Exegetical Prayer Walk

Exploring Your Neighborhood

The word exegesis literally means a critical interpretation and is commonly applied to the study of literature. As readers of the Bible, we exegete the text with a view to discerning its truth for our lives. In this exercise, you’re invited to undertake an exegesis—a critical interpretation — of your neighborhood. Through careful, sensitive, and critical observation, your task is to discern the truth of God’s presence where you live. Quite simply, it’s about reading your neighborhood as one of the primary texts of daily life—one through which God speaks.

STEP ONE
Sketch

Before you head out for your walk: 

Think about how you define your neighborhood and how it’s physically laid out. 

Draw a map, including your own home, the basic street patterns, and any landmarks, shops, commercial or community buildings, schools or parks. 

If it’s your workplace, get creative with what the “street patterns, landmarks, or restaurants” would be. 

STEP TWO
Walk

Go for a walk in your “neighborhood”—where you live, work, or play.

STEP THREE
Observe

Be sure to include time along the way to stop, buy a drink somewhere, sit in a park or at a bus stop, outside public buildings, or places of interest. There’s no hurry.

Observe the Physical:

1. As you stand just outside your house/apartment/cubicle—by the front gate or on the footpath—what do you see as you look in each direction? What do you hear or sense? What activity do you notice? 

2. As you walk the neighborhood, what do you notice about the architecture of the place? 

3. What do you notice about the front gardens or entryways to each house or apartment? Does your neighborhood feel like a cared-for place? 

4. Does the neighborhood have a feeling of permanence or change? 

5. What “public spaces” are provided? Are they used? If so, in what ways? Where are people gathering and experiencing community? Where do people spend their time and money? 

6. If there is a local park, what do you notice about it? Does it feel like an inviting place? Who is there?
   How is it used?

7. What kind of diversity do you see? Is it celebrated? 

8. What are the rhythms of your neighborhood? How do people organize their time? How do they party? 

9. What cultural experiences do they value? What is their spirituality?

Observe the Spiritual:

1. What sense of connection do you feel to your neighborhood as you walk through? 

2. In what ways do you sense God’s presence where you live?

3. Where are people finding meaning and a sense of identity?

4. Where are people expressing a longing for the divine? 

5. How does the gospel address these issues? What is “good news” for these people?

6. Where is God already at work in the community? And how can we join with God?

STEP FOUR
Reflect 

After you complete your walk, journal your thoughts and observations.

Ask this overarching question:

When I look at my “neighborhood,” where do I not see the kingdom? Is there loneliness, hunger, fear, or pain of some kind? 

Ask Jesus to help you answer these questions:

How can I help change that? 

How might I demonstrate the good news? 

• It might be taking a meal once a week to an elderly neighbor and sitting for a chat. 

• It might be organizing a few people to clean up the neighborhood park.

• It might be setting up a lunch party for the office to create some community. 

(An exercise from Simon Carey Holt, God Next Door: Spirituality and Mission in the Neighbourhood. Brunswick: Acorn Press, 2007, 103-104.)