Getting to Know the Neighbour...Through Outtatown
By: Marcus Fowler - Assistant to the Director, Outtatown

Several weeks ago, a woman spoke to our Outtatown groups that had spent significant time in Africa working with people suffering from AIDS. She was asked how she got involved in this work and she explained that the more she learned of the AIDS crisis in Africa, the more she felt that our generation would be judged by how we treat our neighbours and how we respond when they’re in need. So she asked herself, “Who is my neighbour?” The answer she gave was: My neighbour is anyone whose need I see, whose need I can meet.

So who are my neighbours? Who are your neighbours?

Asking this question, I am reminded of the story in Luke 10 where an expert in the Law asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life and when Jesus asks him what the law says, the man knows God’s law and answers correctly:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and Love your neighbour as yourself.” I wonder if it began to sink in at that point that the statement implied incredible responsibility because the man then asked Jesus, “So…WHO is my neighbour?”

One of our main objectives on Outtatown is to help our students answer this question for themselves. Our job isn’t to answer it for them, but to show them what the needs are, and to journey with them as they look for ways that they can meet those needs.

So how does an Outtatown student discover who their neighbours are?

First of all, they are placed in a community of 30 strangers that become their closest neighbours for 8 months. In community living, these neighbours are at times the source of immense blessing, and at other times the source of intense frustration. But in both the good times, and the bad, God shows us the importance of taking care of one another.

Then as the semester goes on, their neighbourhood is expanded. We take students into Winnipeg’s inner city to show them some of the dimensions of urban poverty, and learn about the beauty and the brokenness of the people who live there. It’s hard to know how to help or even relate to someone who is addicted to alcohol and solvents and living on the street. I had the privilege of joining the students on a walk down Main Street to talk with and pray for the people we met. We struck up a conversation with one gentleman who was sceptical at first, but soon warmed up to us and began to share his experiences with us. He asked us to pray with him and to make sure we said hello if we ever saw him again. The man I met that day is my neighbour.

We also give students the opportunity to meet our First Nations neighbours. They are fascinated and surprised by the realization that people who they’ve often thought of previously as being so culturally and intrinsically different, are in fact our brothers and sisters. Brander “Standing Bear” MacDonald is our friend in the Chehalis community in BC’s Lower Mainland. He teaches our students about the meaning behind traditional practices and ceremonies of First Nations people. We don’t go there to fix them, but to seek to understand them and share our beliefs with one another. Last year our students joined a community of First Nations people for a smudging ceremony. One of the elders was so moved that this group of Christian kids were willing to learn about THEIR cultural traditions instead of condemning them that he was moved to tears. The First Nations community are our neighbours.

In second semester, we introduce our students to some of our global neighbours in both Guatemala and South Africa. In Guatemala, our students work alongside poor families to help them build their first home. In South Africa, our students partner with locals to assess the needs in the community and come up with a creative way to meet those needs. We help them to see that again, even though we are culturally and geographically removed, these are our brothers and sisters too, and the problems they face are actually our problems also.

We often feel under prepared, uneducated and just too small to actually make any discernable difference in the world. Through Outtatown, our goal is to break down some of these barriers of class, culture, fear and unfamiliarity so that we can see, and so that we can meet the needs of our neighbours.

Whose needs do you see? Whose needs can you meet?