Missing the obvious

Guest speaker Pastor Dave Ferguson opens by telling Elan Church that what they are part of is something very special. Picking up where Pastor Max left off on advancing the Jesus mission, he suggests that many of us have missed the obvious. He tells of admiring a print on a friend's dining room wall, only for his wife Sue to point out that they had given it as a gift and had the very same one hanging in their own house.

Love your neighbor, but how?

When an orange moving truck pulled in next door, Pastor Dave remembered that Scripture says love your neighbor eight times and calls it the royal law. He asks everyone to write down the name of one new person where they live, work, or play. His own story includes two failed approaches: aggressive street evangelism as a young adult, which asked questions people were not asking, and then simply living a good life without words, which made him a well-liked neighbor but led no one to Jesus.

God's blessing strategy

In Genesis 12 God tells Abraham that He will bless him so that all peoples on earth will be blessed through him. Pastor Dave admits he once treated "blessed to be a blessing" like a bumper sticker rather than a strategy for changing the world. Then he found a doctoral study comparing two missionary teams in Thailand, the converters and the blessers. After two years, the blessers had created real social good in their communities, and they had fifty times as many conversions: a hundred people compared with two. Barna research added that 79 percent of people would talk about spiritual matters with a friend, and that they want someone who listens without judgment, lets them reach their own conclusions, and shares their own perspective with confidence. Our neighbors are people, not projects.

B.L.E.S.S.

Studying the Gospels with his brother Jon, Pastor Dave identified five missional practices Jesus used again and again and arranged them into one word. Begin with prayer: Jesus started His ministry on a mountainside praying, and God was at work in your neighborhood long before you arrived. Pick four neighbors and pray for them every morning, perhaps on a prayer walk. Listen: Jesus asked the blind man in Luke 18 what he wanted rather than assuming, and Christians today are known more for talking than listening. Eat: Jesus invited Himself to lunch at Zacchaeus' house in Luke 19 and salvation came to that home. "Nothing moves an acquaintance to friendship faster than a meal." Serve: once you are friends, people tell you how to love them, and Jesus came to serve rather than be served. Share your story: it is not deprioritized, it just is not what you lead with, and after paying the relational rent your story carries far more weight.

Michael's story

Pastor Dave's friend Michael grew up in an abusive home, left at fifteen, became a Division I runner, married, and built a successful company, yet told Dave he was mad at God and that church was nonsense. In grad school Michael had survived a car accident that killed his best friend Jay and for twenty years carried the burden of living two lives, one for himself and one for Jay. Their sons ran cross country together at Neuqua Valley, so Dave wrote Michael's name in his journal and prayed for him for three years, listened at meets and on travel weekends, and then shared regular breakfasts when Michael suggested it. At a breakfast two miles from Elan, on the twentieth anniversary of the accident, Michael spoke about it for the first time outside his marriage, and Dave told him there was a place to find forgiveness and that God can redeem our worst stories. Michael said yes to Jesus. Two months later Dave and Michael's son baptized him.

Love your neighbor, change the world

Pastor Dave closes by wanting the same for everyone at Elan: to love a neighbor so well that you might one day baptize a friend. Begin with prayer, listen, share meals, serve, and boldly share your story. That is how you love your neighbor, and if enough of us do it, it is how we change the world.