Love Your Neighbor

Building an economy based on beloved community rather than extraction and exploitation sounds like a huge task, but it can begin in our neighborhoods. Congregations can be a fundamental part of shaping such an economy, in part through deep listening in their neighborhoods, towns, and cities.

In this episode, Bianca Vazquez and Kristen Kane (no relation!) talk about how co-ops offer powerful ways of building a more caring economy. Check their work with Beloved Community Incubator (BCI). Also check out the US Federation of Worker Co-ops Directory, Luther Place Memorial Church, Seed Commons, Grace in Action Detroit, and Poder Emma.

For an episode on breaking predatory lending cycles, also part of BCI’s work, check out an earlier conversation with Exodus Lending.

Housing affordability has become one of the major economic and political crises of our time. How can Christians respond? The gospels put Jesus himself in the midst of a housing struggle, after all – “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Laura Stivers talks about her new book A Home for All in the series Building a Moral Economy. Check out the toolkit that accompanies the series as well.

Amid cultural and religious transitions in North America today, many churches are having to close their doors or change the way they operate. What might churches facing such a scenario do with their property? Mark Elsdon talks about what the teachings and witness of Jesus might call us to do in such situations. Mark is a pastor and author with expertise in faith-based impact investing, social enterprise, and property development.

I highly recommend the book Gone for Good?: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition. Also check out Rootedgood.org, which helps churches make lasting change in their communities. For more terrific conversations about churches creatively impacting their communities, see ignitingimagination.org.

How do the injustices that accompany climate change impact our local neighborhoods and congregations? How can Christians and congregations participate in building neighborhoods that reflect an economy that cares for all of God’s creation—not just people but plants and animals and the entire ecosystem? How can Christians be people of hope when the challenges we face seem so severe? Michael Malcom and abby mohaupt share experiences of ordinary people working for environmental justice.

Check out their book Climate Justice, Climate Hope as well as the book series Building a Moral Economy and its accompanying toolkit.

Is Jesus’s commandment to love neighbors an economic commandment? We often imagine loving neighbors as something interpersonal, but attending to neighbors’ struggles also involves interconnected webs of economic activity. Ethicist Cynthia Moe-Lobeda shows how we have power to reshape our economy to focus on justice and loving neighbors, and also shares personal stories of hope over despair.

Check out her book Building a Moral Economy and the book series toolkit buildingamoraleconomy.org.

For a related conversation, an earlier Love Your Neighbor podcast with coffee producer Neil Balkcom explored how buying a cup of coffee links us to a global web of neighbors.

Ordinary life in most of the United States today involves an automobile, whether to drive to work or get basic needs like groceries. In an economy so based around the automobile, though, what happens if you can’t afford to repair your car? I’m joined today by two people who saw neighbors struggling when their cars broke down and felt compelled to do something, based on Jesus’s commandment to love our neighbors.

Oran Warder and Ben Nielsen talk about the ministry Go In Peace based out of the St. Paul’s Lazarus Ministry and offered through Nielsen Auto Care.

Why did Jesus tell us that loving neighbors is so central to Christian life and witness? We often think Jesus wants us to help neighbors mostly to alleviate suffering. But what if Jesus wanted us to encounter neighbors—to know them in their beauty and complexity, and to be known by them just as Jesus knows us? Sam Wells shares his theology of Being With in connection to Jesus’s commandment to love neighbors and discusses his new book Constructing an Incarnational Theology.

Check out the books discussed – A Nazareth Manifesto and Constructing an Incarnational Theology.

What keeps congregations looking inward rather than also focusing on loving neighbors? There are all sorts of reasons—keeping the congregation going as an organization, keeping community fellowship strong, maintaining the building, the list goes on. Sometimes, though, fear keeps us from engaging our wider community. Not necessarily in the sense that we fear neighbors, but the fear that emerges from changing old habits, facing uncertainty, or entering transitions. How can we overcome fear and begin genuine discernment in how we love neighbors?

Bishop Susan Goff shares inspiring stories and perspectives about how congregations can face the future with creativity rather than fear. This episode is full of grounded, practical advice for congregations in transition.

Check out the episode about Church of the Resurrection’s affordable housing project, which Bishop Goff mentions!

Neighborhoods are not only part of a wider town or city, but also part of an environmental ecosystem. How can we build neighborhoods that care for these ecosystems? How can we build towns and cities where humans care for their environment, nurturing God’s gift of creation, rather than acting destructively toward it?

Ellen Davis of Duke Divinity School joins the podcast to discuss how scriptures approach such questions. Check out her books including Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament and Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture.

More information on the sustainable burial practice of aquamation is available here.

As we walk or drive around our neighborhoods, it can be easy to ignore their past, especially when the build environment of the past isn’t there anymore. But the ways neighborhoods have changed over the years profoundly shapes the present – they often haunt the present. How neighborhoods and cities in the United States took shape in the mid-20th century shaped the world we live in today, and churches played a major role in that shift.

Greg Jarrell shows the central role White churches played in shaping neighborhoods during this period, and explores how Christians today can seek healing and repair for our cities and towns.

Check out Greg’s book Our Trespasses and his album How Bright the Path on Apple Music or Spotify.

The podcast episode on reparations that Greg mentioned is here.