Justin Hancock: The Julian Way

Welcome back to The Neighbor Next Door, friends! For today's episode, hosts Adam and Matt sit down on the virtual front porch with one of our dear friends, and co-founder of The Julian Way, Justin Hancock.

Among so much more, Justin is an extremely compassionate person, a passionate leader, a deep thinker, and a gifted speaker and writer. We are so incredibly honored that he was willing to do an episode with us! Justin and his wife, Lisa, founded The Julian Way, a ministry of community, advocacy, and empowerment for those with diverse embodiments. It's an incredible ministry with the goal of developing an empowered community of discipleship in which disability is not viewed as a hindrance or something to be overcome. We brought Justin on today because we think the work of The Julian Way has a powerful connection to asset-based community development, and we're just so excited to share this episode with you all!

As has been the case with some of our other episodes, this episode mentions spiritual and religious topics. Because The Julian Way is centered around concepts of intentional Christian community, Christian spirituality is referenced in this conversation. As always, we want to reiterate that we do not present these episodes to promote any one spirituality or religion, Christianity included, but instead because we think they are helpful and encouraging for all neighbors, regardless of their relationships to spirituality or religion.

In the episode, Justin begins by introducing The Julian Way before then sharing some of his own story. We then move into exploring the connection with asset-based community development and talking more about what Lisa and Justin's work looks like today. It's so fantastic!

You will definitely want to learn more about The Julian Way, and you can do so by visiting this website: http://thejulianway.org. As Justin mentions in the episode, this website is still in progress, so you will also want to check back in soon in order to learn even more!

As is mentioned in the episode, Justin also wrote a book that you should all read! It's called The Julian Way: A Theology of Fullness for All of God’s People, and you can buy it on Amazon by clicking here!

Riccardo Harris (Part 2): It's About the People

This episode presents the second part of hosts Adam and Matt's conversation with the most recent addition to the Neighboring Movement team: Riccardo Harris.

In last week's episode, Riccardo detailed what his childhood neighboring was like, as he painted a picture of the neighborhood where he grew up. If you have not yet listened to that episode, titled "Riccardo Harris (Part 1): A Murmuration of Starlings", we would highly suggest doing so. During this week's episode, Riccardo tells about the many incredible things that he does, why he was drawn to the Neighboring Movement, and about his church in the SoCe neighborhood. 

As has been the case with some of our other episodes, this episode contains discussion of spiritual and religious topics. Because Riccardo is a Christian and his church in SoCe is a Christian church, Christian spirituality is referenced frequently throughout this conversation. As always, we want to reiterate that we do not present these episodes to promote any one spirituality or religion, Christianity included, but instead because we think they are helpful and encouraging for all neighbors, regardless of their relationships to spirituality or religion. We hope you enjoy the episode!

If you would like to learn more about Riccardo and about a few of the many incredible things that he does, please visit the following sites:

His website: https://www.riccardoharris.com/

His church: https://www.resurrectioncc.net/

His program: https://www.wichita.edu/administration/diversity/communityengagement/wichitagearup/index.php

His book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0615692273/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Guest Episode!

This week, we present a guest episode from one of our favorite podcasts, Reports From The Spiritual Frontier, as host Benjamin Yosua-Davis interviews Gregory Ellison II, whom we will let introduce himself.

Again, we want to allow Greg to introduce himself, but believe us when we say that he is doing amazing work and that you won't want to miss his interview! Because this is a guest episode, it is a bit longer than the ones we normally produce, but again, we think you are going to enjoy every bit of it. Like a few of our episodes, this one also contains discussion of spiritual and religious topics. As always, we want to reiterate that we do not present this episode to promote any one spirituality or religion but instead because we think it is helpful and encouraging for all neighbors, regardless of their relationships to spirituality or religion.

We hope you enjoy, and for more episodes and information, please check out the Reports From The Spiritual Frontier website!

We are pumped to present Episode 14!

This week, we present the second part of our interview with Rev. Mike Mather, the person who inspired us to utilize an asset-based approach in our work. We split the incredible conversation into two episodes and encourage listening to the first episode before this second one.

In the last episode, Mike outlined both his shift and his church's shift from scarcity to abundance. In this episode, Mike first presents practices that can help us stay focused on abundance before detailing how individuals, organizations, and institutions must structure themselves differently in order to be built around abundance. Next, Mike describes how he sees this movement of abundance-focused work taking shape around the country. To finish, Mike re-frames the idea of Christian discipleship and details what discipleship looks like for both him and his church.

Like Mike's first episode, this second one also contains discussion of religious topics. We want to reiterate that we do not present these episodes to promote any one religion or being religious but instead because we think they are helpful and encouraging for all neighbors, religious and non-religious alike.

We also want to take a moment to promote Mike's book, Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places. It is an amazing read, and we recommend it to everyone! You can find more information about the book here.

The Role of Faith in SoCe Life

From Matt...

As I’ve been writing these blogs and reflecting on our work in the neighborhood, I feel it is very important to clarify how our beliefs fit into our work and also how our faith impacts our friendships with others.

For me, my Christian spirituality is central to almost everything I do. Over the years it has helped me to forgive others and myself for mistakes, it has helped me accept myself with all my foibles, it has helped me grow in caring for others, and it has given me a sense of purpose. Most importantly, it has helped me to experience God’s love for me, and to realize that this gift of love is for everyone.

My Christian spirituality helps me see my neighbors and my neighborhood as beautiful and valuable people--even if the world sometimes tells us otherwise.

And here is the important catch. Our neighbors don’t have to have the same beliefs. My work with SoCe Life, and our process of doing interviews are not secretly aimed at tricking people into being Christians. Our work is not a decoy to draw people in. Because of this, we don’t have a hidden agenda of converting people to embrace our beliefs. Now, if our experiences and our beliefs are appealing and helpful to people that we get to know, we are definitely happy to talk about that, but if they aren’t interested, that is alright too. We’re just thankful to be their neighbors.