Loving Neighbors As Yourself
My name is Shelbi Kovacich, and my husband Daniel and I have been at City Bridge for over five years. We have two little boys: Kyle, who is 5, and Jake, who is almost three, and they are so awesome!
Since starting our family, we have experienced various work schedule types—full-time, part-time, home, away, continuing education, and now I am a stay-at-home mom. So last year, I was finishing up physical therapy clinicals. While there, I could share the gospel with many of the patients I was working with.
Coming from this to staying at home, it became abundantly clear that there were not as many opportunities to have these conversations. Instead, we were either at home (around no one) or in public, where my primary goal was to contain the toddlers! Of course, I can still be a role model for Christ in these moments, and discipling my kids is a huge calling as well, but to me, it still felt like such a drastic shift in the role I was playing for God's kingdom.
I started praying for God to show me more opportunities to love his people and share the gospel. Around that time, I went to church, and Amanda Buccola spoke at the beginning of service about the new neighboring ministry launching and her incredible journey with her neighbors. It was such an eye-opener for me. To be honest, I don't think I gave much thought to pursuing my neighbors (even though Matthew 22:39 tells us to "love your neighbor as yourself")
So, I was pumped to join this ministry! I went to the first meeting, and I was fired up with ideas on how to share the gospel with all my neighbors. My thoughts were very evangelism based! I was stopped pretty quickly in my tracks, though. Our goal is supposed to be to love our neighbors as Christ has loved us. That means with no ulterior motives, even sharing the gospel. Yes, we do want to share our love for Jesus with anyone we form relationships with, but this should not affect the way we love them. We should love them even when their belief systems are not the same, and maybe they never will be.
I started reworking how I viewed neighboring.
One of the most significant barriers I immediately recognized was that our family was too busy. I feel like busyness is even built into daily Christian small talk. You know, one of the first things we always say is, "Hey, how have you been?" "Busy! You?" "Same!" We want to be productive for God's kingdom but sometimes lose sight of what matters most. Like the story of Mary and Martha. It stuck out to me that Martha was serving Jesus, which is awesome—but it was not the best thing she could have been doing. Mary got it right by simply spending her time at Jesus' feet listening to Him.
In my own life, here's where it got tricky. I had just begun filling my schedule with many good things. I ended up having to quit a couple of different Bible studies and started saying no to more people and events. I had a lot of great and God-honoring options- but my calendar was not God-honoring. And really, neither was my heart. 1 Corinthians 10:23 says,
“Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial.”
Busyness, for me, had become a way to reclaim my worth and make myself feel productive. So I slowly had to work through lessening the number of things I was willing to put on our plate and sort through this with my husband as well.
This looked like, first and foremost, getting my heart right. JP did a sermon on busyness earlier this year. His main points were that busyness is the enemy of encouragement, focus, and empathy. All 3 of those things are crucial to building relationships. He says, "People become distractions to your list of things to do when you are busy." That's super unloving. But how do we make the shift?
The book The Art of Neighboring says, "Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don't have." So I had to say no to some things so I could say yes to intentionality with my neighbors. We joked during the launch meetings about how many of us needed to go out in the front yard more and linger there, hunting down our neighbors a little bit. It was all in good fun, but it helped shift the focus to becoming more proactive.
Another big thing God has been teaching me is that I don't need to be the Hero—God is. I don't need to be the one to throw extravagant events. (Maybe one day). Our neighborhood has many events and opportunities for us to show up! And we have. I'm excited to share how many names I learned between last September and now. How many basic but much-needed conversations I have had. We have had some casual hangouts in our home and front yard as well. There are so many great ways to reach out to the people around us, even if it's just in passing!
This may be how some of you have already lived and operated. That's awesome! This has been a radical change of life for others like me and will continue to be. I realize how intentional I have to be every single week to ward off the busyness. And it takes effort. Ephesians 2:10 says,
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
No matter what season we are in, we must intentionally prioritize our walk with the Lord and the relationships he has entrusted us with. I'm so encouraged by how God will use each of us to love people in our communities well. It's such a true embodiment of the name CityBridge! Thanks, guys!
