Front Porch Ministry

Last night I visited Fellowship Bible Church’s young adults ministry, Inversion. Some members from their church shared the following video of how God moved them from comfortable ‘Franklin TN’ to ‘East Nashville’ or sometimes describe round these parts as the hood. The vid tells the story of how ONE family is making so much difference in this so often neglected community by living their lives out of their FRONT porch and loving on neighbours rather then hiding and living in the isolation their backyard.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRGac7eHKgc]

What about you? How many of your neighbours do you actually know? Here for me… apart from the occasional ‘gday’ when you see someone actually outside we all seem to dive inside and get on with what we were doing and almost feel it’d be imposing trying to chat more.

I remember though, when I was growing up on our farm back in Hatton Vale, QLD we knew all of our neighbours…they were our friends… and most of them would live a kilometre or two away. We would borrow flour or sugar if we needed… and ride our push bikes or horses to visit them. We’d let each other know if cattle or horses had gotten out on the road… broken through back fences or where having trouble calving and lend a hand whenever we could.

I remember many years ago when I was like eight hanging out with a girl from next door down the creek and telling her about Jesus and she accepting him then and there. It was a pretty amazing experience for me.

So now, as I sit her reminiscing on the ‘good old days’ and reflecting on the video from ‘Front Porch Ministries’ I am challenged about how easy it is to become insular and oblivious to people who live 10 meters away. God commands us to ‘love our neighbours as ourselves’ – maybe we need to take that a little more literally and at least get to know them.

How does the Front Porch Ministry challenged you?