Simon Carey Holt

There is no doubt the business of loving our neighbours lies at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus' affirmation of the commitments to love God and neighbour as the essence of spirituality underlines the fact: "Do these two things and you will live!" Jesus said.

The challenge in our Australian context-the most thoroughly suburban nation on earth-is to discern what this means for our neighbourhoods. The truth is, our commitment to loving the neighbour does not always transfer to the way we live with the people in our street. In our legitimate desire to be global in our faith perspective, we think of the neighbour more easily as the one in need elsewhere. In contrast, we may not even know the names of the folks next door.

Indeed, we live today in a global neighbourhood and our call is to love justly and inclusively. However, whatever the universal applications of this command, we can't ignore its most immediate implications. The command is local before it is global. By definition, the neighbour is the one close by, the one we come across in our daily rounds. Whatever universal implications it might have, the command to love our neighbours has to be worked out where we live.

That said, the Australian residential landscape can be a challenging context for such a calling. This is so for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the local neighbourhood is no longer a primary place of community for most Australians. In his article, Robert Banks begins by defining the neighbourhood as both a geographical location and a network of relationships within that location. In reality, while the neighbourhood may encompass a set of relational ties of some sort, for many Australians their primary and most daily relationships are elsewhere. Each of us is enmeshed in a network of relationships that transcends one particular location. In short, we no longer need the neighbourhood in the way we once did.

Secondly, it is a mark of Australian suburbia that we value privacy and independence over community and connection. In a recent study of a new housing estate on Melbourne's fringe, researchers found the most common assessment of a good neighbour is "one who leaves you alone." In his excellent book Australian Heartlands, Brisbane-based writer Brendan Gleeson argues that the planning values of the new master-planned communities on the suburban fringes of our large cities have taken this pursuit to a new level. As we retreat ever further into our private, sometimes gated, worlds, Gleeson warns that we are in danger of losing all sense of public and shared life.

Thirdly, our transient lifestyles significantly loosen our ties with local places, and our neighbourhood connections suffer. First, our levels of daily mobility have never been higher. The typical suburban household generates twelve auto trips every day, while the average urban Australian is traveling in excess of ten thousand kilometres each year within his or her city of residence. In reality, we spend more time exiting our neighbourhoods than we do living in them. Second, Australia is one of the two most nomadic societies on earth. Fourty-three per cent of Australian households are on the move every five years. The motivation to invest locally is diminished.

Of course, highlighting the challenges is easy. Finding answers is not. Banks gets us started. He titles his final section Tending the Residential Neighbourhood. 'Tending' is a good word. It reminds us that investment in our neighbourhoods as places of community and mission requires care and intention; it takes time and effort. Good neighbourhoods don't just happen. Genuine neighbourliness requires the choice to nurture and to invest for the long term. Here's some forms that choice might take:

Choosing the local: In today's overwhelmingly suburban environments, there is no getting around the need for some degree of travel to meet our daily needs. Regardless, choosing to live as much of life as possible in the local area can be a great form of neighbourhood investment. While nurturing relationships with local businesses will not always be the convenient or cheapest option, choosing to shop locally is a choice for community. Similarly, choosing a walk around the neighbourhood each night over a treadmill at the gym in the next suburb; choosing a smaller, local church over a larger one further away; choosing a local, slightly daggy cafe over the trendy one at the mall-every simple choice to live locally is a commitment to the neighbourhood as a place of mission and community.

Choosing stability: While there are numerous and often good reasons for relocating from one neighbourhood to another, perhaps it's time to revalue residential stability as a factor in our mobility choices. As one of the most universally significant markers of neighbourhood health and cohesion, the choice for stability is undoubtedly a choice for good neighbourhoods. This is especially so when it's made with the intention to invest in local relationships. Similarly, even in the midst of unavoidable relocations, no matter how routine, we can choose to inhabit each neighbourhood as though its the most important place we'll ever be called to.

Choosing community: While the predominantly suburban neighbourhoods of Australia are characterized by the desire for privacy and refuge, we Christians are called to live counter-culturally. While others may draw the blinds and guard the boundaries, we can choose to open the doors, nurture connections and act as a catalyst for genuine experiences of interdependence. Initiating street parties or neighbourhood barbecues, keeping an eye on the older neighbours or those in need, sharing lawn mowers, childcare and the bounty from the backyard veggie patch; while on the surface these ideas might seem inconsequential, there is no doubt they can serve as the most wonderful embodiment of our faith in action.

As Banks reminds us, the command to love the neighbour as ourselves is an unavoidable one for followers of Jesus, but one that does not blend easily in our current residential climate. Choosing to invest in the neighbourhood is choosing to love the neighbour, and in one of the most hands-on and immediate ways available to us. In ordinary neighbourhoods across Australia, it's an increasingly important choice to make.

Simon Carey Holt is Lecturer in Spirituality at Whitley College, the Baptist College of Victoria, and author of God Next Door: Spirituality and Mission in the Neighbourhood (Acorn Press, 2007). He lives with his family in an inner city neighbourhood of Melbourne for which he has great affection and blogs regularly at http://simoncareyholt.typepad.com <http://ea.org.au/Redirect.aspx?id=5e50c0fe-2a36-4e17-925f-6a8f953dd80c& redir=http://simoncareyholt.typepad.com/>