A Call To Be A Better Neighbor

Recent surveys say less than half of Americans trust their neighbors. What might be some of the reasons for this erosion of trust? On today’s episode, Chris McKinney, co-author of the book Neighborhoods Reimagined, speaks with Tim and Mike on some of factors contributing to healthy and unhealthy neighborly relations, and they discuss the surprising relevance of the beatitudes. Chris also shares some of the practical steps he and his family are taking to build trust with their neighbors and the lessons they have learned.

Show notes and a full transcript are available.

Transcript

Tim Muehlhoff:

Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a Professor of Communication here at Biola University in La Mirada, California. I'm also the Co-Director with two other individuals of something called the Winsome Conviction Project, which seeks to reintroduce civility, kindness, compassion, perspective-taking into our public disagreements. And it's a pleasure today to be joined by Dr. Mike Ahn. Mike?

Dr. Mike Ahn:

I'm grateful to be here. I'm the Dean of Spiritual Development here at Biola University, also co-host of this podcast with you.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And one of the three co-directors.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Co-directors, yeah, that's right.

Tim Muehlhoff:

The epitome of your career.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

It is, it is.

Tim Muehlhoff:

You have reached the ceiling.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Thanks for having me join.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, we love it. Mike, you know what's so funny? I say this to my students often. I say, "Imagine halfway through the class I say to you, 'Here are the two most important things I'm going to say all semester. They're going to be reflected on the test. On the final, these are the two most important things I'm going to say this entire semester.'" You would imagine they would write those down.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

They would all tweet it.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yes. So this is what's so funny about the first and second Great Commandments, right? The first, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul." The second is just like the first.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Yes.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Jesus says, and that is too "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Right.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And today, loving our neighbors has kind of fallen on hard times. We need to think deeply about that. So we're super excited to have on today, Chris McKinney. Chris and his wife Elizabeth, wrote an amazing book called Neighborhoods Reimagined: How the Beatitudes Inspire our Call to Be Good Neighbors. It's a great read and a wonderful handling of the Beatitudes to make them completely relevant to our modern context. Unfortunately, Elizabeth couldn't be with us today, but we've got Chris. Chris, welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast.

Chris McKinney:

Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It's really, really great to join you all.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Chris, we're so grateful to have you. If I could ask the first question, is that okay with you?

Tim Muehlhoff:

Yeah. I'd love it.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Yeah. Chris, you start off the intro with this idea of the good life. And I think for me, I'm living in the suburbs, I live in Orange County, and there's this picture of the good life. And I'm just curious, what would the good life be for people in your area? And how does that look and how does that play out with what you're trying to bring into with the Beatitudes?

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. I think it's probably a lot of the same things that you experience where you live. In fact, I think there's even been some research done on this, but our definition of what it means to be a good neighbor in our culture is to basically leave our next door neighbors alone, to give them space, to take out your trash, and to keep to yourself and pursue self-sufficiency, pursue all the things that you want for your life and the things that our culture would say you should have for a good life.

And I think what that creates is isolation and independence, especially in neighborhoods. Why would I take the time to reach out to a neighbor when I don't see that as part of the good life? It seems like a hassle. I don't know them. I don't trust them, so I'm just going to stick to myself.

And that was the story in our neighborhood 12, 13 years ago. And we just felt like we wanted to meet some of our neighbors. So we started reaching out a little bit, and through a fish fry, got to know some neighbors and the rest took off from there. We saw God do a lot of work. And so, we were just really captivated by the Beatitudes, this way of Jesus. And we're excited to think about what could change in our neighborhoods if we walked in this way of Jesus, this Beatitude way.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, I'm telling you right now, Chris, I'm coming to the fish fry.

Chris McKinney:

Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Come on. That's great. But I like what you said about our modern attitude is if, "I just leave you alone, then I'm being a good neighbor." But you mentioned two statistics that really caught our eye, especially since we're educators at a Christian university. The first one, in 2005, a Georgetown University study found that 47% of Americans knew almost none of their neighbors. Second, one of the reasons they didn't want to know neighbors is because of a lack of trust. And this is what surprised me and Mike, is the demographic that didn't trust their neighbors the most. You write, "Research confirms our newly installed trust issues. Surveys say less than half of us trust our next door neighbors. And those in the youngest demographic, ages 18 to 29, even have a higher rate of distrust than the normal population." Man, unpack that.

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. I think the scary thing about that is it probably hasn't gotten much better, I would assume. And I think there's a number of reasons for that. There's the cultural story of what it means to be a good neighbor. I think there's a really fascinating book by a guy named Mark Dunkleman. He's a professor at Brown, and he says that these middle ring relationships, he calls them the neighbor relationships, are vanishing in part because we are spending so much time in the outer ring, which is like these affinity groups, our tribes, it could be a political party, a sports team, and with our inner ring, which is our friends and family.

And really, I don't want to blame our phones and technology, but our phones and social media make it so easy to connect to those two rings, which it's not bad. But when you can do that with ease, why take the step to talk to your neighbor who might have a different candidate's political sign in their yard and you're like, "I don't want to talk to them. I don't trust them and their viewpoints. I want to go be around people I know and I like and who they know me and we all kind of think the same." And you can see how easy that would be to slide into that.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Chris, I think it's pretty easy to fall into this isolation trap as you're saying, that I can live my own life and let my neighbors live their own life. Why did you even want to start this fish fry? Why did you even want to initiate this kind of conversation?

Chris McKinney:

Yeah, that's a really good question. So we weren't looking for more to do. At that time, we were in one of the most stressful, busy seasons of our lives. We had four young kids in five years. I was directing the campus ministry with crew at Mizzou at the University of and also commuting to seminary in St. Louis. And so, it really was out of that sense of loneliness. We had community in our small group, but to get across town with four young kids, you might as well be going to Europe because of the amount of stuff you had to bring and the time it took. And so, we felt like part of our community needed to come from some people around us.

And so, that's how we met Bingo and Angie. Bingo was seven feet tall and he played basketball at Mizzou and loved to fry things, so that's how we did the fish fry. And we realized that we just really enjoyed Bingo and Angie. And so, these events became our excuses, because you need an excuse almost these days to walk up and talk to your neighbor. And the more we did these events, the more connected we got, the more these relational bridges were built that could withstand some of the weightier conversations. And that's where we began to have the spiritual conversations and even saw some people begin to trust Christ and follow Him. And so it was really, we stumbled into it is the best way I can say because we knew we needed community around us.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Maybe you misspoke, maybe I heard you wrong, but did you say you had four kids under the age of five?

Chris McKinney:

In five years. So yeah. So it's like 14, 12, 10, and 9. Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Brother, I'm going to go take a nap right now.

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. I'm losing my hair and it all turned gray, so that's where I'm at.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And you are talking to a bald co-host.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

That's just you, though. I just want to make that clear.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, mic snap. Mic snap right here. So did you find that kids was also an entry point that you could talk about? Raising kids is just hard on everyone and presents challenges and then throw in teenagers. Did you find that was an entry point as well into these neighborhood conversations?

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. I think that was the stage We were in, young kids. I have a wife who I say has never seen a party she doesn't like. And so, that was our entry point, was her sitting on the couch surrounded in diapers and babies and getting on Facebook and initiating an Easter egg hunt where eight kids came and four of them were ours. And so, that became the point of connection.

But I would say in our neighborhood, we have retired families, we have empty nesters. We have run the gamut and we see all of them are able to join in and connect. And so, I think yes, kids do make it a little easier to get to know your neighbors, but I think we can connect with our neighbors in whatever stage we find ourselves in. I think it's just important to do it out of a desire to want to get to know your neighbors and not see them as a project or feel like you should. But it's this desire to want to know them and for them to experience community and maybe even come to know God.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Yeah. I think if I could, this is not scientific data, this is very anecdotal, but just listening to some of the college students and why they are starting to drop out of church, if I could say so, is part of this idea that they've been sold that church needs to be their whole community, and that their community needs to be at church. And what I'm hearing from you is that there's a little bit of a... And I know you believe in the church. It's not that. It's just that there is a community that you're trying to build with the neighbors around you. I'm just curious, what are some of the lessons that you've learned as you've interacted with your neighbors? What are some of the lessons, maybe even surprising lessons, about what it's been like for you to engage well with your neighbors?

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. One of the cool things that's happened is we've gotten to know other families from other churches. So one of the very first families that helped us pull off our first block party went to a totally different church. And so, from the beginning it was fun and nice to know that we weren't doing this to try to get people to come to a particular church. We were just wanting to serve and get to know our neighbors.

I would also say that I think I would've said this intellectually, that people who don't share the same worldview or faith, belief in God as me, have things to offer me. But I think experiencing that and experiencing all the gifts and the strengths and really the wisdom that our neighbors have who may not follow Jesus has been just a true blessing. I've felt God's care for me as we've sat outside around a little campfire with some s'mores with our next door neighbor who's not a believer and has a very different worldview, but she's a therapist here in town. And we were sharing about some stuff that was going on and some things we were trying to work through. And some of her thoughts were just really great, and she really cared for us in that moment. And so, I think that's been one of the really fun things is to actually experience that reality.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Okay, fish fry and s'mores. When is this next block party?

Chris McKinney:

Every May right around Cinco de Mayo. I smoke about six pork butts. It's grown a little bit over the years and everybody brings a side. We do a lot around food. Some of our best neighboring events are all around food.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Would you be up for us to come and do a live location podcast?

Chris McKinney:

Oh, absolutely. We'll do some kind of barbecue. We're in the Midwest. We're near Kansas City, so we'll do a barbecue cook-off and you guys could judge it.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Done, literally done. We're going to do our first remote podcast, and we're going to judge it. You guys had an aha moment. So as I'm reading this book, I'm thinking, "Okay, this is another book about reach out to neighbors," which is great. It's just great. But then, you make this turn towards the Beatitudes, which I thought was really interesting and really well done. And you call it an aha moment. So tell us a little bit about the Beatitudes, which sometimes people's attitudes towards the Beatitudes a little bit is a bit of a stifled yawn, like, "Okay, here we go with the 'Blessed of the meek, Blessed are the poor in spirit.'" But for you guys, it really was an aha moment.

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. So for us, I was studying the book of Matthew a couple years ago, and I came to the Sermon on the Mount. And so, the Beatitudes come before the Sermon on the Mount. And I found myself doing exactly that. "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Okay, okay. Blessed are those who persecuted. Man. Okay. Okay, salt and light. Now we're into the good stuff." And I stopped and I was like, "I really want to understand what Jesus is saying here."

And what I found, one of the aha moments was that these things that Jesus is calling us to, they're not things that we're doing to try to earn a blessing or earn favor with Him. Paul says, "We are blessed with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ Jesus." But instead, this word blessed I think means it's more of a flourishing. It's a happiness. It can also mean fortunate. So what these are invitations into a way of living. It's the way of Jesus that Jesus modeled for us that brings flourishing not only to our lives, but to those around us.

It's very upside down flourishing. It's not the flourishing that the world would look at and say, "Yeah, that's something we recognize." But it is in contrast to the world. And I think that the salt and light passage there follows well, because I think the salt and the light is in contrast to the lack of salt and the lack of light. And I think living in this Beatitude way, never perfectly, always in need of grace, following Jesus, looking to Him for help, is a way that we can have that contrast in our world.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Chris, I think the way that you compare the salt and light or the way you see this juxtaposed in the scripture is so profound. And I'd love for you to unpack that a little bit more, because this idea of meekness or powerlessness or some of these virtues that Jesus applauds in the Beatitudes, I'm just curious if you lead with that, how does that become salt to your neighbors? I feel like neighbors, they want to know my accomplishments. They want to know my job status. They want to know what I'm doing for my financial portfolio. They want to ask these kinds of things. But how do you lead with that? And maybe there's an example that you have of how you've tried to help them understand who Jesus is through all of it.

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. So it starts off with flourishing are the poor in spirit. And this really is, I would say the foundation. It's the marinade, the special sauce, if you will, that all the Beatitudes sit in. And it's this invitation into neediness. We come to Jesus in our sin, in our brokenness, needy. And a lot of times, after we experience that forgiveness and the gospel in our lives, we think, "Okay, now it's time to get my act together and pull myself up by my bootstraps." But really, the invitation here is to continue to be needy on Jesus. And so, that is the initial invitation. And I think meekness then flows from that where poor in spirit might be our neediness and our humility with God, meekness shows up in our relationships with others. And it's the invitation to have the courage to consider others as better than ourselves.

And so, I think what you're saying is right. Neighbors will expect me to list off my accomplishments. And maybe they think that's what they want to hear and that's how they're going to relate. But I wonder the difference that it would make in a conversation if we were meek, if we were quick to listen more, quick to ask questions, quick to make margin in our lives so that we could serve our neighbors, that we could meet needs. I think that's the way that our neighbors can see that contrast. And in a world that is shouting, "I'm the best. Look at me." That gets tiring. And so, to interact with someone who's engaging with you, who's serving you, who might have a different point of view but is asking you all the questions and listening well, I think that really would stand out.

Tim Muehlhoff:

One of things I love about this book is one of the publishers is Family Life. My wife and I have been speaking at Family Life marriage conferences, believe it or not, Chris, for 29 years.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

I thought you were only 29 years old.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Oh, thanks. You've recovered from the hair comment. And we've been on enough that we evaluate new speaker couples. And here's an interesting thing with new speaker couples, they will share struggles from early in their marriage, but only early in their marriage, not current struggles; so the implication being, "We got past it, we got past the struggles." And what we'd rather say to them is, "We do want you to exhibit some meekness in front of audiences," which is not everybody's cup of tea, "but we want to talk about current struggles." And couples really struggle to do that because that is not the American way. You talk about being a success story, not about, "We still struggle in our marriage about certain things like that."

And that's what I'm picking up from you, how you set this up with the very first Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." So instead of saying to your neighborhood, "We've got it all together," it would be, "Hey, we need some advice with teenagers. We need some advice in our own marriage." Is that kind of what you're suggesting with the "Blessed are the meek and the poor in spirit?"

Chris McKinney:

Yeah. I think sometimes when we come to these relationships, and maybe even with nonbelievers, we think we need to present this, "Hey, I've got it figured out. Because of Jesus, my life is on track and things are going super well." When behind closed doors, we're anxious, we're fearful, we're depressed, we feel isolated and lonely, and there's things going on. And I think what could happen if we showed up and realized our identity is in Christ, and that we are jars of clay, and we're going to let the light of Christ shine in us and through us through these cracks to our neighbors. So when I say, "Man, I am really struggling in parenting with all these four young kids. And you can probably hear me yelling from your front door. Man, I'm really having a hard time, but I'm trusting that God's with me and I've been praying a lot." What kind of conversation could that start? I think it could be really powerful, and we've experienced that in our neighborhood as well.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So Chris, we'll wrap up this section right now and then come back and do another. But David, I'm going to close this out with this point and then close it out. So Chris, you just sit back for a second. Okay?

Chris McKinney:

Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Mike, what's so interesting about the New Testament is that it was heavily criticized because it showed the vulnerabilities of Jesus. So again, the argument was the Messiah has come.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Right.

Tim Muehlhoff:

And you get the Gethsemane passage, where He is literally weeping and falling down and saying to His disciples, "I need you to pray for me because I do not know if I can bear the Father's cup," which we know is the Father's wrath in the Old Testament. So many people would say, "This can't be legitimate. What kind of Messiah are you presenting?"

Dr. Mike Ahn:

That's right.

Tim Muehlhoff:

But God had totally different plans for that. It was this poor in spirit. Jesus wasn't hiding His physical needs, emotional needs from the disciples. And we see that as great authenticity. So I love what Chris is saying. With our neighborhoods, rather than thinking, "I'm going to be a witness to them by having it all together, all the time, put on a really good front." Man, the Beatitudes are saying, "No, maybe go the opposite direction."

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Right. And I think that's what Paul is saying, too. When Paul is writing the letters to the various churches, he's saying, "It's really about the weakness. That's where you find the real power in God." So again, I think something that Chris is talking about is so real. And there's something right about living out our faith with our neighbors as well.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Well, here's the good news. We only covered one Beatitude.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

Just a bit.

Tim Muehlhoff:

Just a bit, but he said it was the framing Beatitude. So we're going to have Chris back on.

Chris McKinney:

Dude, yeah, this has been great.

Tim Muehlhoff:

So check back when you pop in on the Winsome Conviction Podcast. Go to Winsomeconviction.com. You can check out our previous podcasts, also articles we put, resources that we have for you, as well as a quarterly newsletter that you can go and sign up. One thing I'll also say is we've started a brand new website linked to the Winsome Conviction Project, and that is endthestalemate.com. Go check it out. It's a way to practice perspective-taking, putting other people's perspectives above your own. So thank you so much for joining us, and we'll have Chris back on sometime in the future.

Dr. Mike Ahn:

See you soon.