neighbor on Community Development

If you never left your home and avoided all interaction with other people, you couldn’t be characterized as a loving person. Instead, you might even be unloving because of your lack of concern for oth...

We cannot be closed off to one another and be open to God. That’s not how this works. Do you remember the commercial when the woman says “that’s not how this works, that's not how any of this work...

There is a paradigm shift going on in the realm of forestry. For years there had been a consensus among ecologists that all trees were independent operators, each tree an island unto itself, the fores...

In 2017 Rebekah Morris was teaching English and journalism at Cross Keys High School, a public high school in Atlanta. Noticing that her students had really important, insightful things to say about t...

The Leader and People pray responsively In peace, we pray to you, Lord God. Silence For all people in their daily life and work; For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are...

Father-God, our burden bearer; Jesus, God the Son and lover of our souls; Spirit of God–giver of life and power: Thank You! Thank You for those we love and those who love us. Thank You for mothers and...

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.

He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

Deacon or other leader In peace, let us pray to the Lord, saying, "Lord, have mercy" ( or "Kyrie eleison"). For the holy Church of God, that it may be filled with truth and lov...

The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we too often center our lives around ourselves and our immediate needs, and that this blinds us from being aware of the needs of our neighbors. Help us to know our tru...

Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.

What if the solution to our society’s biggest issues has been right under our noses for the past two thousand years? When Jesus was asked to reduce everything in the Bible into one command he said: Lo...

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Loving and faithful God, You save and sustain us. What marvelous good news You give us through Jesus!Yet we are oblivious to opportunities to share Your grace and love. We fail to see, as Your Word sa...

Generous Lord Jesus We confess that we do not receive others with compassion. We object to being interrupted And respond with anger or frustration. We confess that we do not share generously Not trus...

Tracy Autler’s life changed in a very unexpected way on Thanksgiving Day, 1993. Tracy was a single mother, living in an apartment in a rough neighborhood, she was doing her best to raise a three-year ...

Father God, you see us; you have compassion; and you care for your greatest creation – people. You have also called us to notice, to listen, and to love others. Yet in our selfishness, we have ignored...

O God who will not let us go, we confess that we have been so wrapped up in ourselves that have not loved You with our whole hearts, and we have not loved our neighbors as we love ourselves. By Your g...

Gracious God–Giver of all good gifts: We praise You. You give us the wonder of creation and You give us life. We praise You, Father. You give us forgiveness of our sins with salvation and eternal life...

Heavenly Father, We confess that we are not always able to see your handiwork in the people and things around us. We do not always see your image in our neighbors, and we do not always see your creat...

Jesus–our Lord, Savior, Friend and Companion: To be “in” You is to no longer be strangers to Your Father, or to one another. In You–we are brought near. In You–we are redeemed and forgiven. In You–we ...

Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

When I get on stage, my first goal is not to show my expertise, but on the contrary, to give a bit of happiness, of joy, of cheerfulness. I am firmly convinced that in order to sing well, you must lov...

Our God, we have been slow to stand and slow to act. We have been unmoved in the face of wrongs. Rather than welcoming others, we have put up walls. We have served this god of self-preservation. But y...

Help me, I pray, to be someone who tells the truth, even when that truth has to do with my mistakes, my sins. Help me see myself and my actions clearly. Give me the courage to admit when I’ve done wro...

O God, you judge your people with righteousness; we judge our neighbors either right or wrong. Your Servant defended the cause of the poor; it is because of our greed that many still want. You bring d...

O God, you make covenants with us and never break them. We find it much harder to keep our word. We offer promises we don’t intend to keep, and we make deals that we intend to break. All too often we ...