Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Love Your Neighbor: An Interview with Chris and Elizabeth McKinney

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Before we hop in, I want to tell you what we are going to start doing in January. Starting right at the very beginning of January, we are going to read through the Gospel of Mark together. And our goal is that people who are setting goals would join us. I just find that at the beginning of January, a lot of people say, I want to start reading my Bible for the first time, or I want to start reading it again, or I just want to read it more. And that's a great aspiration.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Maybe you're thinking that for yourself. And so I hope you'll join us as we read through the gospel of Mark. We actually will have, it's really cool. It's called a guided Bible reading plan. It's a little devotion. It has three devotions in every single week, and it walks you through questions that not only explain Mark to you, but help you apply it to your life. But here's the key. If you're listening to this, you're doing something already in your life to get the Bible into your life. But my guess is that you have a or maybe a spouse or a parent or a coworker who would love to be in the Bible, but they're not going to do it unless they have a friend to do that with. Why don't you think about that person and invite them to not just listen to 10-minute Bible talks,

Starting point is 00:01:16 but to download that little devotional and begin making this a new habit, a new goal in their life, starting right at the beginning of the year? We have links to that in our show notes. Are you the kind of person who just comes to your house, you open up the garage, you pull your car in, you shut the garage, and you make sure you never, see anyone unless you are mowing the lawn. Well, I might be guilty as charged on that one. Or maybe if you don't live in the suburbs, you live in a more urban environment, you don't know your apartment neighbors next door. You get into your apartment, you shut the door, you turn on the TV and

Starting point is 00:01:47 lock down. I would probably be guilty of that as well. And maybe you've had this sense, I have, that Jesus is calling you to do something more with your neighbors. I mean, you live next to these people after all. Maybe God has a purpose for that. Well, there is no one in my life that I have learned more about loving neighbors from than my two friends, Chris and Elizabeth McKinney. I've known them for a long time now. They are the official dressers of my daughter, Iris, and they have written an amazing, great new book. So Chris and Elizabeth, they obviously live here in Columbia by us. They have four daughters, a Pomeranian, and they work for Cruz City and serve as associate staff at the church that Keith and I are pastors, the crossing. They write, they speak,

Starting point is 00:02:28 and they are passionate about helping people love their next door neighbors. Their new book is called Placed for a Purpose. So Chris and Elizabeth, thanks so much for being on the show. Yeah, thanks for having us. It's exciting. Yeah, so what was the piece of clothing that you guys passed down to Iris that you had the hardest time letting go of?

Starting point is 00:02:47 Oh, any of the baby clothes. Oh, the baby clothes? But I love to see your wife, Emily's Instagram stories, and usually she's wearing 10 to 12 articles. I mean, including a scarf, shoes, necklaces. She's passionate about layering. She's extremely passionate about layering, which I love. Yep, yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:08 So I already mentioned this, but you guys obviously have four daughters. I kind of feel like Iris might be a fifth daughter. Oh, she's for sure. She's a McKinney. Yes. She's honoring all the clothes. And she's a good little neighbor. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:19 So it's funny you say that because Iris is a better neighbor than I am. She loves our neighbors. She brings them little gifts. Recently, she's been cutting out ornaments. and she'll go take them and put them inside of their mailboxes. And I am an introvert. And so it's really hard for me because after I'm a pastor, so I spend my whole day with people. And when I get home, I just want to go down into the bunker.

Starting point is 00:03:40 So let me ask, are there of you guys introverts? So yes, I am. I'm the introvert in this relationship. Yeah, right. Yeah. No, I am definitely an introvert. So how did you get it a day break? So, you know, I think it was like eight or nine years ago, we moved into our house.

Starting point is 00:03:54 And it was a very stressful time. We were commuting to seminary together. Patrick and I. So you had a window into that. I was helping lead a campus ministry and we had young kids. And I think we just felt like, man, if we don't make some connections with the people right around us, we're going to die because we just need some kind of connection. We don't have a lot of time in our schedules and we just need those connections. So thankfully, my wife likes to throw parties. And so she organized. I'm a sucker for a party. Yeah, yeah. So she organized. And your parties are just normal parties.

Starting point is 00:04:22 Wow. You know. Your parties are, it's like, hey, let's have a Disney Princess birthday party and Somehow Disney World moved to Columbia and got packed inside your house. Well, don't say that because then people will feel like, you know, because there's no one right way to neighbor. That's right. Yeah. So it started off with just a small little fish fry. And for me, being an introvert, the smaller settings are better, you know.

Starting point is 00:04:43 And so getting to know some of these neighbors in that setting was really great. And we met some other neighbors who were like, hey, do you guys want some help? Do you want to help plan some more of these? And we're like, well, we're not looking for more to do because we're swamped. But it was kind of fun getting to know these neighbors. And it kind of took off from there. So I think for me as an introvert, I've had to learn that I can neighbor in a certain way. So being an introvert, that means I like to serve and help out so I can do that.

Starting point is 00:05:05 Or have smaller gatherings. I have nerdy board game nights with my neighbors. And it's not this. Where's my invite? Well, you're not my neighbor moving to my neighborhood. Right. So, okay, I just realized something for a lot of people listening to the podcast, this phrase we've been using neighboring is probably a new term. You guys introduced that term to me.

Starting point is 00:05:22 I never heard anyone say neighboring. Did you invent that, by the way? I wish I could say that we did. I think you did. So these are the inventors of neighboring. So would you please for a moment define this phrase that you may or may not have coined? Well, it's funny that you asked that because I remember after reading The Art of Neighboring, who I'm pretty sure Dave Pavlock and Dave Runyon invented that term. But it came out after your book, right? No, it did not. But I remember telling Kay Fitzpatrick, who works here at The Crossing, we're going to really switch our focus from campus ministry to neighboring. And she said, I have no idea what you're talking about. And I was like, you know, reaching out to our neighbors.

Starting point is 00:06:02 It does. I think neighboring is reaching out to your next door neighbor, your literal next door neighbor, and taking Jesus's command seriously that when he says to love your neighbor, that is not limited to the people who we might have in our minds. Recognizing that a lot of times, and we think that it tends to be the people who we want it to be, who we want to be. who we want to be our neighbors and we dismiss the people who might live right next door. Why do we do that? You know, I think, so Harvard School of Medicine did a really interesting study where they were trying to figure out what is the cultural definition of what it means to be a good neighbor.

Starting point is 00:06:42 So they found some evidence from a survey done in the 50s and 60s, and they sent it out and says, what does it mean to be a good neighbor? And the responses they got back was everything you would think it would be at that time. You know your next door neighbors. you say hi, you can introduce new neighbors to the neighbors who just moved in, all that good stuff. And so they decided, okay, let's send that same survey out today and see what people would say. And so what they got back was basically the definition of being a good neighbor right now in our cultural moment is leaving people alone. So to be a good neighbor means.

Starting point is 00:07:13 I'm laughing because sometimes that's what I want my neighbors to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, take out your trash well, keep the music down and just, you know, stay out of my business. And so if you're living in that story, you're going to walk out your front door and say, to be a good neighbor means I'm going to leave my next door neighbor alone. That's why we do that in part. And so I think part of neighboring, what we're trying to do is help people move out of that cultural story and into God's story, which means, hey, you're placed here for a purpose. And that purpose is to love your next door neighbor. So what would you say to people like me who have maybe bought into that cultural story and find it really difficult to get outside of it? What are some first

Starting point is 00:07:51 steps, but what are some ways that I can change my heart so that, you know, I have a deeper longing to care for the people who are right next door to me? Well, I think for one thing, it's changing our view. So instead of just thinking, okay, at the end of the day, I want to run inside and escape and get to my phone and Netflix, which I totally get and I'm guilty of, it's remembering that, yes, home is a place to rest and recharge, and those are good things. But our neighbors can be part of that rest. And they can be God's very means of grace in our lives to provide that for us. And that a lot of times our neighbors are outsiders to the church. And they don't have necessarily the same opportunities to be in community. And so to really have a heart to extend some of the same

Starting point is 00:08:39 things that we get to experience in the body of Christ to them. Okay. So can I challenge you guys for a second? You live in a great neighborhood. You have lots of families that have kids that are similar ages to your kids, similar life stage, that kind of thing. Now, in my neighborhood, we moved into an aging neighborhood where most of our neighbors are 30 to 40 years, our seniors. And that means for us that we don't necessarily feel like we have much in common with them. And we've got little kids, and they're kind of past the little kid phase in their life. And you kind of start feeling like, well, you know, I would love to love my neighbor, but they aren't really that much like me. And so do I really have to spend that much time? I mean, I'm probably just

Starting point is 00:09:18 bothering them at the end of the day. So what would you guys say? You know, I think breaking out of that cultural story, it's so ingrained in us that we have to embrace the little actions. So we talk about removing just from your neighboring vocabulary. It's just a wave. It's just a smile. What is it going to matter? How is it going to ever connect me to them? It's such a small thing. But if we don't do that, we're never going to take that next step. And so especially with those who we see are different than us, we have to embrace the small step mindset of engaging with them. And we do have a lot of empty nesters in our neighborhood. They're some of our favorite neighbors.

Starting point is 00:09:57 And at some of the events that we do, they're the ones who are really able to help. And we do some block parties. And some of the best people are Anne and Sharon, who they're in a completely different life stage and they're holding my kids or helping them make a plate full of food. The empty nesters have started a neighborhood watch. Yeah, I feel like the empty nesters are, they don't have their hands full and aren't as stressed as I am in a lot of ways. We also, on our cul-de-sac, have a lot of single parents. And even, I remember a few years back thinking, oh, we live in white suburbia.

Starting point is 00:10:30 It's like there's a lot of people who look like us. And then as time went on, I started to realize and we started to realize that, well, initially it was, I thought there were just a few families. I started noticing that, oh, there may be from a Chinese heritage. or an Indian heritage. And we started noticing that those families were kind of on the peripheral of some of these events. Maybe their names were hard to pronounce. Maybe some of them didn't speak English. And so we thought to ourselves, it would be great to have something to kind of honor these families, to bring them in more to that sense of community. And we started praying that God would lead us in that. And over time, we thought it would be fun to do like an international

Starting point is 00:11:15 kind of food fest. And what we found through that was that there weren't just a couple families who were Chinese or from these different countries. There were a lot of different families who were from these different cultural backgrounds. A woman actually who has gotten involved here at the crossing, Shirley and her husband Sibby ended up stepping up to run this international food fest. They called it Bite of the World. And they invited people. And I think we had people from Mexico, Argentina, Egypt, China, India. I'm trying to remember. Israel, all over.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Yeah, it was crazy. And we got to come and sample their different foods from all over the world. So in that way, where I stepped in thinking, oh, these people are a lot like me, we've been able to experience people who are also really different, too. I love that story. This was maybe last year, it was before COVID. Actually, I know when it was. It was Valentine's Day of last year.

Starting point is 00:12:16 Emily got Iris to host a Galentine's party for her friends from school. And so all of the little girls in her class came over. And one of the moms was from Iraq. And they're actually back in Iraq now. But that's where she grew up. They were here to get a degree because we're obviously in a college town. And I struck up a conversation with her. And we were talking for a while.

Starting point is 00:12:35 And as they were leaving, she looked over at Emily and she said, we've been here for four years. And you were the first family to ever invite us into their house. Yeah. Right. I mean, they've been here for four years and no family had invited them to come into their house. And later on, Iris did a little birthday Irish cream trucks. You know, it's kind of back in COVID world and you're doing different things to do social distancing. And when Iris went by her house to say hi, Iris had to go to the bathroom, so they had to go up into their apartment. They ended up staying there for a little bit. But again, they said, you are the first family that we have had into our house. So it's been willing to come over to our house now. And I just thought, oh my God. I mean, it made me feel like. terrible and guilty. But they are certainly not alone. And you just made an amazing point that people like that are probably living in all of our neighborhoods. And of course, Jesus loves them. He wants to know them. He wants to draw them to himself. He might already be in relationships with a lot of those people. And we might be able to be partners with them in reaching others.

Starting point is 00:13:31 I mean, there's just so much great stuff he said there. Here's my question. Okay. For people who are just getting started, this episode's going to come out, gosh, about a week and a half before Christmas. Is there something that we can do during the Christmas season to neighbor well? Do you have any practical ideas? Yeah. So COVID has obviously kind of changed things a little bit. So you can't have the holiday parties in your house or the get-togethers. We used to do, we typically do a big Santa thing with our neighbors and have them over or up

Starting point is 00:13:58 at the clubhouse. So we're having to adjust even our thinking of what we can do. One of the things we're going to do is try to reach out and send the light up the night online Christmas experience that the crossing here is doing as a way to kind of reach out to our neighbors and say, hey, typically maybe you've. gone to a Christmas Eve service, and that's probably not going to be able to happen this year, but here is a link to an online Christmas experience that we're going to watch as a family. This might be something that you might want to enjoy as well. So just trying to reach out and

Starting point is 00:14:26 provide that as an option. Which is great because we've seen some families, very few, but we've seen a couple families come with us to the Christmas Eve service for the last several years. But a lot of people we're finding struggle with social anxiety. So to come to church is there's a lot of obstacles there that neighboring can really kind of plow the ground for and needs to before they'd be willing to step into a church. So an event like light up the night is huge because they can experience some of the same things that we get to experience in the privacy of their own home, kind of on their terms, in a time where they're maybe feeling nostalgic or searching or kind of wanting some of that,

Starting point is 00:15:09 oh, what's the meaning of Christmas kind of thing? they might sign on to something like that. So we're really excited for that. And then the other thing I would say is, especially during this time, we're feeling more isolated, more lonely. So if you don't know your neighbors well enough to invite them to something like that, just reaching out with a card or with some cookies or something like that, just to let your neighbors know, hey, I see you. You know, I know you live next door. I may not know you super well. And jot a note and sign your name and just put your contact info. Don't even say, hey, if you need anything, contact me. Just say, hey, Chris and Elizabeth McKinney. here's my phone number, here's my email. You know, put this in your contact books. Maybe when it gets warmer, we can hang out, you know, do a driveway party or something like that. So just the little act. Remove the word just. Do the little act. And I think you'll see they'll feel loved and you'll see some good things come out of it. I really appreciate that because I am not a man of grand gestures. Yeah. I prefer small things. And that's so much more manageable. My wife, again, I'm the worst neighbor in our family. Emily's a much better neighbor than I am. And during

Starting point is 00:16:11 Thanksgiving, we have a next-door neighbor who is single. She's a wonderful woman. She actually goes here to the crossing. But she was, you know, at Thanksgiving on her own. And we invited her over for Thanksgiving. She, you know, COVID other things and it feel comfortable with that, which is totally understandable. But Emily said, you know what, I'm just going to make a little plate of food and bring it over there and leave it on her doorstep. And I saw her the next day outside and on our driveways. And she said, oh, thanks so much. I love that. That was really good. And, you know, it's what you guys are getting. I mean, that's a tiny little gesture of kindness that didn't cost us anything that I think helped us build a deeper friendship and relationship with those people. So I love that. I love starting small, not saying,

Starting point is 00:16:52 hey, I have the big block party, get the cotton candy machine, do all the big things. Just saying, no, just start really small. Any other small things you think people can do to start neighboring? Well, I mean, one of the kind of phrases that we've coined is it's never just a wave. And I think before COVID, we kind of saw those small things. And like Chris was saying, just thought, oh, what difference could it ever make? But now with COVID and we're all kind of trapped in our homes, we can kind of see, oh, that really does make a difference. So I think, yeah, just going back to waving, smiling. You know, being outside, depending on where your listeners live, you know, most of them probably here in Columbia, the weather is going to be harder. It's going to be harder

Starting point is 00:17:28 to be outside. But one of the best things that we've done is invest in a portable outdoor fire pit that we can move to our front, either yard or our driveway. And, man, you'd start a fire, get some s'mores or have some little bit of food or drinks. I mean, that is, it's non-threatening, and it's just an easy way to invite neighbors over. Hey, come over and hang out for a couple hours. There's a time frame. They don't feel like they're going to get stuck at your house. Hang out from five to seven, and we'll do a fire pit and have some food or something. So the outside, I feel like, is a great place to interact with your neighbors. Even if you live in an apartment complex, finding a common space to host something is still a really

Starting point is 00:18:03 great option. That's really great. And we have listeners all over the country. And so I have to imagine that in every locale. there's different ways to be outside unless you're in Antarctica, in which case you probably aren't listening to this. But, you know, it's funny you say that because for me, the easiest way to neighbor is, and this feels maybe a little bit Hoosier, but I just like taking our lawn chairs and setting them out front. And I just go out with the kids, and they're running around, they're playing.

Starting point is 00:18:25 It's awesome. And it's nice for me because I get to kind of do drive-bys with neighbors. It don't really have to have a big, long, you know, conversation. We just have the chat for a little bit. And it does. It builds a relationship, it builds rapport. And it makes it easier. down the line when we've invited neighbors over, had people into our house to feel a little more

Starting point is 00:18:42 comfortable with each other. And so again, this is great. Just starting with small things. Let me ask you guys one final question. If you could give someone a vision, this is what I think God might want from you for your neighborhood, for your community, what do you think that is? If Jesus could knock on our listeners' door and say, hey, here's what I would love to see from you in the next few months. Here's what I could do if you would just do this small thing. What would you guys say to that? Man, I think it starts with believing that your address is not an accident, and neither is your neighbors. So if we're going to live out of God's story of redemption, we have to walk out our front doors and say, God has placed me here for a reason, and he's also placed my neighbors

Starting point is 00:19:21 here for a reason. So if I'm going to operate out of that framework, something's going on. God is at work, and he wants to use me. He wants me to be a part of that. And so then every action becomes meaningful. Everything is a part of God's work in the neighborhood. Everything is part of God's kingdom coming, you know, the mustard seed, right? Jesus said, how does the kingdom grow? It starts with the mustard seed. And over time, this mustard seed grows, not overnight, over time, into a tree where the birds of the air can find shade and rest. And so I think one of the things would just be embracing that mindset, move out of the cultural story, move into God's story of redemption for reaching out to your neighbors and embrace those small things.

Starting point is 00:20:02 Yeah, I love that question. I'm thinking about it in terms of my experiences in the campus ministry where we like to affectionately call it the microwave. You know, life change happened fast and that was awesome. But as we moved into neighboring, we like to call it the crock pot. Things are low and slow. And we had to really kind of broaden our view of what it meant to have even like gospel motivated conversations, conversations that might be not overtly spiritual. in nature, but where our faith and our Christian worldview was woven into the conversation behind the scenes, maybe, maybe even sometimes kind of quietly in conversations like parenting or about our marriage, about just everyday life. And so I think if a listener is willing to take some of those seemingly small steps and start to build that relationship, I would just say there's no cut and paste. There's no right way to do neighboring. There's no it's really kind of embracing however God has made you, he's wired you, and living out of kind of that vulnerability in your own kind of inadequacies, not trying to set a good example

Starting point is 00:21:15 and be this perfect Christian in the neighborhood, but saying, like Chris said, I'm placed here for a purpose, I'm going to seek the common good of the neighborhood. I'm going to care about more than just what maybe I previously would have thought as counts as spiritual, but I'm going to care about the whole thing. And I think as you do that over the long haul, your neighbors will see not just, oh, there's something kind of different in this like, oh, she's better than me way, but like, oh, kind of there's a better story happening here. And I want to be a part of that. I know that this is not true of me as a neighbor. I think it might be true of you and you're going to hate me for saying this. Uh-oh. But I think, I think about Jesus's prayer that heaven would

Starting point is 00:21:58 come on earth, that God's rule, God's reign, God's presence, his goodness, his love, his justice and mercy would be on earth as it is in heaven. And he seems to pray that not with the expectation that it's a entirely future-oriented thing, as though we will just wait long enough, and that will finally happen. It's something that he seems to actually pray and expect to happen in the present. And what you just told me is that through very tiny little things, long over time, in the context of relationships, it's, you know, you're having a conversation, you talk about how you're anxious at work and that's a great time just to drop, you know, but I've been praying, I've been trusting Jesus. Just tiny little moments where you get to talk about your

Starting point is 00:22:37 faith in an unembarrassed way that when you do that, God's kingdom is coming on earth as in heaven. I can say for a fact that you have made your neighborhood a better place. I know people who want to move into your neighborhood and they don't know you guys. They're like, I want to move there because they have these fun events and people seem to really know each other and just got a great feeling in that neighborhood. And they don't know that this started with two people who said, you know what? We really want to follow Jesus and more and more people bought into that same mission together in a really simple, small way. And that's, I mean, that is beautiful. That is God's kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven or coming on, what's the name of your subdivision?

Starting point is 00:23:13 Windham Ridge. Windham Ridge. Yeah, God's getting him coming in Windham Ridge as in heaven. So thanks so much for being on the show today. In our show notes, we will have a link to placed for a purpose. Here's the deal. Chris and Elizabeth, our practitioners, This is not just ideas floating up in the sky. These are people who have really practiced it. Their book is wonderfully and delightfully short. There's only 104 pages and it's full of practical ideas. I believe an audiobook is eventually coming out. Hopefully, we're hoping. But it's short enough. You can buy it on your Kindle. You can buy a paperback copy of it. I would really encourage you to read this book. I think it's going to give you really practical ideas about how to bring Jesus's kingdom into your neighborhood.

Starting point is 00:23:52 They mentioned during the podcast, The Crossing is doing a special Christmas. experience is an online experience. It's not like a normal service. It's going to be very different, but I think it's going to be a great thing for you to listen to and for you to watch with your family. We'll have a link to that. It's called Light and the Night. And if you want to invite your neighbors to watch it at the same time as you, what a cool opportunity, because Christmas is kind of one of those free for all times where you get to talk about your faith and no one judges you for it. So, you know, take advantage of that. Thanks again for being on the show. And please, please, please pick up their book. I think you will really enjoy it.

Starting point is 00:24:25 quick reminder we are starting mark in January so set a goal read your Bible more importantly find a friend to do this with who is that friend I want you to stop before you do anything else and text that person right now and say hey I've got a great idea let's read our Bibles together in January 2020 we're going to start in the gospel of Mark I've got a devotion that you can read a podcast you can listen to they're going to feel cared for and they're going to be excited to do this with you thanks for listening if you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family

Starting point is 00:25:09 member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Love Your Neighbor: An Interview with Chris and Elizabeth McKinney

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