On Pastoring the Community

Every community is in need of pastoring. Some communities are in more need than others are. Our community has a problem with drugs and violence. One of the ways we decided to pastor our community was to make sure that the services offered by the city were being provided to our community. One service many may take for granted is to have streetlights on at night. In our community we noticed that the lights were often not working and that repairs were taking a long time to get accomplished.

Our neighborhood is comprised of about 70 square blocks. It is a somewhat dangerous place to roam about at night. We thought that might have led to the lack of repair on the streetlights. We found out which city department was responsible for reporting the outages and we decided to assist them. We went out one Friday night with note pad and pen and we drove down every street in our neighborhood. We only had one instance where a car tried to block us in but I managed to get past them before they could get out. I am sure they just needed directions or something. By the end of the night we had documented 42 street lights out in our neighborhood.

I am happy to report that after one week it appears that 40 of these have been repaired. Our area is brighter at night and that will help to deter crime. We are making this a regular activity of ours. Last week, as we checked on the repairs to the reported lights, we found several more that had gone out. In our simple daily walk to live our faith and pastor our community we have found that the most basic of services can be held back if we do nothing. There are many other services the city offers that we see lacking in our community. Instead of looking for someone to blame and complaining about the lack, we have decided to assist them in their job.

Our next step will be to make sure we praise the civil servants that helped us correct these issues and to teach the community members how to access these services. As we do this publicly we will care for the residents, show our love for the community and promote unity between the city and its residents. All the while we get the privilege of shepherding the community Christ has given us charge over.