Lance Ford > Quotes

“It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.”
― Lance Ford, UnLeader: Reimagining Leadership…and Why We Must

“The key to our progress is believing that Jesus is right about everything and therefore surrendering our own will to his.”
― Lance Ford, Revangelical: Becoming the Good News People We're Meant to Be

“The practice of biblical hospitality is unique because it reaches out to those who cannot reciprocate.

We are created as social, relational beings who are made for a community. Hospitality, when rightly understood and pursued, has the power to break the bonds of isolation and exclusion.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Two of the most important initiating principles for neighboring are to take notice and to invite others to join you. For a neighborhood to flourish it takes a joint effort of people who care about their neighbors and their neighborhood. Besides being essential, however, this joint effort is fun and brings joy to all who are involved. It manifest and takes us into real life, eternal life. It is how we make a neighborhood worth living in.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Although small groups have been utilized as a church renewal scheme, they have rarely been legitimized as a full expression of the church. They have been conceived as an adjunct for the personal growth of the participants. They have been considered an “extra” in church programming, and they have served this role well. Meanwhile the “real” church gathers in the sanctuary at eleven each Sunday. It’s there, with “everybody” (except the sick, etc.) present, that the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are celebrated. We have been so oriented toward the gathered congregation that the small group is relegated to serving as a means to a larger end—that is, to stimulate active participation in the corporate congregation.[3] When we look at small groups as secondary helper units for bolstering our larger gatherings we have gone off the rails. The better view is to see our corporate gatherings—church services—as a celebratory exclamation point of lives lived as salt and light the previous week.”
― Lance Ford, The Missional Quest: Becoming a Church of the Long Run

“We choose to live in our neighborhood based on how it would serve our personal wants and needs. We fail to realize that opportunities to bring something better to our neighbors and have our own lives affected are all around us. We primarily viewed our presence in the neighborhood as about us.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“If anyone should neighbor differently it should be us Christians. So let’s do it. Let us love our neighborhoods as ourselves.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Presenting data from numerous studies, Susan Pinker offers a compelling argument that the strength of our social relationships is comparable to well established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Weak social relationships are a more significant risk factor than physical inactivity and obesity. Simply playing cards once a week or meeting friends every Wednesday night at Starbucks adds as many years to our lives as taking beta blockers or quitting a pack a day smoking habit. The subtitle of her book, “how face to face contact can make us happier healthier and smarter” gets the point across: if we don’t interact regularly with people face-to-face, the odds are that we won’t live as long, remember the information as well, or be as happy as we otherwise could have been. The solution is no doubt multifaceted it will involve a variety of tactics, including the themes spelled out in the remaining pages of this book: the art of neighboring, restoring genuine community, sharing meals with others, welcoming the stranger, opening our lives and those who are disconnected.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Keep in mind your particular context: where you live, work, eat, and play on a regular basis. The Holy Spirit has sent every Christian to those places. It is no accident that you live where you do, even if it is temporary.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“God created us as social, relational persons. Yet the current way of life in developed countries is greatly reducing the quantity and quality of our relationships.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“This lack of meaningful social interaction and sense of displacement is not only heartbreaking, because we were created for so much more, but astoundingly harmful to our way of life. It is literally killing us. According to the volume of evidence Susan Pinker assembles in her book “Village Effect,” persistent loneliness alters the genes in every cell of her bodies and not in a good way.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“We believe we would better understand Jesus point if, rather than calling it the parable of the good Samaritan, we called it the parable of the real neighbor. The Samaritan, the one who proved to be a real neighbor, demonstrate several important traits we can learn from.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Relationships happen in the margins. When there is no margin. It impossible to welcome others in to our lives. But how do we change this? Perhaps the two greatest helps our, first, affect of alignment rather than addition. In other words, don’t try to add more activities to your schedule but instead look at ways in which you can align your daily rhythms with the rhythms of life of those around you. And second be prepared to prune the activity branches. If you are serious about cream margin in your life, there’ll be times that something will need to be cut off. Furthermore we must be reminded that it is OK to say no.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Our homes become our castles, our fence become our motes, our gates open only from the inside. Though we are touted as the richest country in the world, the United States is statistically the most medicated nation as well. The fact that those two notable pieces of data go hand-in-hand should cause us to ask some serious questions about the way we have come to do life.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Don’t start doing things until you understand the ethos of the neighborhood. Let the spirit of the place make its impression. Fall in love with the little things. Get to know the people. If you start “doing your thing” before you are familiar with the place, then you’re forcing things too much. Ministry should fit with how God is already working in a place. If you start pushing your agenda before you start making friends with the neighbors and finding out about their lives, then you’re a salesman, not a minister of reconciliation. And throughout it all, pray. Pray for spiritual eyesight. It is the Spirit’s job to reveal Christ . . . not just to “them” but also to “you.” Pray that you can see Christ’s fingerprints in your neighborhood. Pray to see the face of Christ in the face of those who live around you. Pray for the Spirit to show you what is wrong in your area, and also what is right. Seek to understand.[18]”
― Lance Ford, The Missional Quest: Becoming a Church of the Long Run

“Our aim must be higher than just to be a good neighbor ourselves. The goal is to create a neighborhood or group of neighbors were by the collective gifts, talents, resources, and caring hearts of many neighbors can join forces when needs arise.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“God created us as social, relational persons. Yet the current way of life in developed countries is greatly reducing the quantity and quality of our relationships.

When you add the high degree of mobility, the strong sense of individualism, and the decreased opportunities for informal public life, isolation and loneliness become increasingly common.

According to one recent study, 40% of adults between the ages of 45 and 49 said they were lonely, a rate of loneliness that has doubled since the 1980s.

Based on a 2004 study, one in four Americans said they had no one whom they could talk to about personal troubles. If family members were not counted, that number doubled. More than half of those surveyed had no one outside their immediate family with whom they could share important issues. In short, we have fewer people to lean on.

In nearly every American setting, people are living relationally impoverished lives marked by a sense of isolation. Far too many people are lonely and alone.

This issue of isolation is compounded by a sense of detachment from place. In a highly mobile society, people rarely feel rooted geographically. We live as nomads, both figuratively and literally.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Most people are eager and willing to share. All that is needed is someone who is willing to take the initiative to get things started. We suggest getting another person or more to help you if this is something you would like to see happen in your neighborhood. Our neighborhoods are full of gifts just waiting to be open and shared.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Fear is certainly a significant hindrance to becoming more hospitable, the second and perhaps greater barrier has to do with time, or what we refer to as a lack of margin.

Margin is the space between our load and our limits between vitality and fatigue. It is the opposite of overload and therefore the remedy for that troublesome condition.

Without margin, we are incapable of relational spontaneity in our neighborhood. Without margin we are only interested in opportunities to serve our neighbors. Without margin we are unable to even think about planning time to spend with others. Margin creates buffers. It gives us room to breathe, freedom to act, and time to adapt. Only then will we be able to nourish our relationships only then will we be available and interruptible for the purposes of God.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Incompetent communities operate from a scarcity mentality. Particularly in the post 9/11 age, ours is a culture marinated in fear, anxiety, distrust, anger, and suspicion. This atmosphere is perfectly suited to turn extremely inward. To focus tightly on self-protection. Neighborhoods that lack the local and personal integration, concern, and inter-dependency characteristic of a neighboring mindset breed a scarcity mentality add time when we need a mutually beneficial mentality.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Most people just dream of possibilities. Few people take action to bring possibility into tangibility. Our neighborhoods will become livable and sprinkled with the foretaste of heaven only when we decide to act on the little notions, daydreams, and crazy ideas running around in her head. The starting point lies in the word ownership. You must own the possibility in your neighborhood. Take our ship and act upon it.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Are you willing to commit to the welfare of your city? Will you allow your imagination to see a movement that begins with the local and ordinary but overtime becomes global and extraordinary? If your answer is yes, then together let’s seek the welfare of our neighborhoods, strive for it to spill over into every nook and cranny of our city. Let’s dig into the places we are already doing life, and display to a fragmented and isolated world a new way to be a human.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“Roughly two centuries ago, French sociologist Alex de Tocqueville wrote in “democracy in America,” praises the strength of the individual in American society. Yet simultaneously he issued a dire warning: this same potency could mature into a crippling weakness. The combination of individualism, addiction to privacy, and a consumers mind that can become a vault, locking away resources and functionality that are that are essential for a typical community to operate freely and fruitfully on its own.”
― Lance Ford, Next Door as It Is in Heaven: Living Out God's Kingdom in Your Neighborhood

“You will never have a missional church without missional people who engage the lives of others where they live, where they work and where they play. In other words, every church member must see him- or herself as a missionary living out their missional calling in their neighborhood, through their vocation and in social settings (third places) within the local community.”
― Lance Ford, The Missional Quest: Becoming a Church of the Long Run