A SIMPLE SOLUTION 

Author Reggie McNeal again provides helpful advice for engaging in becoming a better neighbor:

Your best shot at making your best contribution to the world is to get better at what you are already good at. When you come to a greater awareness of your strengths and begin to develop them, you become more of the person you were designed by God to be.

God uses life-shaping experiences to establish passion within us that enable us to organize and prioritize the most important answers to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

My experience in coaching people toward a focused life, fueled by issue-based passions, has led me to believe there are four domains of passionate engagement.

These four domains of passionate engagement should not be viewed as rigid categories. But they can be helpful when seeking to find your own sweet spot for engagement and recognizing where you will need to be intentional about enlisting the help of others.

Service, focused on meeting a need.

Justice, focused on righting a wrong.

Discovery, focused on solving a problem.

Advocacy, focused on promoting a cause.

The bigger and more complex the issue, the more likely it will require passionate engagement from all four domains to make a lasting impact. Devaluing the contribution of others who share your passion but are operating in a different domain is to have zeal without wisdom (see Proverbs 19:2). It is as foolish as the head telling the feet, “I don’t need you” (1 Corinthians 12:21).

There is no hard and fast formula that suggests certain combinations of temperament, strengths, or gifts will automatically place a person in one domain or another. And yet people with the strength of empathy as well as the gift of mercy or serving often gravitate toward the serve domain with a bent toward meeting practical needs.

Those with “word gifts” such as teaching or the strength to woo others may gravitate toward advocacy. People with a bent toward analytical thinking may find themselves repeatedly asking themselves why, with a focus on solving a problem in the discovery domain. Still others will have strengths that point toward righting a wrong in the pursuit of justice.

Steve Moore, Who is My Neighbor?

A NEXT STEP

Maybe you can’t change the world, but you can change your part of the world – your street or neighborhood.

On a chart tablet, reproduce the “Four Domains of Passionate Engagement” as depicted below.

Now prayerfully consider how you are to engage each. Invite your family and friends to join you in pursuit of God’s better future.