A number of weeks back, Frank shared the acronym BLESS in his sermon. It’s a simple method for living out Jesus’ command in Matthew chapter 22 to “Love your neighbor as yourself”.
Begin with prayer
Listen
Eat
Serve
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Part of South’s vision has been to serve our neighbors as a practical response to loving God. This is what leads us to last Saturday. In seeking to be good neighbors, our method hasn’t changed-we hosted another Egg Hunt. What changed was our goal; we wanted to listen to our neighbors. Of course, this means we needed to meet them. What better way to meet them than by inviting their kids to search for pastel plastic eggs on a Saturday morning?
In an eggshell, we had a very successful event! Over two hundred and fifty people attended and over half of these were kids! The inflatables were kid magnets, and even the college age group had meaningful interactions with Lansing City employees. These are all wins, but the question remains: Did we listen to our neighbors? Yes we did! And here’s how we stayed focused on our goal:
A number of South families showed up at 9 on Saturday morning and prayed together. We expected God to open hearts and enable us to connect with families in the park. Our missional parents initiated conversations, while taking note of names and ways to pray. Doing this enabled us to see our neighbors as people, not just a generic demographic living just beyond our backyard. We saw God working not only in our neighbors, but also in us, making us better neighbors! This brings us back to Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves. How will we obey this? Two ways.
First, we’re going to pray for our neighbors!
Second, we’re going to find ways to connect with them in order to keep listening.