How it all started...
Mark 12:30-31
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. “The second is: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other command greater than these.”
Neighborhood Church held our first Sunday worship service on January 12, 2014 at Comfort Suites Hotel in Huntersville, North Carolina. We have since moved twice. In April of 2014, we moved to North Meck High School. Then on November 6, 2016, we began worshiping at Hopewell High School in Huntersville and continue to hold our Sunday morning worship services there.
Our church name is intentional. The scriptural foundation upon which we base our church is Mark 12:30-31 which is quoted above. Jesus spoke these words to a Jewish law scribe who had asked Him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" The answer is first to love God with every part of you. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. This is who we want to be. We want to love God will all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We want to love our neighbor as much as we would want to be loved. Really, we want to love you as much as Christ loves you.
And who is our neighbor? That is a great question. Read on for an answer. There was a lawyer that came to Jesus once asking Him, "What must I do to be saved?" Jesus replied with a question, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" Interestingly, the man answered similar to the Mark 12:30-31 scripture above. He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said, "You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live." But the lawyer wasn't satisfied. He asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" The Bible says he asked that question to justify himself. In other words, he wanted to be able to prove that he met the standard of loving your neighbor as yourself. But Jesus challenged him with a story. That story is commonly known as "The Good Samaritan" (Luke 10:30-37).
At the end of the story, Jesus asked the lawyer, who was a neighbor to the man who had fallen among robbers. The lawyer's reply was, "The one who showed mercy." Jesus turned the lawyer's question around completely. The right question to ask is not, "Who is my neighbor?" The right question is "To whom can I be a neighbor?" Ultimately, Christ calls us to be neighbors to all people.
At Neighborhood Church, we see the whole world as our neighborhood. We love God, and we love people. The question has been asked, "If your church were to shut down or move to another location, would it be missed by the community?" We hope neither scenario would ever happen, but if it does, our prayer is that through us, God would have loved everyone we encountered along the way and ultimately Christ would have made His home in them and they in Him. "Welcome Home!"
