Over at The Gospel Coalition, Ben Stevens has written a thoroughly practical guide on getting to know your neighbors. His point—and it’s a good one—is that you must get to know your neighbors before you can love them as Jesus has called us to do:

You cannot love your neighbor if you do not know that neighbor. Time spent with neighbors that does not result in conversions, does not result in spiritual conversation, or does not result in any greater appreciation of the work of Christ, is not a net loss. Let us be resolved to undertake this kind of work confident that it is a legitimate end unto itself, that our culture deserves our attention, and that God will call us to account for the time spent serving neighbors.

[…]

I would like to make a radical suggestion. The suggestion is not that knowing the neighbors should be important to Christians. The radical thesis I would like to present is: actually get it on your calendar for next month, and make that a habit.

Head over to the Gospel Coalition to read the rest of the post, including six steps to take to make the gathering successful.

How have you successfully reached out to your neighbors? Is there anything from Ben’s post that you’d like to try?

By: Chris. This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 at 10:50 am and is filed under food, love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.