Knocking on Doors: More on Spiritual Friendship

Assumption: Post-moderns would never go door knocking.

Not so fast.

For the last two years, I've heard a whisper as I drive down Avon Road coming/going to the synagogue (a.k.a. the Rochester Church building) . . . "What does it look like to live locally for Jesus? What does it look like to live locally here, in this particular context?" People get fired up to go to the City, Uganda, Rio, etc. But, what would it mean to see Rochester Hills as a unique space for God's rhythm to break into the daily grind?

Rowan Williams (I tell my students at RC, "Not Robin Williams . . . but Rowan Williams . . .") reminds us that "the hardest place to live is right where we are." I live in an affluent part of Metro Detroit--Oakland County. That's not bad or good, it simply is. But it is sometimes way too easy to live somewhere else. To dream that God wants to work in only the dramatic and spectacular settings.

The sexy places.

Directly across from our church facility is an apartment complex in which Indian, Hispanic (not "Spanish" as some like to say), Latino, White, Black, and Asian call this area "home." It is, pound for pound, probably one of the more diverse, in every sense of the word, spaces in Rochester Hills.

As far as I know, our church has done little to connect to the real needs of the people living here. Well, that's all about to change. I don't know what it's going to look like, but I'm going to spend the next few months provoking the leadership and body of Rochester Church to develop "Sunday eyes" for this neighborhood. "Friday eyes" look at the world as it is. "Sunday eyes" look at the world as it can be. This is not to say we will infiltrate the neighborhood as if we posses God (because we're the church folks) with a conquering spirit of imperialism. Rather, we are compelled to love our neighbors as Jesus loves them. Remember, for Jesus everybody is a somebody. Everyone is a someone. There are no strangers or enemies in The Jesus Way. Also remembering that God is already out "there" and that we are simply called to join God to see what God is up to.

This happens through conversation.

Listening.

Eye contact.

Personal touch.

Feeling uncomfortable.

This morning, ten of us from Rochester Church spent 30-40 minutes walking the premises of the apartments across from us. We asked the people we met if we could a) do anything to help their families in this tough economic time (Michigan's the eye of the storm right now)? and/or b) prayer for them in any specific way? We did not go with any ulterior motive other than to be a tangible blessing in their life.

I jokingly quipped to one person "We should have worn short, black dress pants with white dress shirts. I could have brought a few bikes from my house." My friend, Shaun Hover (one of the coolest people I now because he does not try to be cool), looked at me and uttered the infamous slogans of 20 somethings across our great nation, "Not so much. Not so much, Josh."

When Jesus ascends to heaven at the beginning of Acts, the angels say to his disciples, "Why are you staring up to the heavens?" Barbara Brown Taylor says it is because the disciples then (just as disciples do now) want to look up to the heavens for God. But God is not "up" . . . he's "out" . . . in the highways and bi-ways, in the nooks and crannies of our world. If only we take the time to see through different eyes.

Living someone else's life is easy. Living in a made-up scenario is fools gold. Living in hopes of God meeting your every need is shallow. Living right where you are, seeing yourself, and others around you as tiny evidence that God still does miracles each morning in the cry of the infant, the rising of the sun, the hug of a teacher, the tear of a grandmother--that's the the Christianity of Christ. It's the difference, as many have noted, of having faith in Jesus and having the faith of Jesus.