“Move Into The Neighborhood”
“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.”
John 1:14 The Message
I’m new to Love INC — new to the community of folks that support this ministry through donations and prayers and time and work — and the moving-in process has been exciting and a little overwhelming at times. Yet I have felt warmly and generously welcomed by many of you. Thank you. Although I have lived in Hudsonville for more than 20 years, my new drive to work has introduced me to a new neighborhood that I haven’t been connected with before. I am noticing new businesses,
seeing some people walking their dogs or shoveling snow that I have never connected with before. The physical neighborhood of the Love INC campus is my new neighborhood, too.
I come to Love INC after spending five years as a psychotherapist that works primarily with people who have experienced trauma, including children adopted from orphanages and foster care. Before that, I worked for 15 years at EverGreen Ministries as the Director of Outreach and Arts. I have spent time in countries that struggle with feeding their people, and worked with organizations bringing aid and development to them. All of those experiences connected me with people in hard circumstances, and reminded me of the important work that Christians are called to do: to offer love and transformation to the people that God loves so profoundly.
I love the way that Eugene Peterson describes the incarnation of Christ: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” A flesh-and-blood God who focused his love on his neighborhood. As we move into 2020, we want to follow Jesus’ example, and focus our eyes on our neighborhood. I am excited to “Move into the Neighborhood”, which is our theme for 2020. I am eager to understand its strengths and needs, to meet the people and find out what they are passionate about. As an organization, we will be working with churches to do what we can to support their connection to their neighbors, and doing the incarnational work of being part of a neighborhood.
So we invite you to join us and “Move into the neighborhood” — following Jesus’ movement and command to love our neighbors as ourselves. These are the neighbors God gave us, and we receive them as a gift.
-Jodi Cole Meyer, Executive Director