Who Are Your Neighbors?

This morning I was reading in
Proverbs 27. Verse 10.
"Do not forsake your friend and the friend of your father
and do not go to your brother's house when disaster strikes you
better a neighbor nearby than a brother far away."

This reminded me of something that has been on my heart a lot lately.
A few weeks ago, I was home with my 2 year old son and 3 men came crawling through our back window... apparently to finish up a robbery they'd started earlier in the day when I was out of the house. I hadn't even noticed things were missing until after the police were in the house with me later. We were unharmed, and ran out the front of the house as the men ran out the back when I started screaming... but the experience shook up our family and really brought a lot of things to light.
The most important comfort to me over the days following the incident (besides my faith in God's protection and leading us to this home in the first place) was the comfort of my neighbors. By the end of the first day, I had 13 neighbors (many of whom I already was on a first name basis with, but also many new ones) come to check on me. I now have at least 6 of their cell phone numbers on my speed dial, and instructions to call if I ever need anything. When I got scared to walk into my house alone, my neighbors walked with me through the house and gave me hugs when I needed it. When I had workers come to give quotes on security systems and the like, my neighbors walked right up to my porch to make sure these were good people talking to me.
One of the police officers that first day said, "Don't give up on your neighborhood. It takes good people to make a good neighborhood."
He was right.
I've been thinking a lot about who my neighbors are. It really does take a village to raise a family in safety and wholeness these days, especially in Los Angeles.

When I need instant help, I can't call my family - they all live between 4 and 40 miles away. I need to call my neighbors. And I actually have church family pretty close, too. In a church our size, there are enough of us, that most of us have someone from our Metro family who lives pretty near to us. Wouldn't it be awesome if you knew that someone from your spiritual family lived a few minutes away and could help you out in a time of need?
To me, that is what being family is about. Finding those people and as we say in our family, "doing life with them"

We've made it very clear to the people that we meet - "hey, we have room in our life for new friends." This is LA, and one of the hardest things about LA is how often people move in and out of the city. There is a lot of turnover, and it's hard to find people who are committed to you. But if you look, you'll find them here at Metro...

here are some fun ways to break the ice at getting to form better bonds with your Metro family:
1 - go on the fall retreat!
2 - join a small group (sign ups are happening again soon! if possible, find one CLOSE to you)
3 - if you have free time, call the church office and volunteer to come help with a project
4 - join one of the prayer meetings that happen during the week
5 - find a service opportunity - lots of ministries need help
6 - ask someone to lunch after service

some fun things that we've done as a family as well...
-hosted parties and invited people over
-set up a standing weekly date with another family that whenever we're free, we do Saturday breakfast with each other
-get on facebook, and find some metro friends there
-introduce ourselves to people we've not met before at church "Hi. I haven't met you before..."

Here's to creating a family here... in LA ... the kind we can call on.