At The Linka blog by NeighborLink Fort Wayne

Blessed Are The ____________

I’ve been listening to Rob Bell’s (Mars Hill) latest sermon series on The Beatitudes and it’s been challenging the way I thought I understood them.

On one hand, this enhances the fact that the more we interact with the scriptures, the more they change and deepen our sense of who God is and what it means to follow Jesus.

On the other hand it completely challenges your core and even more so, your actions as a person trying to live out their faith in an authentic way.

He highlights them as being counter intuitive to what we think they’re saying as we read them. For instance, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Rob suggests that it’s not for us to become poor in spirit in order for us to inherit the kingdom, but those who are actually poor in spirit are present in the kingdom.

As I think about this, it practically suggests that in order for me to understand the kingdom of heaven, I need to associate myself with those who are poor in spirit, not change my spirit. The action of me entering into relationship with those poor in spirit will change my heart in order to understand the kingdom.

Anyway, I’m in process of understanding this and the point of this blog post is to encourage you to listen the sermons with me. They are all online available to be downloaded and listened to.

These types of messages and conversations are important to understanding why connecting to those waiting on assistance on the NeighborLink website is so important for our transformation.

Mars Hill Sermons - Downloads

posted 4 days ago

Blackhawk Ministries - Bring a Rake to Church - Nov 8th

Blackhawk is doing “Bring a rake to church” on Sunday, November 8 after the second service to rake the lawns in the neighborhoods adjacent to the church.  Leaf pick-up in that area starts the following day.

Fantastic way to impact their neighborhood.

posted 1 week ago

10.27 Message From The Link - I Wish You Could Have Been There

First of all, I apologize for not getting an email out last week. I was preparing for a conference put on by CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) in Cincinnati, OH. We officially launched the newly formed NeighborLink Network at this conference. More on NeighborLink Network in a future email. Just know it’s the parent organization of all future NeighborLinks around the country that pop up.

CCDA is an association of like-minded individuals across the country who are passionate about seeing Shalom lived out on Earth. Everyone at the conference is connected to an organization or church actively involved in Kingdom building activities.

I was able to meet a lot of really great people and hear from people all over the country tell about what they are doing. I reflected often on the fact that I wish you could have been there as well. I wish you were there with me so you could also be joining in on the conversation that I think more of us should be having. There were over 2,500 people there sharing their experiences and gaining wisdom from each other.

I came away so charged up about NeighborLink as an organization and the environment we’re creating that allows you and I to connect to those asking for help who can’t get help anywhere else. It truly is a remarkable concept.

Since you weren’t able to go nor have many of you ever heard of CCDA, I hope to share quite a few thoughts with you over the coming weeks as I process them and as God shapes those in my mind.

If I can leave you with two reminders that were clear for me leaving the conference.

1. We cannot fix everything. We cannot save everyone. We can not make the most difficult of things go away. What God has given us, is the ability  to Love everyone. If we truly have accepted the Love of Jesus Christ, then we can Love everyone. For now, maybe we need to just work on loving our neighbor just as they are and join their journey. If we’re willing to commit to that, then we’re creating the environment for God to reveal himself fully through us. If we’re not loving people well, then are we revealing Him to those who need Him?

2. NeighborLink and the programs we create in our churches are only designed to connect people. NeighborLink nor any program that we can create will ever be the solution to a particular issue. Only when we see it as a tool to connect to someone burdened by this world to be a beacon of Light in a dark place will we ever get a glimpse of the Kingdom that God desires us to see.

I encourage you to process these ideas with me in the coming weeks as we think about why we’re connected to NeighborLink in the first place.

It’s about the people.

The Link is Our Weekly Newsletter - 10.27 Edition

posted 1 week ago

The Way Out of Poverty

My pastor friend here in Fort Wayne, Tim, wrote this blog post recently out of some of the things he’s learning and studying about as he tries to pastor in a poor neighborhood. I really like his thoughts and these quotes he’s pass on.

“Productivity growth and, hence, the way out of poverty, is not simply a matter of throwing resources at the problem. More important, it is a matter of using resources well.”

In other words, countries grow out of poverty not only when they manage their fiscal and monetary policies responsibly from above, i.e., reform wholesale. In recent years, a lot of attention and moral concern has been devoted to the roblem of persistent poverty, particularly in Africa. That is a good thing. But persistent poverty is a practical problem as well as a moral one, and we do ourelves no good to focus on our moral failings and not the practical shortcomings of the countries and governments involved.
Poor people grow out of poverty when their governments create an envioronment in which educated workers and capitalists have the physical and legal infrastructure that makes it easy to start businesses, raise capital, and become entrepreneurs, and when they subject their people to at least some competition from beyond - because companies and countries with competitors always innovate more, better, and faster. pg 402
…if you change the regulatory and business environment for the poor, and give them the tools to collaborate, the will do the rest. pg 403

~ Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat

In my work to better understand the causes of poverty as well as the way out of poverty, most of my research has been done using religious-based sources. It’s also helpful to read and discover what non-religious sources have to say about the reality of poverty. If a church is going to help lift its neighborhood out of poverty, we need to understand some of the bigger forces at work. If a church is going to bring a full-orbed Good News to the poor, it had better understand how to be realistically helpful, intentional, resourceful, creative, and persistent.

posted 1 week ago