Love Fort Wayne Podcast
The Love Fort Wayne podcast amplifies the stories of everyday people who are loving and leading in Northeast Indiana to spark imagination, root inspiration, and ignite transformation.
Love Fort Wayne Podcast
Loving Thy Neighbor: Eric Wood's Journey of Faith, Ministry, and Community Impact
When Eric Wood walked through our studio doors, we knew his story was one that needed to be told. At just 14, a meaningful encounter set his heart on a trajectory toward pastoral service, and he hasn't looked back since. Throughout this episode, Eric, executive director of NeighborLink, lays bare his journey of faith, ministry, and community impact that is sure to ignite your own passion for service. He shares the transformative power of grace that has shaped not only his life but the entire Fort Wayne community. It's a tale of worship, of miracles, and of a shared commitment to service that transcends the ordinary.
Imagine a ministry where neighboring isn't just an act, it's a lifestyle—a calling that resonates with the simplicity of Jesus's approach to reaching out. Eric Wood embodies this through NeighborLink, inspiring us with stories of profound forgiveness and the agility to serve others with a vulnerability that draws us closer to the heart of Jesus. We unravel the art of listening before acting and the necessity of humility and presence in our everyday interactions. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of what it truly means to love your neighbor, stripping back the layers to reveal how we can embody compassion and servitude in our own communities.
As we close, Eric offers a vision of unity within the church that speaks louder than any sermon. Through NeighborLink's initiatives, like Camp NeighborLink, he showcases the importance of building relationships and serving together from a young age. The ripple effect of a single act of service, such as mowing a lawn, can foster deep connections and reciprocal benefits. It's a powerful reminder that our oneness as believers is essential for portraying the gospel message with clarity. So join us, not just to hear Eric's story, but to become part of a movement where love for one another is our clearest testimony to the world.
Welcome to season four of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. The Love Fort Wayne podcast amplifies the stories of everyday people who are loving and leading in Northeast Indiana to spark imagination, root inspiration and ignite transformation in our community and beyond. At Love Fort Wayne, we believe the pillars of a flourishing community are its leaders, pastors, schools, families and prayer. And in season four, we're excited to learn from and be encouraged by people who not only lead but love our city in these areas each day. Before we dive in, we want to say thank you to our partners at Remedy Live Dream On Studios Star Financial. Want to say thank you to our partners at Remedy Live Dream On Studios Star Financial, brotherhood, mutual and Shepherd Family Auto Group for making the podcast possible. Well, welcome everybody to the next episode of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. Every episode is special, but this is a special one. We've got a friend of ours here with us, eric Wood, the executive director of NeighborLink. Eric, we're so glad you're here, bro. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a privilege.
Speaker 1:We're excited about this conversation. We are, yeah.
Speaker 3:Maybe he'll lead worship for us. Yeah, I may. I need my wife, though we're excited about this conversation we are yeah, maybe he'll lead worship for us. Yeah, I may. I need my wife, though. That'll be good. Two people in one man. I can't do it by myself. I love it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I love it, and so, yeah, we'll be able to dive in about a lot of different things as you're tuned in about Eric, his life, his testimony, the work they do at NeighborLink, things happening here in our community. The temperature of transformation in our city is hot right now. We've shared that on other episodes. So, again, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah, let's start at the start, though. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, some about Neighbor Link as well, here at the top, but I think it'd be great for folks just to hear a little bit about I know you well enough, not just your journey and your testimony, but your family as well, up into this point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I grew up here Southwest Fort Wayne, which I think some people are astonished by, namely because I'm all tatted up and don't fit the part. First time I taught at YFC a few weeks ago, they asked how long I was in prison.
Speaker 3:So, you know I mean. The reality is I grew up out there under a guy named Stan Buck, at Sunrise at Aboyt, and knew that I was called to be a pastor at 14 by meeting a black woman in Darien, georgia, who was 83, who just lost her husband. We were there to build a ramp. She opened the door with joy in her eyes and her smile and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and told me stories of his faithfulness. And so while I knew the Lord as a young, young boy, I'd pray myself to sleep at three, four years old. At 14, I saw joy that I'd never seen before and just said Lord, you can have everything, I just want that. And on the way home in that 15 passenger van I just heard you're going to serve my people the rest of your days. And so that set a trajectory for who I was going to become Played sports, did student leadership in the church in YFC, and then my senior year I quit sports to do an internship at our church because I knew who I was going to be when I left school and went to Huntington. Right before I got to Huntington I met my wife. We started writing music within the first month, leading worship right away doing albums. A guy walked up to me into a factory, handed me $2,000 cash, said, hey, you're supposed to do an album with your future wife. And that started this whole unexpected journey of our ministry being not just alongside but a portrait of oneness. And so we recorded an album.
Speaker 3:I was told at 18 that I was going to travel the world and tell people about Jesus. And so, 23, 24, we start having kids, 27,. I'm praying that the Lord kick us out of Fort Wayne or put us in concrete because I'm unsettled preaching, serving on Sunday, but then I'm out on the streets with gang members and kids that have single parent homes and not being able to put the two together. My pastor at the time said you know you need to spend more time getting ready for sundown. I was like I feel like I am out there, like my life out there feels like it feeds in here, and so I prayed for 30 days as I was packing a bag to take 10 kids from Northside high school, all from broken homes, on a trip. I heard sell everything you own and follow me around the world. Preach my name and honor my name for my glory. Go check your email. Your pastor is going to tell you I'm talking to you, so I walk right over to my computer login goodness email shows up.
Speaker 3:Hey man, I haven't slept in three nights. You need to sell everything you own and follow jesus around the world.
Speaker 3:Don't worry if everything falls apart and start over again. And um, somebody bought our house. Our furnace blew up. Somebody gave us a brand new furnace the next day and in three months we were on the road. We're 600 bucks a month and I tell people it was a Job moment. I'd heard about you, but now I've seen you with my own eyes and for two years straight. It was a miracle. Every day, daughter almost died and got healed in the Philippines. We needed 50 grand in 24 hours. Two checks came in the next day and we just felt like we were on a conveyor belt of grace. Not every moment was beautiful or great, but every moment was full of grace. And came home, the pastor wasn't doing well. We were trying to move to England to plant churches and I heard a voice again. It said cancel England, love my sheep, and you're going to get hurt more than you've ever been hurt in your life.
Speaker 3:And we went from the highest of highs to 10 years of low, Still beauty still like God was working and moving and I can say this here publicly now because I've asked my son. But we adopted a boy from Columbia who had a hard life but didn't know how hard it was, and so home was not easy for any of us. It went from joy to sorrow and he and I and we know this now we can talk about it. But it was hard man and at this time we're in Maine, we don't have any family there, and I think the crazy part of that story is we got home to Fort Wayne, knowing it was time to come home, and he sits us down two and a half years ago and says hey, dad, mom, I need to tell you a story. And up to that point we had not heard the inside of his heart. We'd just seen the heaviness of his heart and how he expressed it. And he said you know, I was seven, I was on a walk with my dad we didn't know he ever met his dad and a man in a hood came up behind me and my dad and shot my dad in the back and he died in my arms and he just started bawling.
Speaker 3:We're bawling and he's like that's why I've been mad. And from that day on, like kindness and gentleness and peace, entered our home because we didn't understand his pain. We knew it was there but we didn't know why. There's other reasons why, but we didn't know the heaviest of thing that was sitting in his gut. And when he released that, I remember my dad the whole time. I just didn't want to talk about it because he'd always tell us he forgot the whole time. I just didn't want to talk about it because he'd always tell us he forgot.
Speaker 3:All of a sudden, you know, two and a half years ago, joy, sorrow, freedom. And it was a few months after I got hired at NeighborLink. And you know, neighborlink is really just a reflection of our family and our story of living Jesus simply in a way where whereby we love one another and our neighbor as ourself, without expectation. And so when John bars hired me, it wasn't like I was going to work, it was I was going to live yeah, so for three years for three years I've gotten to even messily without having to protect or perform wrestle through the way he made me.
Speaker 3:And three years we'll be here in a month and it's been one of the coolest journeys of our life, getting to lean into and lead that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Can you parallel that with this, which is incredible? It's like God's prepared you for where you are right now. Um, with neighbor link story, can you?
Speaker 3:talk about neighbor story.
Speaker 3:So it's another beautiful story. Uh, you know, 25 years ago John Bars got an idea in 97, 98 in a ministry cohort, leadership cohort in Fort Wayne for NeighborLink. He had seen that we had lacked the connection between the church and neighbors. We were, we were giving them things, giving people things as a means to get to people to church, but never were they things that they asked from us, like we'll give you bottles of water and we'll wash your car and we'll give you a track. And he's like none of those were requested. But what would it be if the neighbor, what would it be like if the neighbors requested and invited us into their lives with specific need? Because that seems to be the way of Jesus. Specific need is the invitation for the gospel in the kingdom. And he just looked through the gospels and seen a pattern of Jesus addressing specific need and often while someone was waiting for an answer.
Speaker 3:Bartimaeus, on the side of the road, blind for years, waiting for someone to see him, a woman at a well waiting to be known, come and meet the one that knows everything about me. So he starts, this idea gets second place in this ministry cohort, puts it in his pocket and lays it down. Well, a few years later, his dad, in 2001, gets kidnapped and ransomed and gets a call from his mom and his mom says Dad's kidnapped, we've gotten ransom, we don't know who or why. And so, man, in the midst of anger, he heard the Lord speak ever so gently hey, you're going to forgive this person because I've forgiven you. So, in the midst of anger and hatred and what could have turned into bitterness and even his own spiritual death, he begins to press into releasing and giving away what he's received in forgiveness through Jesus.
Speaker 3:And so a year goes by, they find him, they're in court and he stands in front of everybody when the family gets to speak and he says hey, hey, brother Lloyd, in light of the forgiveness I've received because I've hated men which Jesus equates to murder and I've been forgiven, I forgive you for what you did to my dad and my family. The man says you've got the wrong man. The judge says are you crazy? Cause his wife and son had already turned on him. That day, john walked out as a free man and I would say I would dare to say that a year later, when neighbor link gets started in 2003, it's rooted in forgiveness and that's why it's been a free, grassroots ministry that has the agility to flex as needed because of a man's forgiveness of his enemy.
Speaker 1:So good, so good.
Speaker 2:Go for it. John's a friend of mine and I walked through some of that with him and also helped cast the vision of NeighborLink at our church at Blackhawk and my number two daughter, kelsey, who's the volleyball coach at Huntington University. She and I used to go on the.
Speaker 2:We would do them on Saturday mornings as outreaches and had a real tight window, so everybody would give it a try. And I just look back on that and I think that I know it did something special in me. Um, but my kelsey's middle name is grace and I think grace just oozes out of her life and I gotta think that that had a lot to do with it yeah, I think, um, when somebody invites us to their home, they're in the midst of a need that they don't have an answer for.
Speaker 3:They're embarrassing themselves in their vulnerability and that might be one of the most precious invitations that we can ever get. So true, and so when we walk behind the front door, where the shadows live, and get to know that person there in meekness and as servants, something transpires that's otherworldly and I think it's one of the most reflective concepts that I can see to Jesus's ministry in the Gospels. It just so closely relates to him. As he walks on through these towns, people would come to him with their need. He'd have people brought to him, he'd pass by them, he'd go out of his way for them, he'd sit with them, he'd recline with them, they'd cry out to him, he'd be next to them. And the more I process that, that seems reflective of my normal day and opportunities to neighbor, and when we press into that it feels like we're really joining him in the life he's invited us into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that that prompts just a another question, eric. It's you know, I think we both heard that saying Jesus walks slowly through the crowds, right, man, and it's just. You just described it, uh, through scripture, and just just his posture every single day, um, but there are so many life barriers that we put, that we put in our own lives. Now there's some natural ones that we have that maybe keep us from doing the same, like, uh, what are some encouragements, even some challenges, for us to and you can go there, like you can um, for us to move, to walk like Jesus did, slowly through the crowds, removing those personal barriers that we put in our own lives, perhaps to truly love our neighbors.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, this is a hard one for me and you know that. Um, I think, I think I would start with. This is the way in which I want to approach neighboring in my life and in the city is by it being a fruit of my closeness to my Savior. And I wrestle with the Luke 4, 18 and 19 reality of Jesus proclaiming a news to the poor and freedom to a captive and freedom to the disabled and freedom to the oppressed. It feels as if the closer I am to his heart, the closer I am to those people, and so my question would be for the church is if I don't have burden for the Luke 4 folks, or when I look around my table, the Luke 14 folks that are invited to this great banquet are not the pretty people, they're the outcasts and outsider, the ostracized outside and the isolated inside folk. Then it seems like a question of closeness, and if I am proximate to his heart, I'll become proximate to the people of his heart. And so one I don't think it's more doing at the front end. It's a closeness Like, hey, let's draw close to the heart, as he says, like stay close to my love for you. All fruit will flow from here. Two you don't have to have all the knowledge in the world to live into.
Speaker 3:Neighboring People aren't equations, they aren't math problems to be solved, and maybe as christians, we could first learn how to be human and second how to relearn how to be friends. We've sometimes forgotten how to be human and how to be friends because when I see jesus, the king of the universe, the great one, we think about great commands and great. You know, great commission and all the great you know one anothering the great one. We think about great commands and great commission and all the great one-anothering the great one. The way he solved all of those was by coming lowly.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's right. He went down to go high and he went from high to low, and so I've heard a lot of people in the church say that they don't have the right information to do this work and, as I think about those that first gave the gospel in the New Testament, most of them had no backdrop, dropped out of school early, were isolated from context and culture, from their community, and in the healing that Jesus brings, he brings them close to him, restores them to community oftentimes, and they're sent without all the information. They just go with hey, come and meet this one, come and meet him.
Speaker 3:And maybe lastly, I would say let's be listeners first. We tend to come with information, so I often say I want to listen first. To love best and neighboring starts with listening, and I've seen some of the most beautiful things transpire in Fort Wayne just through listening and coming humbly so good, so Rich.
Speaker 1:I think about we'll talk about this in a little bit those things that are at Jesus' heart loving my neighbor, that great that you know the Matthew 25 is serving the least of these, that great compassion Again, we'll talk about this, maybe in a bit, but it's to true. You know the great commission to truly. I love your point. All that said is to truly understand that for myself, and what that looks like in the everyday relation, at least, starts with being close to Christ's heart as he spoke those words, because they weren't just check, uh, checkbox things to go and do. They were, they were the depths of who he is, um, and as we're closer to him, as we become more like him, those things will become, quote unquote, easier for us to see and then even go and do. But it starts with actually being close to the one who spoke those words. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:Well ending in Matthew 28,. The bookends are authority and presence, all authority, always with you. Now go. It isn't just go, just go, yep. It isn't just go, just go. That's right. And I think there's a holy pause between go and make disciples and I don't know if Western culture gets this very well, but go, pause. I will save my spirit, will save Yep, and then I have work for you to do To do Ongoingly, yeah, yeah, but work for you to do Ongoingly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But we've hijacked the Holy Spirit's job of salvation. So we often haven't got to making disciples, and is is my premise. I've forgotten his authority. I forgot that he's always with me and that he's always saving so I can just go and once he saves I can do work. Yeah, um, so maybe we've misplaced our authority and forgotten his presence and taken on a job responsibility that isn't ours. Like john 6, 29, like your work is to believe in the one whom the father sent. Man lord, give me a better job, you know you know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's good, it's so good, that's heavy, that is heavy, it is it's a good work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hear you saying that the first step toward a lost and hurting world is actually toward God. And get him all over me, then I can participate as a priesthood of all believers. Yeah, so fast forward in my life a couple decades and I'm at County Line Church of God. My great-great-grandfather co-founded it 127 years ago, I think, and my brother's the senior pastor, and he gets up and he talks about this thing called NeighborLink. His world got rocked. I think it might have been a global leadership summit. He heard a speaker say what would your community do if the doors of your church closed? And that really, really got to him and NeighborLink was one of the tools that he went to. Can you talk about how a church can participate?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I think let me can I say a few ways people are participating. First, I think there are about 30 to 40 retirees right now that are from you know. We think about the unity of our city. For the last eight years there's been 30 to 40 people 60% Catholic, 40% Protestant meeting every Tuesday, serving the least of these as one, serving the least of these as one, and they do 500 to 700 projects a year without notice. And theology isn't center, jesus is. When I ask why they do what they do, they said because Jesus told me to love my neighbors myself. What else should I be doing? I was like man. I wish life was that easy.
Speaker 3:I wish that was the answer that I heard more often. Two I think our staff is living into this. The people that are hired at NeighborLink aren't first employees, they're neighbors, and so they're pressing into this in their spheres of influence and relationship and living into this. And so there are parts of all different kinds of churches, so they're a small fragment of reflection. It's really beautiful, the churches, so they're a small fragment of reflection. It's really beautiful.
Speaker 3:And then three, talking about how churches can get involved, I would say don't start a new program, don't start a new. Eight to 10 on Saturdays to get involved. Leaders, pastors, sign up first and learn how to be a neighbor and then invite people to practice neighboring with you. Learn how to be a neighbor and then invite people to practice neighboring with you From there. The way the NeighborLink platform has been renovated is that it GPSs you to where you're located. So if I sign up to help and I'm approved through a background check and now I'm on the platform, it GPSs to what's around me and I might say well, I live where nothing is.
Speaker 3:So maybe it's a John form moment that you're called to go to Samaria, to another part of the city, to jump in where you're compelled to go out of your way. Other option is to get some door hangers from us and take them through your community, invite people into need and wait for it to populate, and then begin to serve your direct neighbors. Lastly, our push is to move from volunteering to neighboring, because volunteering is moment to moment, season to season, situation to situation, but neighboring is a lifestyle where I'm looking front and back and side to side, and so you don't necessarily need a platform for that. I would encourage people to look for the things on the outside that tell a story of the inside of a home and begin to go, and somebody will tell me. Well, they might say, no, it's okay, it's okay, you went, shake your dust, shake the dust off and move on. It's okay, um, you have no idea what might be waiting, though, if you don't go.
Speaker 1:So good, so good.
Speaker 1:I think about some of my neighborLink experiences and some of those methods that are just at the root of who NeighborLink is and you're championing and you're appointing as leader of NeighborLink in this season.
Speaker 1:I was sharing with Mitch before like I can remember signing up a group of athletes via NeighborLink to say we're going to do this because we can't just talk about our character and how we can love people, but we got to move in action. God calls us to move in action, we pray about it and he moves us in action. But saying we don't have to create anything. There is already an outreach, there's already an organization that has created this platform that when your heart is poked, when it's stirred, you can go there and find those neighbors that are near to where we are, where our facility, training facility was, and we would just go there. And the cool part is when you can follow up, when you, when you say the volunteering is the arm ramp for some people but for it can move to the it can move to the steady ground that you just continue to live your life in.
Speaker 1:And I think some of those but for it can move to the it can move to the steady ground that you just continue to live your life in, and I think some of those, those athletes, those kids, now that they're grown they're grown, I'm old is I know they live, they live their lives that way. And so I'm just grateful for NeighborLink in our community, because there are those places where people can can connect individually, as congregations, as organizations, and then it becomes something more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it doesn't. No condemnation for wherever you're starting. The dream, obviously, is like let's live into this. What if 500 people in our city begin to live with the mentality that Jesus gave us a way to solve the crisis of culture through neighboring? What happens when the believer presses into the present and becomes present to their neighborhood, to their community? I think things change in ways that we dream of, we all talk of, and so, wherever you're starting, no condemnation. Like there's volunteer, I just want to do one day, I don't, it doesn't matter, we just want you to come along with us. And, secondarily, if you're a leader or a pastor out there and you go, man, I don't know where to start. What I'd invite you to is to come with me in my truck and I'll go do it with you, and I probably find most fruitfulness in taking somebody with me to meet the people that I've met along the way, to show them that it's not so scary out there.
Speaker 1:That's good. So Mitch asked a little bit about and you've shared beautifully, some of the practical makeup of NeighborLink and how people can get connected and then what it can lead to. There's something coming up at point of air of this podcast in a couple of months called Camp NeighborLink.
Speaker 3:Can you just share a little bit about Camp.
Speaker 1:NeighborLink. I think it's such a cool concept.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So July 10th through 12th, we're inviting the city and youth to come together and serve for three days collectively. The dream is for 10,000 people to serve during three days together as a point of connection and collaboration over those three days someday, but for right now, now it's just families coming along, youth groups coming along, churches coming along, individuals coming along and meeting over a devotional and then scattering throughout the city and serving, coming back for lunch and stories, playing some games, just like a good old summer camp and um, and making memories as we wade into into the life of neighboring. I would say this too For us as older folks, sometimes the camp idea is a call to repentance, but for younger people, it's discipleship Is they don't have an idea, a metric of what this life should look like yet, and so we're inviting them to learn from their childhood and their youth as students who are becoming the fabric of our generations.
Speaker 3:Yeah and so, hey, hey, come and learn now, before you're 40 and go. I have to relearn something, so, but both are invited. Yeah, along the way yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1:That is cool. It's cool. My, me and my babies are doing it. My, they don't like when I call them babies they're teenagers sorry girls, but yeah, so I I just think that it's. It's cool, you, it's a cool concept. I think about the story you told about you and Kelsey, like it's not get that chance with my girls via, you know, camp NeighborLink, for them to see it and be linked in arms with others. You know, in July, from our, our city, serving our city, loving their neighbor together.
Speaker 2:Are you really good at like different craftsmanship kind of things?
Speaker 3:So I can get by. You know, I I here's what I say I can do, I can do enough. I saw the best relationships have been established by mowing lawns, because I have to keep coming back, and and so I would say that's the beautiful invitation to neighboring through neighbor link is there's take out my trash, mow my lawn, clean up the weed bed to painting a wall, to more complex skill needs and even contracted needs, and so there's a range of invitation that homeowners are bringing us into, and so sometimes I don't have the qualification. It gets in the way of no, you do, you're human, and there's needs for anyone and everywhere, from all different kinds of folks, from veterans to elderly to disabled to single moms that sometimes, more than the actual work, they need someone to sit and listen.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's what I really like doing. Yeah, I loved doing that because I can't do very much. I can carry heavy stuff, but that was about it, but I love talking to the people we were serving. And at the end of the day, you're the one that served yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3:It becomes a reciprocal relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, eric, you're familiar with some of the city movement work happening, and not just in the United States, and you know that you've you've seen the world where people that live in towns and cities that are part of the church have, have already have made this agreement right that we've been commanded to love one another in John 13,. Jesus prayed in John 17, that we would be one in everything, um, that we praise the yes and amen, and I think God answers the Lord Jesus prayers, father answers his son prayer. So you're familiar with this concept of where people are loving their neighbor, where they're serving the least of these, where they're going and making disciples, encapsulated by a larger circle of. Where can we do more of that? As John 17.
Speaker 1:What's your encouragement for folks, for the church of our city, wherever they might be listening, in their town or city, to make that a reality? Because everywhere, even in this town, people are doing those three things. Their life, work and their calling is committed to one of those three things and they collide. Where can folks be doing more of that together and what's the outcome of us doing that together?
Speaker 3:I think, maybe at the front end, realizing the cost if we don't and John 13 has become like a home spot for me 34 and 35 is you know, love one another as I've loved you. If you love one another as I've loved you, all the world, all people will know you're my disciples by your love for one another as I've loved you. If you love one another as I've loved you, all the world, all people will know you're my disciples by your love for one another. So that passage might say that the best evangelism in the world is our one anothering. That's mind-blowing. That's mind-blowing.
Speaker 3:The cost of disunity and fracturing is a lack of evangelistic clarity, gospel clarity. There's gospel clarity when the body of Christ is one, that is, we're losing out. We may not have to say much, so the cost is heavy. Two, john 17, 21 and 24, when you are one, as Jesus prays for our oneness, the world will believe the Father sent the Son. That's the gospel. Two, which is number three of these three lines, is that the world will believe that the Father loves the world. The world will believe that the father loves the world.
Speaker 3:So if we are not one, there's a lack of evangelistic clarity. They're looking. Where are the people of Jesus? Can't find them because they're not one. Two, did the father really send the son? I think people are asking that question. And three, is the father a bastard or does he love the world To be so brash? Yeah, our oneness tells all three stories. These are the people of God. The son was sent and the father loves the world. That's good. So the cost of our disunity is a lack of clarity around the very thing we say we stand for. That's why it's so important.
Speaker 1:It's so good. It's so good, it's such an encouragement. I think we need that challenge sometime. As we're leading in the everyday, as we're serving in the places that God's placed us, especially as those that are tuned in and are listening, we're believers to have that understanding. That reminder in our everyday is this is a critical game. It's not all on our shoulders. Praise God for that.
Speaker 3:However, we've been called to it and there's some critical outcomes if we don't live unto it Go ahead and I would just, I know I I would just say this unity gets disunity, but Jesus produces unity, and as we chase him, I think we get everything that we long for. And so I've seen a drive at unity, but only more division. And so the city, the believers of the city, like a Nehemiah four moment. This has been my dream since I was little that we'd all be working on our part of the wall. We've got responsibility in one section, one block at a time, as a family, one section as a local church.
Speaker 3:But we realize we're building the same kingdom and when the trumpet goes off, we would chase down, we would gather around that trumpet and realize that the Lord is great and awesome and he fights for us. So, yes, let's get out there and do our work. We've got each, each of us have gifts, responsibilities, talents, relationships to invest in. But when you hear the trumpet go off which I would believe that this is that what we're talking about there's a gathering of, of the bride unto the kingdom, for the glory of the King. When we hear that come off, when we come together and remember that he is great and awesome and he fights for us, so let's aim at jesus. We get to work where we're, where our responsibilities lie, and then gather back together and go back out and just keep this play and go all the way home that way love it man yeah, and neighborling can be replicated.
Speaker 3:What you just cast the vision for can be replicated in any community right, yeah, so it's actually one map for the whole world to bring their needs to one another. So we rebuilt it so that you could see somebody in Ethiopia and the Philippines and Indonesia and Brazil and Ethiopia and Russia and England could ask for help and then the church would be given an opportunity to to to show up. So the dream is that the world would bring their needs and the church would show up.
Speaker 1:That's good man, yeah, so simple, so simple to remember putting our hearts and carry it for. So if folks are interested in learning more about that, that vision and everything that you just share, drop the, drop the web for folks. Yeah, go to neighborlinkorg.
Speaker 3:We try to make it simple. Yeah, if you have needs, click I need help. There's three simple steps no barrier to entry.
Speaker 3:You're not qualified by who you are, where you're from or what you need. You're qualified because you're human, yeah. And then two if you want to help, click. I can help and fill out the information. Three same steps with a background check so that you're an honorable person going to a hurting neighbor. And then my encouragement to you is you're going to get a package in the mail that's going to have some gear for you and a welcome letter and a what net. What's next? And once that happens, the distance between you sign up and you doing is really important. Fear and anxiety and the what ifs will show up. So my challenge to you would be to sign up, get approved, get your gear and go and see what Jesus might do. It's awesome, it's awesome.
Speaker 1:Man. This is another encouraging episode, man. It really really was. I just want to thank you, brother, for sharing your story, your heart, your heart for the kingdom. The work that you all are doing at NeighborLink is monumental. It's so important, and I hope that folks that are listening and watching are encouraged to know that, wherever you live, you can be involved. So go and click that, that that website link, go ahead and put it in your search browser, check it out and think about and pray about how you might be able to take that first step, or that continual step of loving your neighbor. So, eric, thank you, bro man, thank you. Home will be home for as long as the time is this Amen. We'll tune in with you the very next episode of the Love Fort Wayne podcast. We've got some more great episodes coming up the second half of this season, and so make sure you're looking out for when the next episodes drop and we'll talk to you then.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for joining us this month. We drop a new episode the first Monday of every month. Love Fort Wayne has some amazing episodes coming up. You don't want to miss a single one, so subscribe today, wherever you next time.
