How to build community in your neighborhood

When you focus on place you do everything differently.

Turn off your TV.
Leave your house.
Meet your neighbors.
Look up when you are walking.
Sit on your front step & greet people as they go by.
Plant flowers.
Play together.
Buy from local merchants.
Share what you have with your neighbors.
Take children to the park.
Garden together.
Support neighborhood schools.
Have pot lucks.
Pick up garbage.
Dance in the street.
Talk to your mail carrier.
Help carry something heavy.
Hire young neighbors for odd jobs.
Organize a block party.
Bake extra goodies and share them.
Ask for help when you need it.
Open your drapes & blinds.
Sing together.
Share your skills.
Take back the night.
Turn up the music.
Turn down the music.
Listen before you react to anger.
Mediate a conflict.
Seek to understand.
Learn from new and uncomfortable angles.
Know that no one is silent although many are not heard. Work to change this.
Find the widowers & help them out.

Everything in the Gospel is livable & our task is to get it lived. It is not enough that we announce the gospel, explain it or whip up enthusiasm for it.

It must be lived - lived in detail, lived in the streets and on the job, lived in the bedrooms and kitchens, lived through cancer and divorce, lived with children and marriage.

Along the way I found that this also meant living it out myself & that proved to be a more formidable task. Eugene Peterson