Resources for Neighbourhood groups Books on neighbourhood church for groups to read and discuss together God Next Door Simon Carey Holt has listened to the experiences of numerous men and women of faith living in a variety of urban and suburban neighbourhoods, and uncovered the spiritual possibilities of our neighbourhoods. Part one of the book describes modern neighbourhoods including rural communities, urban communities and suburban communities. Part two describes the call of God with respect to neighbourhoods, including the Biblical mandate, the example of Jesus and the relationship between neighbourhood and church. Part three describes mission in neighbourhoods including disciplines of engagement which the author calls "naming", "celebrating", "nurturing" and "inviting". Everyday Church Every Day Church is a practical and challenging call to live out the gospel in community. Chester and Timmis use the book of 1 Peter as their plot line for this book. As the authors argue, we cannot be content with programs, buildings and a "build it and they will come" attitude. More and more North Americans are growing up with no biblical literacy and no understanding of the Jesus of the Bible. We must go out to them and meet them where they are. The chapters include: Life at the Margins (1 Peter 1:1-12), Everyday Community (1:13-2:8), Everyday Pastoral Care (1:22-2:3), Everyday Mission (2:9-3:16), Everyday Evangelism (3:15-16), Hope at the Margins (3:8-5:14). The Art Of Neighboring Once upon a time, people knew their neighbors. They talked to them, had cook- outs with them, and went to church with them. In our time of unprecedented mobility and increasing isolationism, it's hard to make lasting connections with those who live right outside our front door. We have hundreds of "friends" through online social networking, but we often don't even know the full name of the person who lives right next door. This book asks the question: What is the most loving thing I can do for the people who live on my street or in my apartment building? Through true stories of lives impacted, the authors show readers how to create genuine friendships with the people who live in closest proximity to them. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make this book suitable for small group study. Love Your Neighbour For God s Sake Justyn Rees is concerned that we should be imaginative and seize every opportunity that comes our way to make the love of Christ real in the communities we live in. He records the time when the neighbourhood he lived in suffered a spate of robberies. He and his wife organised an evening with the local police to talk with the neighbours about security. It was a golden opportunity to begin to build friendships and to afford the possibility of sharing the gospel.
Plunging Into The Kingdom Way Tim Dickau s account of renewal at Grandview Calvary Baptist Church, Vancouver. The book explores the way in which recommitment to the neighbourhood brought immense challenges as well as new vitality to a fading congregation. Themes include community, hospitality, justice, and confession. Making Room For Life A workbook for Christians whose lifestyles have gotten too hectic and over- scheduled. The North American plague of busy- ness has caused epidemic fatigue and spiritual discontent- - crippling the love and connection within many households. In Making Room for Life, Randy Frazee shows you how- - - and why it's so important- - - to balance work and play, establish healthy boundaries, deal with children's activities and homework, bring Jesus to your neighbors, and build authentic bonds with a circle of friends - forming communities of purpose and peace. Missional The burgeoning missional church movement is a sign that believers are increasingly feeling the call to impact their communities. In Missional, Alan Roxburgh calls Christians to reenter their neighborhoods and communities to discover what the Spirit is doing there- - to start with God's mission. He then encourages readers to shape their local churches around that mission. The Church Comes Home In our modern dislocated society many are searching for a church experience that offers true Christian sharing, nurturing, and discipleship, in addition to teaching and worship. For many such people the answer is found in the home church: a small, committed group of often diverse people who meet together in homes to pray, eat, sing, study, and share their lives. "The Church Comes Home" is a handbook for those interested in home churches. It is both visionary and practical. It describes how home churches can be formed, how they should grow, and how networks of home churches can develop. It examines issues" for example, how to make decisions; how to determine doctrine; how to include children, singles, elders; and how to reach out to the community at large" and offers practical suggestions for their resolution. Although this church is about house church, much of its content is immediately applicable to neighbourhood groups.
The Great Neighborhood Book Written by Jay Walljasper, a Senior Fellow of the Project for Public Spaces, this is a how- to guide for local communities to improve the quality of life for their residents through building shared bonds. From creating great places to hang out (a park with few hidden spaces and scattered vendors selling refreshments is more likely to deter homeless people and drug dealers from using it), to reducing crime (ordinary people's eyes and physical presence on the street are much more likely to deter crime than iron bars on windows), foster economic vitality (promoting locally grown/cooked/made food is kind to the environment as well as the local economy), and much more. Drawing heavily upon real- life examples in communities that made a measurable difference. Study guides for neighbourhood groups Don t Invite Them To Church Karen Wilk writes: If you love your neighbors, you should invite them to church, right? Wrong. Loving your neighbors isn't about getting them to join you on Sundays. It's about living your faith right where you are and BEING the church to the people around you. This guidebook will help your small group get started in neighborhood ministry and missional living. It includes ideas for group meetings, practices to help you develop a better spiritual life, and real- life ideas for reaching out to your neighborhood. If you really want to know your neighbors and love them like Jesus would, don't invite them to church. BE the church. The Tanglible Kingdom Primer Everyone is talking about community. Everyone seems to want it, but most struggle to find it. Matt and Hugh have written The Tangible Kingdom Primer with two specific purposes. First, to be a spiritual formation tool to prepare your heart for mission. We want you to grab a few friends to go through this with, and explore becoming an incarnational community. The second purpose is to be a field guide for starting mission together. The Tangible Kingdom Primer is an 8 week, daily Workbook/Journal that will help you define new terminology, inspire your missional imagination, and provoke new missional practices naturally.
Books on missional church and neighbourhood life for group leaders to read The Abundant Community When diving into the whole arena of civic/community engagement, most people are almost instantaneously bombarded with advice and information on how to link together organizations, where to get funding, and how to build the community with resources that come from outside. We are told that there are systems and processes that hold the key to a better life. John McKnight and Peter Block steer the reader in a different direction in "The Abundant Community". Rather than looking externally McKnight and Block encourage the reader to look within the community to find an abundance of resources. McKnight and Block start the book with an examination of how we have succumbed to consumerism in a manner so pervasive that we have eroded the very foundation of community. This examination shows how we have traded the inevitable imperfections in services or fallibility in humans for highly efficient systems which revolve around flawless management, fiscal performance, and scalability. "The Abundant Community" proposes a better, more connected way of living. Rather than learning to blame problems on a lack of governance or those around us, McKnight and Block teach us to turn to our own resources and the resources already present in our community (the people) in order to build community competence. "The Abundant Community" is revolutionary in its message. By mobilizing community members to be more connected and more welcoming the community the can become the solution to its own problems. Instead of making the community and our lives more efficient, the authors focus on how we can create a life that is more compassionate. Within their vision, the gifts that exist among residents become a pooled resource and create a community of abundance. The Mission Of God s People Chris Wright gives us an overview of the Bible s teaching on the mission of the church. This is the biblical theology that underlies the whole missional church/neighbourhood church conversation. A brilliant book for understanding God s big story and our place in it. Journey To The Common Good Walter Brueggemann, a world- renowned Old Testament scholar, calls us to journey together to the common good through neighborliness, covenanting, and reconstruction. Such a concept may seem overwhelming, but writing with his usual theological acumen and social awareness Brueggemann distills this challenge to its most basic issues: where is the church going? What is its role in contemporary society? What lessons does it have to offer a world enmeshed in such turbulent times? The answer is the same answer God gave to the Israelites thousands of years ago: love your neighbor and work for the common good.
Total Church The book provides a foundation for the teaching in Everyday Church. "Church is not a meeting you attend or a place you enter," write pastors Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. "It's an identity that is ours in Christ. An identity that shapes the whole of life so that life and mission become 'total church.'" With that as their premise, they emphasize two overarching principles to govern the practice of church and mission: being gospel- centered and being community- centered. When these principles take precedence, say the authors, the truth of the Word is upheld, the mission of the gospel is carried out, and the priority of relationships is practiced in radical ways. The church becomes not just another commitment to juggle but a 24/7 lifestyle where programs, big events, and teaching from one person take a backseat to sharing lives, reaching out, and learning about God together. Community Modern society is plagued by fragmentation. The various sectors of our communities- - businesses, schools, social service organizations, churches, government- - do not work together. They exist in their own worlds. As do so many individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. This disconnection and detachment makes it hard if not impossible to envision a common future and work towards it together. We know what healthy communities look like- - there are many success stories out there, and they've been described in detail. What Block provides in this inspiring new book is an exploration of the exact way community can emerge from fragmentation: How is community built? How does the transformation occur? What fundamental shifts are involved? He explores a way of thinking about our places that creates an opening for authentic communities to exist and details what each of us can do to make that happen. Websites with lots of free resources: Abundant Community www.abundantcommunity.com Art of Neighbouring www.artofneighboring.com Project for Public Spaces www.pps.org Forge Canada www.forgecanada.ca