Have you ever thought, “I want to love my neighbor, but I don’t know how”? How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird by Amy Lively is packed with practical, adaptable tips and tools for introverts or extroverts, and people who live in big cities or small villages. If you want to get rid of the guilt about disobeying Christ’s #2 command to love our neighbor but don’t want to alienate or offend your neighbors in the process, this book is for you.
Amy wasn’t always a good neighbor – in fact, she says she wasn’t always even a good believer. In Chapter One she tells her story of running from God for 20 years before natural relationships with godly women changed her spiritual destiny—and this happened outside of church, at coffee shops and playgrounds. Once Amy returned to the Lord, however, it was as if Jesus was locked inside her house! She lived in her neighborhood for seven years before she attempted to get to know her neighbors, and even this was done kicking and screaming. She fought the Lord for a long time before finally inviting 89 neighbors over for coffee. This gathering of women in homes became an international ministry called The Neighborhood Café, and this book was also an outcome of her experience in her own neighborhood.
You may be asking, “Isn’t it ‘loving my neighbor’ when I support world missions or witness to my hairdresser?” Yes, it i s… but we have globalized the definition of neighbor to include everyone in the whole wide world, conveniently excluding the people who live right next door—the ones who can reject us. Jesus had a different way of loving His neighbor. He simply sat down with His neighbors at their tables, in their homes, and they did life together.
Loving our neighbor means investing in relationships – it’s sometimes messy, but it’s always meaningful.
If you’re struggling to build relationships with your neighbors based solely on religion, How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird teaches you six other areas where you can interact and engage with your neighbors: family, government, education, business, arts and entertainment, media. Along with religion, these seven areas have shaped every culture in every generation, and they are active forces in your community today. These areas impact the people living around you, and the influence of the Gospel is desperately needed in each area.
God knew what sociologists and archaeologists have also figured out: your entire community is safer, stronger, wealthier – and even lives longer! – when neighbors know each other’s names and are involved in each other’s lives. And on a spiritual level, loving our neighbors blesses us even more than it does them. You’ll never lean on God more or see Him more clearly than when you obey His #2 command.
How about you? How are you loving your neighbors? Share a comment about how you reach out (or want to reach out!) to your neighbors, and you’ll be entered to win a lovely prize pack from Amy:
- 2 MUGS Adorable “Love Your Neighbor” mugs, one for you, one for your neighbor!
- 10 CARDS to ask your neighbor over for coffee, board games, BBQ – you name it! Invite one neighbor or the whole block, whatever works.
- 2 COFFEES Single-serve Columbian coffees.
- 2 COASTERS to put under your steaming mugs.
- 1 BOOK A signed copy of Amy’s book, How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird.
GIVEAWAY UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner, Sarah Cooksey! I’ll be in touch with more details soon.
Amy Lively
Amy Lively is a speaker and the author of How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird (Bethany House, May 2015). She provides tips and tools for Christ’s #2 command drawing from her own experience knocking on her neighbors’ doors and leading a women’s neighborhood Bible study called The Neighborhood Cafe. Amy lives in Lancaster, Ohio with her husband, their daughter, a holy dog and an unsaintly cat. Learn more athowtoloveyourneighbor.com.
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We have neighborhood movie nights and invite the entire neighborhood over for movies on a blow-up screen in our front yard. We’ve become the house that the neighborhood kids come to to play, which gives us the opportunity to get to know their parents. We deliver Christmas gifts to our neighbors on Christmas Eve, every year. I’m always looking for new ways to get to know our neighbors better and would love this book!
Sounds like a great place to live, Jill! One home can change the whole culture of a neighborhood. That’s YOU!!
Share the word of God with friends and family online. Have conversations with some friends about God and his promises, healing and such. Being kind and offering encouragement to those I pass along my path that could use a helping hand or word of kindness. God had shown me such grace and mercy in my life, In my soul, I feel it’s my responsibility to show the same to those around me. If that’s weird, I’m ok with that.. 🙂 I make mistakes, we all do, because, we’re not perfect. The only perfect person was and is Jesus. Getting back up and “staying the proverbial course” is one of the important aspects of life while trusting in God and His timing to fulfill His promises. This book would be helpful for me in starting a F2F bible study. Abundant blessings to all.
Sounds like you’re my kind of weird, Cheryl!
The title made me smile 🙂
“Without being weird”… is GREAT!
We use our abundance of chicken eggs combined with an abundance of cute children…send those two around together and doors usually open pretty quickly 🙂
It’s been a great way to at least open lines of communication and start building relationships. That first step is often the most difficult for me…
A gift really does open doors – and even better if it’s food! Love how you share your abundance of goodness 🙂
I started having tea and coffee in my home in the 55+ community we moved to. I include my neighbors on either side of me who are shy, and also ask a couple Christian neighbors who help by baking something delicious, and then a couple new neighbors. I then ask how I can pray for each of them before they go.
Everyone needs to eat right (and most people NEED coffee!), so this is the perfect way to spend time with your neighbors. Love it!
I would like to have weekly coffee get togethers with my neighbors.
I can help! Lots of great ideas like this – and more – in the book! Let me know how it goes or if you have any questions.
We host neighborhood family barbecues, and I also coordinate a seasonal ladies’ brunch. I can say that I know my neighbors well, and since 2008 they have been like an extended family.
Isn’t it amazing how important these people become in our lives? It’s truly the purpose of Christ’s #2 command!
I live in a senior high rise. I like to smile at everyone I see during the day. Hugs are freely given if needed. I am the in-house coordinator for weekly church services.
Nancy, you’re the neighbor everyone loves to have – keep smiling and hugging and praying!
We move… A lot. My husband is the the military , so this is something struggle with. I sometimes feel like my relationships are shallow and not deep due to the fact that either me or them will be leaving soon. However, we have just arrived at our new base and we will be here for 5 years!!! Crazy!! Seems like a lifetime lol. I am really excited to read this and hopefully start it with others in my new neighborhood. One way that I do try to live my neighbors no matter where I am is to be sincere with the fact that I always there, thru good and bad, arrivals and deployments, moves and homecoming, and everything that comes in between. Sometimes ladies take advantage of it and others don’t. But no matter what, I always let them know I am sincere.
May God bless your family for your service to our country! Thank you for the sacrifices you make for us all. Your a soldier in your neighborhood, fighting to keep families connected.
i have not been great at inviting neighbors over but I have provided meals to a few when I have heard about a loss in the family or a baby has been born. I usually give a plate of homemade cookies to immediate neighbors at Christmas. I definitely need improvement in this area
You’re off to a really great start! Don’t discount what you’ve already done, just keep on doing it. Awesome!
I tried getting our immediate neighbors together to get to know each other better this past month. We’ve lived in this neighborhood for several years and have a great group of neighbors but we don’t get much further than the hello how are you out in the street, No one visits each other at all. So we planned a potluck BBQ last month that turned out great and now we are being asked when the net one will be! 🙂
I’m all for the picnic in the park type but I really want some in home fellowship a lot more often. I’m just not sure how to get that ball rolling. I’m not a great conversation starter so I wouldn’t know how to get them to my house and then once they are here what do I do with them?? LOL
Eat! Food is a great conversation starter. You could have a game on hand as an icebreaker. Your BBQ was already a big hit, you can do this {again}!
my next door neighbor lost her husband suddenly last summer. She and her two teenage boys have been on my mind and in my prayers ever since. I have brought over some food gifts occasionally, but would love to have some other ideas – I’m afraid she is getting tired of the sweets. Our neighborhood is a very stuffy, critical place, so it would be nice to reach out to others too.
Your heart of mercy for this family is directly from God! When you feel a nudge to reach out to her, that may be His way of telling you that she needs to see Him. We cannot know how she will react, but your obedience to the Holy Spirit is all you can control. I pray that your gestures touch her heart and her sons!
i just moved into a new apartment complex, and have discovered that all of my immediate neighbors are single women. So I am planning to ask them over for dinner soon. I also have a porch that is highly visible, so I want to push myself to be visible on it so that I can have conversations with people as they walk their dogs or get home from work.
God gave you that particular unit for a reason! He has big plans for your porch, and I hope you’ll let me know how it goes!
Most of my neighbors have lived in our neighborhood as long as I have. We all raised kids here. We have block potlucks and visit often.
Sounds like Mayberry 🙂 I love this kind of neighborhood, you’re blessed to have it!
I am fairly new to my neighborhood and I am pretty much an introvert. I would love to find ways to get to know my neighbors , there are not many on this rural road, i guess I had not not thought about some of the ideas that you talk about .
Thank you for giveaway
I bet some of your neighbors are introverts, too – and they will appreciate your softer approach to neighboring. Lots of ideas for introverts in the book because God made each of us to love our neighbor in our own unique way.
For some strange reason it does feel “weird” to reach out to neighbors. Although our kids play together all the time, us parents just hibernate inside our houses. There’s even a few of us who chit chat on FaceBook but not in our homes. I’m not sure why this is. I have thought that it would be neat to reach out in some way. But would people think I’m weird if all of a sudden, after 5 years in the neighborhood, I decided to have them over? I really don’t know. I do know I feel pretty uncomfortable about it but at the same time would love to stop talking about it & do it. This book sounds like something I could relate to.
Well, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Feeling awkward for a few minutes as we stumble through a conversation? And what’s the best thing that could happen? Making a new best friend? Go for it! You can transform your neighborhood so that someday it will feel “weird” to NOT be neighborly!
I live in a rural area and no neighbors are within my sight. However, I consider my church family my neighbors. We go to worship services and fellowship together.
That counts! Geography is one thing but it’s not the only thing. Love the one you meet 🙂
We moved 2.5 years ago and my husband knows the neighbors and we have done business withthem and swapped equipment with them (we are farmers) but I have never met any of them or their families. Wait, I did meet a teenage son ofone neneighbor when I returned their wandering kittens. I keep thinking I should bring over a pie or some cookies and finally introduce myself. My 7 year old just learned to make cookies so maybe we will make it a mission to meet the neighbors this summer.
Kids, kittens, cookies- the perfect combination to make a new acquaintance! Let me know how it goes!
Such a great idea.
🙂
We invited our new neighbors for supper when they moved in so that they wouldn’t have to worry about unpacking and cooking or going out 🙂
That’s PERFECT! Timely, thoughtful and kind – way to go! I’m going to remember this one!
I would love to have my neighbors over for a Bible Study or just for a cup of tea.
Do it! Just ask… they’ll be honored!
I am friendly with most of my neighbors, but because we live in an apartment, people are moving in and out all of the time, so it gets hard to keep track of who is still here. I’m an introvert as well, so making new friendships has never been easy. Hope I get the chance to read this book and apply some of it to my life. 🙂
Maybe you could start an address book just for your apartment building, and keep it by Unit instead of by Name – that way when people move in/out, you can update your list. I keep all my neighbors as contacts in my smart phone, and I put the word NEIGHBOR after their last name. I can search NEIGHBOR and see them all!
This past Christmas our family packed homemade treat baskets and delivered to a few of the homes on our street. At some of the homes we were greeted with smiles and conversations, but I fear we may have shown up at the wrong time at other homes. (We went a little after dinner time.) Regardless, I don’t want my worries to keep me from returning. The people inside my neighbor’s homes are important – they are loved by a Savior who is far more giving than me and that’s what I ultimately want them to know.
I don’t think we can possibly plan or know the exact “right” time to approach our neighbors. I do know that NEVER going is worse than going NOW! May the blessing of your gift baskets be still warming hearts these many months later!
We go out of our way to help out the elderly couple next door. Hubby mows their lawn and cleans their gutters and they bake us yummy cookies as a thank you. In warmer weather, we’ll walk the dog down to their house and sit on their front porch listening to their stories. Elders are treasures and I appreciate them. Our other neighbors are very kind and always ready to lend a hand with each other. I’ve been thinking about trying to arrange a block party this summer since I appreciate them all so much.
Thank you and bless you for caring for your elderly neighbors! Did you see this story? So sad, yet encouraging – http://www.facebook.com/howtoloveyourneighbor/posts/927784237272791
That’s very sad. I’ve never understood how people can disregard or ignore the elderly.