FAQs

A Neighborly House is the mechanism through which Neighborly initiatives are practiced locally. Think “local chapter” if that’s helpful. Covenant Members of Neighborly Houses lead the Neighborly initiatives which allows for multiplication.

Candidates who wish to establish a Neighborly House in their community/neighborhood first become Covenant Members. See that process here.

• Each House has access to our 501(c)(3) to receive donations on behalf of the organization.

• Each House receives an initial monthly stipend (lasting 6 months) to help carry out its rhythms of Redistribution, Hospitality, and Communion. After six months the expectation is that the members of the House are sustaining the work of the House.

• The Ecumenical Pastoral Council provides theological guidance and discernment to the Covenant Members of each House.

• Each house gets paired with a Church/community in a developing nation with whom they partner to provide clean water, access to education, and medical resources.

• Neighborly pairs each House with a local family of refugees.

When John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he was the long-anticipated Christ, Jesus didn’t answer by saying who he was but rather what he was doing. The point was that his actions, if aligned with scripture, should identify and authenticate who he was; thus making himself submissive to the scriptures. For instance, if John’s disciples had an unbiblical idea of who the “Christ” was supposed to be, answering them with a simple “yes” would only serve to reinforce their own ideas of what the Messiah was supposed to emobdy. Instead, Jesus quotes scripture to describe his ministry, leaving them with a different question, “Is this man in alignment with God’s Word?” So, instead of asking, “Are we a church?” perhaps a better question is, “Are the actions that Jesus used to identify and authenticate himself as the Christ, the same actions that we can use to identify ourselves as his Church?” If we begin with an unbiblcal idea of church, answering “yes” will only serve to reinforce and import an unbiblical concept. Anyone can call themselves a “church” while rejecting God’s design for it. It seems more biblical to assume that we should do as God commands and let you call this whatever you wish, than to do whatever we wish and call it a Church. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Thanks, Shakespeare.

Ok, ok. So who who are we? We’d rather tell you what we are doing. After all, you are supposed to identify us by our fruit, not our name (Matthew 7:20). All week long we live like a family (Luke 8:21, Luke 14:26), amplify every voice in the pursuit of interdependence (Eph 4:11-16), submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph 5:21), carry one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2), imitate Jesus (1 John 2:6), devote ourselves to Scripture (Acts 2:42), meet one another’s needs (Acts 2:45), fast and pray (Mark 9:29), work to tangibly establish God’s kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven (Matthew 6:10), make disciples, simplify to multiply, and choose the hard and narrow path over the road often traveled.

We know that answering the question this way can be frustrating. Especially for those of us who grew up being taught that “Church” is a place one can attend. But like Jesus, we want to submit to, not subvert the scriptures. So, instead of giving a simple answer, we’d prefer you read the Bible and “test every spirit.” For example, you might discover that Jesus never used the word “Church.” Nor did any other biblical writer for that matter. The Greek word that an Aramaic-speaking Jesus thought was worth taking a linguistic detour to use, was “ekklesia” which was a common word used by the Greeks to describe a participatory ruling body of average people on a mission to extend a Kingdom’s rule and reign into new territory. In 1525 the Tyndale Bible translated “ekklesia” to “congregation.” In doing so, we traded the participatory nature and the mission to extend his reign into the world for… a general grouping of people. In 1611 the King James Bible then traded the word “congregation” for “Church.” Church actually does mean “the Lord’s house” or place to worship.) Again, it just isn’t a word Jesus used. So through the KJV, “group” became “building.” While there is more worth exploring here, this is the simplest way to describe how a participatory ruling body of average people on a mission to extend God’s Kingdom rule and reign into the earth turned into… “a building.” So whether or not we use the word “Church” to describe ourselves is up to each of us, so long as collectively we mean that we are an interdependent motley crew of average folks who participate with God in his mission to extend his Kingdom’s goodness, beauty, and reign throughout the earth.

In short, like Jesus to John’s disciples, we would like to reframe the question and turn it back to you; “Are we in alignment with God’s Word?”

• Fasting and praying for one another weekly

• Giving financially towards the activities and people in the House.

• Individually reading each week’s Scripture.

• Weekly participation in the Sunday gathering.

• Sharing money and possessions.

• Engaging in each initiative (Breakfast Brigade, Refugee Resettlement, supporting those in the Christ Room as needed, Jubilee Marketplace) at least once time each month.

The most formative of all the places we’ve visited is the Catholic Worker House. Experiencing life with them fired up the kiln from which we’ve emerged after thirteen years of discernment. We’ve also learned from the Simple Way in Philadelphia, Northstreet Neighborhood in North Carolina, and Jesus People in Chicago. From afar, we’ve observed Bruderhof Communities, Church of the Sojourners, We Are Church, Innerchange, and Order of the Common Life.

Nope. Neighborly House Members just lead the charge. We partner with lots of different individuals, churches, and schools in the community.

Jesus of Nazareth is the founder, foundation, head architect, and builder (Matt 16:18, Psalm 127:1, 1 Corinthians 3:11). This might seem idealistic and even a little silly to say, but there really is no founder other than Christ because there is no foundation other than Christ. The apostle Peter acknowledged that Jesus is the Christ and it was upon this rock foundation and authority that Jesus promised to build his Church. With this in mind, it becomes impossible to “plant” a church because we know that “no one can lay any foundation other than that which has been laid by Christ.” All we can do is provide a space within which the Church can thrive as she tethers herself to Christ. So are we Christian Anarchists with no leadership? No. An anarchist critique of leadership prevents servant-leadership from emerging. Human governance is at the heart of God’s creation mandate. In fact, when Jesus told Peter that he was establishing a Church, the word he used was actually “ekklesia”; an assembly of citizens in a Greek city-state summoned to co-rule with elected officials to make decisions about the affairs of their city. Our leadership structure aims to support the original vision of the ekkelsia that Jesus had in mind, which by definition democratizes power, it doesn’t diminish it. The apostle Paul likened this ruling body to a physical body with many interdependent members (Ephesians 4:11-16, 1 Cor 12), each with their own purpose. The arm leads by serving the rest of the body with the ability to reach, the foot leads by serving the whole body with mobility, etc. Our collective spiritual maturity is at stake when any one member’s role lay dormant. In this way, everyone is a leader in some capacity and a follower in others. Our leadership structure is found on the Governance page.

See Governance

Additionally, it’s not lost on us that renewal movements that tend to go against the grain are especially susceptible to the pride of heroism and spiritual superiority. It seems biblical for renewal movements like ours to tether to the wider Church as it serves as a reminder that we are part of the body we seek to reform, it affords us an ecumenism that resists denominationalism, and because, statistically speaking, intentional communities which have established strong and accountable relationships with the wider church tend to thrive more than those who don’t.

We find that our ability to follow the New Testament commands for the Church becomes difficult when groups grow beyond 15-20 people. So once we reach this number, it’s time to multiply and establish another Neighborly House. We want a small enough environment so that all people can be deeply, truly, and persistently noticed and seen. In this way, the purpose informs the design, not the other way around. | Genesis 1:29, 9:1, 26:4, Matthew 28:19

Yes! Find a House and just hop in. Contact the Host if you have any questions.

No. While most intentional communities live together under one roof, ours is a dispersed community and serves as a bridge for those who are not quite ready to move in together but also want something deeper from spiritual community. Members of each Neighborly House have their own living spaces but all live close to their Neighborly House and each other.

We certainly hope so! We are a diverse community whose members come from all walks of life and streams of the Church. This means that while most of us hold to a traditional sexual ethic, not all of us do. A Neighborly House itself doesn’t hold a belief on this topic because houses don’t believe anything. People, however, do and people are diverse—just like the body of Christ. So are we friendly? Yes. Do we all think the same thing? No. We choose unity over uniformity on this topic and spend the majority of our time improving our posture, rather than our position.

We hope they worship with us! We prefer to have them around with all the disruptions that come with it! However, during our time of study, kids have the option to go to their own study led by a background-checked parent. We expect that they will likely go in and out of the gathering as they and their parents decide.