the hood.

From [biblical and] theological perspectives, the neighborhood is an important place by its very nature. It is home; the place we inhabit. It’s where God’s presence is most tangible and it’s where the church is called to be. We human beings are most human when we embrace the places of our lives from the inside; when we live rooted lives that respect the daily places that inhabit us and make us who we are. So too with God: the God of the Christian faith is the God who takes on flesh and blood and moves into the neighborhood; the God en-fleshed in our most mundane surroundings, forever sanctifying them as sacred. So too, the church: by its very nature it’s an embedded community that cannot exist apart from its most local surroundings. It is a neighborhood reality, a church most true to its character when it lives and breathes right where it is.

-Simon Carey Holt, God Next Door: Spirituality & Mission in the Neighborhood, p. 89