So much of life comes down to our habits – those things we do overtime that become so engrained we do them without thinking.  

When I first moved to Arlington, I needed navigation to go everywhere: church, my kids’ school, a friend’s house; you get the picture. A few years into life here though, I can drive around town without much thought. I can get home from work by habit. I did it enough that it became smooth, and I could give my brainpower to other things. 

Living well as a neighborhood chaplain is like that too. At first, you’re going to have to do new things that take thought and attention, but over time, with enough habitual practice, those things will become somewhat automatic, or at least easier to do. 

You can organize your practice of neighborhood chaplaincy around five basic habits: 

• Begin with prayer 

• Listen 

• Eat 

• Serve 

• Share  

Over the next few weeks, we’ll unpack these habits, but we begin with prayer. 

In his book The Familiar Stranger pastor and author Tyler Staton writes about his desire to see the Holy Spirit at work in his own life and in the life of his community. He writes: 

I kept asking, seeking, hoping for the life of the Spirit rumored on the pages of Scripture, but to this point at least, that life was nothing more than an ancient rumor … I’d read stories that made me want to believe that every syllable of the Bible was livable. Then I’d pace around the city asking to experience that very presence and power, to become a vessel overflowing with God’s living and active Spirit, to find myself among a community to whom such expressions grew from ancient rumor to everyday expectation. 

Chances are if you’ve subscribed to this newsletter and you’ve kept reading to this point, you too desire to see God work in amazing ways in your community, and you want God to use you to do it. Maybe you also have read that the disciples were “clothed with power from on high,” and you want to live into the power with which God has clothed you. 

Billy Graham once said: 

Everywhere I go, I find that God’s people lack something. They are hungry for something. Their Christian experience is not all that they had expected, and they often have recurring defeat in their lives. Christians today are hungry for spiritual fulfillment. The desperate need of the nation today is that men and women who profess Jesus be filled with the Holy Spirit. 

You’ll be a nice neighbor if you try to be a neighborhood chaplain on your own power, but if you want to see the miraculous kinds of things we read about in books like Acts, you’re going to have to put on the power that God so freely wants to give you. 

Begin with prayer. 

Pray for yourself. Pray that you will be available to the Holy Spirit’s leading. Pray that you will be an aware and responsive “temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God (1 Cor. 6:19).” Pray that the Holy Spirit will speak to you and pray that you will hear the Spirit clearly. 

Pray for your neighbors. You may not know all their names, and you may not know what to pray for, and that’s ok. God knows them and loves them, and the Holy Spirit goes before us in all our missional endeavors. Consider walking around your neighborhood and praying while you walk. Consider downloading the BLESS Every Home app, which will provide you with the names of your adult neighbors, and will prompt you to pray for five neighbors every day. 

Whatever you do in your neighborhood, begin with prayer, and keep praying. Prayer is the foundation by which we engage in the work that God is already doing. 

Begin with prayer and keep praying, and consider this thought from Tyler Staton, “God has never cared much for the qualified, but he’s shaped history through the available. This isn’t about being qualified. It’s not about being skilled, practiced, or trained. Are you available?”