Summary: About Stephen Stephen Crotts is a native South Carolinian. He studied illustration at Winthrop University, where he co-founded Friday Arts Project with several other students in order to explore truth, goodness, and beauty in art and faith. His an illustrator, the Integrated Marketing Coordinator at the Culture and Heritage Museums of York County, and the Program Coordinator with Friday Arts Project. He is also likely the future mayor of Rock Hill, where he and his wife Erica helped Daniel and Andy plant Hill City Church. What is Gospel Neighboring? To bring your friends and neighbors along, and together learning to see people and places near you with a gospel imagination, leaving behind cynicism, seeing broken neighbors as the image of God, and seeing broken places as undergoing gospel renovation. Stephen's Gospel Neighboring Quote “We cannot love God unless we love each other. And we cannot love each other unless we know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread. Heaven is a banquet, and life is a banquet too --- even in the crust, where there is companionship." - Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker "We'll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us, until there are no strangers anymore." - Patty Griffin Tough Lesson Learned in Gospel Neighboring If you're endeavoring to do something important for your less fortunate neighbors, you'll have to have a champion in one of those neighbors, or the thing simply won't fly. "Who is my neighbor?" The simple reality is: the people right around us, within a block or two of your home, are the people with whom you have the most opportunity to bless through a steady, faithful presence. There is need much closer to you if you'll look more closely. More Lessons on Gospel Neighboring It may not be the first people you show hospitality toward who are the most deeply effected; it may be that the people you are hospitable toward bring new people into your life whose lives you will profoundly bless. Taking small steps of faith and small risks to be generous, and the generosity of the community as a whole becomes wider and wider. Loving your neighborhood with abandon as a church is going to be costly, but it will be contagious, especially as you dig in over the long haul with "a long obedience in the same direction". We should show the kind of hospitality toward our neighbors, so that they leave your home thinking "all things are possible". Action for the Next 24 Hours Pray for your neighbors, obviously. Make your neighbors a pie, take it to them, and invite them to dinner. Plan a neighborhood shindig. Stephen's Final Bit of Gospel Neighboring Wisdom Have the courage to see the places and people around you as changeable. Dig in, and, by God's grace, you will see change. Stephen's Favorite Gospel Neighboring Resource The Man Who Ate New Orleans, a film about Stephen's friend who ate at every restaurant in New Orleans. Wendell Berry's novels and poetry, which have a deep rootedness in 'place'. Babbette's Feast, a novella and a film with an incredible story of the possibility that opens up through the artistry of neighboring. Connect with Stephen Twitter Instagram Friday Arts Project Facebook S. Crotts Illustration
