Mapping Your Neighborhood

Before we can begin BLESSing our neighbors or the people in our network of relationships, we have to know where our primary calling is and know the people who also exist in those places.

The Relational Map exercise will help us begin to do that. You will need to download the Relational Map or recreate the map in your own journal.

We’ve borrowed this concept from Dave Runyon and Jay Pathak who wrote
The Art of Neighboring. It’s a great resource that we would encourage you
to pick up. Runyon and Pathak demonstrate that less than 10% of people who claim to be Christian can actually tell you the first and last names of their eight closest neighbors. 

Less than 3% of Jesus’s followers can tell you the first and last names of their eight closest neighbors and then some other detail beyond what you could observe from their driveway. 

Less than 1% of Jesus’s followers can tell you the first and last names of
their eight closest neighbors and something you couldn’t observe from the driveway, or their greatest hopes or greatest fears. 

Those are some sobering numbers. What this is indicating is that we don’t know our neighbors. Jesus said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. How can we love our neighbors if we don’t know who they are, or even their names? 

 Again, if we’re going to BLESS our neighbors, we have to know who they
are first.

Here are few questions to guide you through this map. You may want to keep it somewhere handy so you can add names and information as you begin to invest intentionally in your neighborhood or network of relationships.

STEP ONE

Pick a primary place of sentness. Where do you have the strongest sense of “sentness” from the Spirit? Is it where you live, work, study, or play? Which one is Jesus highlighting and saying, “Here is where I want you to engage your time and your resources?”

STEP TWO

Fill in the names in the boxes, beginning with yours and continuing with those around you. Who are the people in that relational network? Although the map looks like a neighborhood, it could represent a workspace with cubicles, for example. If it’s not a geographically bound location, but a group of people who share a similar story, write the names of those people in the different boxes.

STEP THREE

Describe the people. In each little box, list keywords that describe that person. Think about how much you know or don’t know the people. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t name many things. You can take intentional steps now to consider exploratory questions to learn their story.

STEP FOUR

Describe the place if you can, or describe the spaces where you exist the most if it’s a network of relationships. In the margin around the big box, list keywords that describe your neighborhood or network of relationships.

STEP FIVE

Light bulbs. Where do you see openness and invitation? Put a light bulb by those names. If someone seems more interested spiritually, highlight that person. Double down on your prayers for these people.

STEP SIX

What would BLESS look like in relationship to them? What are some ideas that you have about how you might begin to serve these people or share meals with them? Record some ideas.