Loving Our Neighbors Means Loving Our Neighborhoods

Overview

The last episode of our season on formation begins with co-hosts Lisa Greenwood and Tim Soerens each sharing their top three takeaways from the season. Don’t miss this great season wrap up! And then: We couldn’t imagine a better conversation partner to end this season with than Jonathan Brooks, or as he’s better known, Pastah J, who offers a hopeful vision and powerful challenge for the church to lead the way out of these hard times: practice presence with all neighbors in all neighborhoods. “I don’t actually think that there are ever any God forsaken places,” Pastah J says, “but there are church forsaken places because it is the church that has decided to take all our gifts and talents, all that God gives us, our power, and reside in more comfortable spaces.” Rooted in scripture and grounded in theology, Pastah J reminds us that God is as interested in where people live as God is in whether they will go to heaven. Pastah J invites us to engage our neighborhoods right now for God’s sake.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Tim and Lisa each share their top three takeaways from this season on formation (0:43)
  

• Pastah J: how place impacts the way we live out our theology and formation (14:27)

• The pivotal moment Pastah J realized that his neighborhood and his church were intimately connected (18:45)

• The impact of the narrative of upward mobility on urban neighborhoods and how it leads to “continual disinvestment” (23:10)

• Jesus call us to be uncomfortable and to reinvest in some of the places we have run away from (25:35)

• We need to need make bifocal “Glory of God” and “Brokenness of Humanity” glasses to fully see the world the way God does (32:00)

• Discipleship and formation happen in relationship to each other and to the places we live (39:30)

• God’s gifts and goodness exist for us in community with each other (44:42)

• Words of hope for everyone doing the work of God (49:35)