[This is the third in a series of three posts on Acts 2:44-47 and 4:32-37. You can 
read the first post here and the second post here.]
Dr. Litfin was wrong. I didn’t split my church the one time I finally got up the courage to preach on Acts 2 and 4 after all. Nope. The church was completely unified when it kicked me out!
It happened this way.
Lacking the charisma of a Mark Neuenschwander, I awkwardly suggested from the pulpit, “Hey, everyone, the next time we think about moving, let’s consider moving closer to each other so we can enjoy Christian community!” That’s what I said. But what the congregation thought they heard was, “Hey, everyone, let’s form a commune!”
Suddenly, the entire church turned against me with the fury of peasants with pitchforks. The board called an emergency board meeting “to discuss the matter” and I topped everything off by losing my temper. It was a classic case of CCES (Church Conflict Escalation Syndrome).
In response to my ham-handed efforts at Christian community, I got fired and was unceremoniously dispatched out the front door. And rightly so. Like a quarterback who had just thrown four interceptions in a row, God benched me.
In retrospect, it was disingenuous of me to invite my congregation to be my neighbors. Truth be told, I’ve been a crappy neighbor for most of my adult life. I never admitted it to myself, but in practice, my modus operandi with respect to my neighbors amounted to, “If you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you. Just be sure to mow your lawn, please.”
Instead of loving my neighbors, I ignored them and focused my attention on the events at two primary locations: what went on within the four walls of my home and what went on within the four walls of my church. Those pesky neighbors on my street didn’t even merit me bothering to learn their names.
But those pesky neighbors had a pesky Bible passage in their favor that kept gnawing at me: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Really? Really, God? You expect me to love these people I have absolutely nothing in common with other than the fact that they happen to live on the same block as I do. And you want me to love them?as myself?”
“Yes, Herb. That’s exactly what I expect you to do – love them?as yourself.”
That pretty much sums up the decades long debate I was having with God.
Living with God and knowing that you’re out of compliance on a certain matter is like living in a home that you’ve wired for electricity yourself but know it’s not up to code. Sleep tends to elude you in such situations.
Ultimately, the love-your-neighbor issue came to a head with our last move seven years ago. Patti and I needed to relocate closer to her work to shorten her commute, so we moved to Arvada, northwest of Denver. After we got settled in, I thought to myself: “Okay. It’s time for me to take loving my neighbor seriously. Whatever it takes, I’m going to find out what it means to love my neighbor as myself.”
The way I approached the issue was to ask another question: what does it take to make our neighbors feel loved? What I’ve discovered is that different neighbors have different answers to that question. For one family, it was attending a relative’s funeral. For another, it was dog sitting their dog while they went on vacation. For a widow around the corner, it was taking her to a doctor’s appointment. For a neighbor up the street, it was just being willing to stop and talk. For some who were struggling with cancer, it was praying them through chemo. For new couples on the block, it was introducing them to each other. For another widow, it was mowing her lawn and shoveling her snow.
Seven years later, that strategy has seemed to work. Patti and I have definitely gotten to know our neighbors better. But then something happened that revealed a much deeper reality.
Since Patti will be retiring in two years, we began to think about what we were going to do after that. We landed on the idea of moving to a retirement community a few miles from our home. Since I myself don’t plan to retire and because I work from home, it didn’t matter to me where we lived.
The more we checked into the retirement community, the more appealing the idea became. The community had just the floor plan we needed, it was a beautiful area with amazing views of the Rockies, and the clubhouse was to die for. They even had a full time activities director.
So we decided to apply for the transition loan we needed to cover the time between when our new home would be built and when we could sell our current home. And sure enough, a week ago last Saturday, the mortgage company called at 5 PM to say that we had been pre-approved. All we needed to do was take a check for our earnest money to the model home office the next day and we would be all set.
Patti and I were excited. We would be moving into a new home that we could accessorize ourselves. All of our HGTV fantasies were coming true!
But in the midst of our excitement, we almost forgot that our neighbors next door had invited us to a neighborhood Christmas party.
“Hey, what time is that party tonight?” I asked.
“Seven,” Patti answered. “And let’s not tell anyone that we’re planning on moving,” she added.
“Good idea,” I said in agreement.
And so we went to the party. It took us all of thirty seconds to walk next door and ring the doorbell, a reminder of how convenient it had become to interact with our neighbors.
When we walked in, we discovered we were the first neighbors to arrive. Andrew and Nicole, our hosts, are a delightful young couple with two young children, a toddler son and an infant daughter. They’re also Christians who have caught the vision of getting to know their neighbors.
Andrew, an engineer, had recently finished remodeling their living room, dining room and kitchen and he was excited to show us the final result. As we took the tour, we noticed Christmas cookies, drinks, and other goodies spread out over their tables and kitchen counters.?Nicole, who teaches home economics at a local high school, had obviously spent hours baking them.
Soon other neighbors arrived and the whole house took on a festive Christmas atmosphere. We talked and laughed, ate and drank, and talked and laughed some more. Patti and I were having an absolute blast.
Except for one problem: deep inside me I began to feel a sense of regret, a feeling that gradually morphed into what felt like betrayal. As I talked with these neighbors of ours, I took a mental picture of the entire scene and pondered what I saw. I couldn’t deny it. I really love these people!
When the party ended, Patti and I walked home without saying a word. I could tell she was feeling the same way I was. Slowly, we took off our coats and silently got ready for bed, like we had just come from a tragic funeral instead of a really fun party.
As I lay in bed that night, I began to rebuke myself: “What are we doing? Are we crazy? Are we absolutely out of our minds? All these years we’ve longed for community. And now that we are on the cusp of having it, we’re throwing it away for some stuffy old retirement home.”
The next morning, I discovered that Patti was having doubts about moving too. “The precision of the timing of that Christmas party was amazing, right after we got approved for our loan and just before we are supposed to pay our earnest money.” After more discussion, we made our decision. We were going to spend, Lord willing, the rest of our lives on our block loving our neighbors.
The next day I saw Andrew and Nicole standing in their driveway.
“Hey, that was a great Christmas party,” I shouted.
Nicole walked across their front lawn. “I forgot something at the party. I wanted to get everyone’s contact information. Can we exchange phone numbers?”
“Sure,” I said. “And while we do, I have a story to tell you. Your Christmas party changed our lives!” And then I told her what happened with me and Patti and how we had decided we weren’t going to move.
“You’re making me tear up,” she said when I finished. “Thank you for sharing that.” And then she turned and walked back toward her home. I could tell she was a little embarrassed.
Patti and I have come a long way in our relationships with our neighbors. Seven years ago, the thought that we would organize our retirement around them would have seemed radical, even unthinkable. Who does something like that? But after years of learning to love, after years of trying to love, we, finally,?have come to love our neighbors. And because we have come to love them – because we have arrived at love – the thought of intentionally spending the rest of our lives living next to them seems as natural as the sun rising in the morning.
Just before she got to her front door, Nicole stopped and turned around. “And we’re glad you’re not moving,” she said, nodding her head. Then she quickly turned back around and went inside.
Yeah. We’re glad we’re not moving too.
Merry Christmas everyone.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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