there and Ann has this heart that says, I got to stop. You know, I got to stop. It's that prayer at the beginning. I feel like when we offer our lives to God, he's like, all right. You're available.

Yeah, you're available today. So when you're walking around your neighborhood, which we do a lot, it's like you walk by a neighbor, stop. Just say hi. And yet it may lead to a conversation. I know some of you are thinking, I don't want to stop. I don't want to talk to them.

I want to get my steps in. And it's like, no, we're called to be the light of the world. You know, it's really interesting. It's one of my mantras when I was preaching is that very passage, Matthew 5 14, when Jesus says, You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. The word in the Greek set on a hill is strategically placed on a hill.

So in a sense, he's saying to the disciples and to us now as disciples, I'm strategically placing you in neighborhoods to be light. Don't close your garage door and shut your door and turn off the lights and hide. I mean, there are times where we need to refill. I have to share this story. Walk across the street and say hi to your neighbor. You got another story? I have not done this well over the years. I just have to say, because sometimes it's messy. We'd like it to be the story of the woman sitting on the sidewalk.

But man, when we lived in California and we were going to seminary, we're pouring into and trying to love our neighbors. And then there's just one lady. She just, I was drained after a while because she was just talking, talking. I have to admit, she came to my door one time and it was a glare.

You could see through it. Pretending you weren't there. I fell on the floor flat on my stomach because I just did not want to talk to her that day. And so I'm saying like, we don't all do it perfectly. Another time we had a woman who was not in a great situation in marriage. It was a little abusive. So she lived with us for a little bit with a daughter and they had a little dog.

And that dog upstairs went to the bathroom all the time in that upstairs bedroom where they were staying. And like, oh, that's what I'm saying. It's not always convenient. It's not always easy. It's messy. This is part of why after we did this research and realized, like, how do we do this?

And we don't have the muscles that, you know, maybe the early church had or whatever. So we developed this network across the country and even around the world. People are starting to do it called the Hopeful Neighborhood Project, which is just people who are like, I want to be helpful in some way of getting know my neighborhood in helping my neighborhood. And so we created HopefulNeighborhood.org.

It's just like a place. There's neighborhood coaches who can hear some ideas. People are sharing best practices with each other, sharing stories with each other, because sometimes we fall on the floor and we pretend we're not there. And we need to hear the story from someone else and go, okay, okay, I can do that.

I can do that. Or to get ideas. It's embarrassing that we're out of practice because Christians should be like industry leaders when it comes to being good neighbors. We really should. And we're not.

And that's okay. Like, we'll just admit it and repent and then say we have to grow. How can I get some help in this?

How can I get some ideas? I'll just sit out front. Just that's an act of being available. We'll see what God does. And I would say, too, whatever you do, whatever you pray about, bring your kids. If you have kids in your home, bring them in to it. Have that conversation. Pray at the dinner table, Lord, help us to love and see our neighbors.

And what would that look like? And then talk to your kids about it and pray about your neighbors. It gives them a worldview. It gives them a vision for their neighborhood of how God can use them, not just sharing the gospel, but just in loving them. Every first day of school, you know, because kids are all, you know, first day of school.

Part of my speech, you know, sending them off, I always say, I want you to keep an eye out for someone who's new to the school in your classroom or someone who doesn't have anyone to play with on the playground. Because we can get so caught up in ourselves. It's actually like your life is found by giving it away and by looking out for others.

And we want to pass it on to our kids and maybe they'll do better than we have done. You've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Don Everts on Family Life Today. His book is called The Hopeful Neighborhood.

What happens when Christians pursue the common good? You can get your copy at familylifetoday.com or when you call us at 800-358-6329. That's 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. If you know anyone who needs to hear today's conversation, be sure to share it from wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, a simple way you can help more people discover God's plan for families is by leaving a rating and review for Family Life Today. Now tomorrow, Dave and Anne Wilson are going to be talking with Hilary Morgan Ferrer about the importance of instilling a strong biblical foundation for your kids' faith. That's tomorrow. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.