1/8/25 - 2076: Loving Your "Neighbor Neighbor"
Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him , the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.
Martha: We are your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place, where they work with God every day. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.
Jim: After a long Christmas vacation break, it's back to work. Are you ready to live out our faith vibrantly at work? Loving our work neighbors as ourselves, even in the midst of the pressures and stresses of work? Have you made that transition to recognizing your workplace as your mission field? Your place of ministry? 2025 is the year of the mobilized body of Christ, impacting people everywhere in our country with the love of Jesus and reintroducing them to the Creator Almighty God, but what about when we get home? Does your faith impact how you live in your neighborhood? Do you even know your neighbors?
Not just their names but know them, their kids, their hobbies. Do your neighbors know they can count on you in a crunch? It's one thing to live out your faith in your family. And one thing to live out your faith at church. And then one thing to live out your faith at work, but we all need to come full circle and love our neighbors when we come home after a long day at work.
And that's the topic of today's iWork4Him episode. Martha, we've had some neighbors that weren't too easy to love over the years, haven't we?
Martha: Oh man, you're going to start right there. (laughter)
Jim: I'm jumping right in. Because Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbors as yourself.
Martha: Yes, I think that everyone can relate to having a difficult neighbor. I'd love to think that every neighbor we've ever had has been easy to love, but that's not the truth. Sometimes we've had to work really hard to love our neighbors. Yeah.
Is that what you wanted me to say? You weren't looking for specifics.
Jim: We've lived in several different neighborhoods. We lived in an apartment when we first got married, actually lived in both, two different apartments when we first got married. We lived with my parents. They were some of the toughest neighbors ever. And we've lived in - just some fantastic neighbors, got to meet some phenomenal people. Truly the greatest experience that we had was that 20 years we lived In Florida in the same neighborhood. We focused almost all of our episodes, though, Martha, on living out our faith at work, but really what do we talk about after work?
About living out our faith when we get home and on weekends. It's pretty, pretty easy to let our guard down after work when we pull into the driveway and we're just tired. And we just don't want to see people. Some of us, we've had long commutes. There was a year, there was five years where I drove 90 minutes to work and two hours coming home. I didn't want to talk to people. I just wanted dinner.
Martha: You were hangry. No, yes, it is easy to change once we, maybe we've had to be our very best self while we've been at work all day and then we get home and the neighbor's garbage can is out or their animal pooped on your lawn or, whatever it might be. And, that is not the time to let your guard down. And it's really important that we're always reflecting Jesus. That is, I guess what I'm trying to say.
I think about the fact that, Jim, we often talk about on iWork4Him, the idea that the people we work with are our neighbors. We spend so much time neighboring the person that you have meetings with or the person that you work down the hallway from. But the truth is, our neighbors, our Actual physical neighborhood neighbors, need to be a priority in our life as well.
And so what do you think of when you think about people coming home at the end of the day and maybe they've had a rough day and they don't want to see anybody, but you can tell like your neighbor... Like today, they maybe needed to have their driveway shoveled and they didn't get a chance to do it or something like that.
Jim: Thank goodness the sun was strong enough here in Missouri to melt most of the driveways. But yeah, it's, I can just think about how I felt coming home after a long day. And sometimes you just don't want to talk to people. And you don't even want to, when you, even when you come in your house, you don't want to talk to people. But the deal is that your neighbors know there's something different about you, and they expect you to act differently because they know you're a Christian.
Martha: Let's start with maybe your neighbors should know that about you.
Jim: If you disappear on Sunday mornings, they're probably figuring out you're not going to the bar, that maybe you're going somewhere else. And it should come up in conversation somewhere that you go to church, that at least opens up the conversation. But it, a lot of people go to church and it doesn't impact them. If somebody knows that you're a believer, they're going to expect something different from you. They're going to expect a different kind of behavior from you and our neighbors need us, okay?
Martha: So what do you think is the best way for us to start building that community if we've not done that in our neighborhood? How can we love on our neighbors?
Jim: It starts with a little couple of things.
Martha: Okay?
Jim: First we need to actually know our neighbors' names . And I'd like to say that I'd like you to start with - this is a good one to Pastor Charlie, hats off to Pastor Charlie - get to know the neighbor in front of you, next to you, on either side, and behind you.
Martha: Yes.
Jim: And then start learning the one's kitty corner, but get to know the neighbor's names. How do you do that? You bake cookies like you did in the old days.
Martha: It is the answer to most situations.
Jim: It is the international language of friendship. Fresh cookies. Anybody can make fresh cookies because anybody can buy Pillsbury dough boy dough and put it on a cookie sheet, but you might have a wife like mine and she just makes cookies herself.
Martha: But any form of - something that you can put on a plate.
Jim: And just say, hey, we're Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We live kitty corner to you, across the street. We just really wanted to say, hey, and we're really sorry we've been lousy neighbors. What's your name?
Martha: Yeah. And one thing, Jim, when we have done that in the past, I've written it on a card and given it to them so that they, you don't have that awkward, how to get a hold of you so that they can, you don't be like, Oh, I have to write all that down real quick. Like okay, here is some information about us. And you're right. Just even if you've lived next to these people for years, just say, you know what? Okay. I just baked these and I just really felt like I wanted to share them with you and get to know you and let you know that we're here if you need anything.
Jim: Keeping it simple, but understanding that not everybody will be responsive, but almost everybody is, they're respectful of the cookie. Cookies are the international open love language, a food language.
Martha: I can't imagine anybody throwing that contact information away. I can't.
Jim: You know, take for instance my friend Joe. So about a year and a half ago, I met my neighbor Joe. So we had a garage sale. We're getting rid of some of the stuff We dragged from Florida to missouri. We paid to put it in a moving truck so we could sell it at a garage sale.
And we met Joe and I gave him my card. He just lived across the street and I said, if you ever need anything, let me know. About two hours later, Joe calls, Jim, grab your six foot ladder. I need you now. So I grabbed my six foot ladder and I ran over to Joe's house and I ran through the front door and there's Joe hanging from his balcony, desperately needing a ladder under his feet.
Martha: And if he hadn't had your business card in his pocket, we don't know what would've happened. But it started a great relationship. I want to finish the story, because it started a great relationship, and Joe then made us food to thank us for helping him, and ever since then, it was like, hey Martha, do you have this spice? Or, hey, I made this, and I have this extra thing I want to share with you, and just created a sweet little relationship there.
Jim: We miss Joe. We do. He moved to Oregon. It's sad.
Martha: Yes. It's sad. But communicating through Facebook, so that still works, that's the kind of thing we're talking about, though, is just take that time to get to know them. Even if you go buy a pound cake at the grocery store and slice it up and put it on a plate, it's okay. But get in front of them and just say, Hi, I am your neighbor and I want to get to know you.
Jim: But if you go to the store and you buy a Sara Lee pound cake, do they actually weigh a pound?
Martha: Oh my goodness. You're very philosophical.
Jim: You may need to add strawberries and whipped cream on top to make them tasty.
Martha: Okay.
Jim: All right. Now I think the best thing we've ever done to build community is
Martha: a potluck
Jim: I was gonna say we need to take a break and talk about SaferNet first. Okay a potluck! Absolutely. The potlucks that we did at indian rocks beach, Florida, were the best idea ever. We always did one right before everybody went home for the summer because people think it's hot in Florida. So they go home to other places where it's hotter but We did a potluck and we did it in our garage or in our driveway, and then we also then did a potlucky gathering New Year's Eve and let people just come over and hang out. Just opening up your house speaks loudly.
Now, not everybody came. And some people said, Jim and Martha, are you okay if we bring our own wine? We're like, yeah, because you're not going to get any at my house. So it's fine. Bring your own beer if you want to bring your own. And I'll have mountain Dew.
Martha: What was fun about the New Year's Eve was that we were able to use the idea that who wants to be on the road driving on New Year's Eve out with other people that might be too festivity, festivitousness, or whatever you call it, having too much festivity in their life. So anyway, that was the way of saying let's have a neighborhood gathering where nobody has to drive anywhere.
Jim: And you can walk home hammered.
Martha: Those were just some things that we've done.
Jim: Absolutely.
Martha: We've not done it perfectly and I think we can talk about that in a minute, but go ahead.
Jim: Speaking of great neighbors, your computers are under attack all the time. People are constantly trying to get it at you. I had three or four emails today telling me that my Microsoft account was expiring. Not! I also had a couple of text messages saying, hey, you need to log into this place. People are lying to you all the time. How do you know? How do you know if you're clicking a real link or a bad link? That's why we use SaferNet on all of our computers, all of our devices.
SaferNet has web filters. It has web filters, it has antivirus, it has a VPN, virtual private network, and if you click on a link and it doesn't go where it says it's going to go, SaferNet blocks it. It keeps you from being stupid. We use it on everything on iWork4Hi and everything Jim and Martha. You should use it too. And tell them Jim and Martha told you to do it. SaferNet. com. SaferNet. com.
Martha: So it's like they're being good neighbors to us, taking care of us.
Jim: They're phenomenal neighbors.
I know we know our neighbors names.
Martha: Yes.
Jim: But, have we done a great job of engaging our immediate neighbors yet? We haven't done a potluck. We've lived here two and a half years, no potlucks.
Martha: We tried, and we had one all scheduled, and then the weather was super crazy that weekend, and everybody freaked out and were like, yeah, we're not having this potluck.
Jim: That was a year and a half ago.
Martha: Yeah, it was. I'm not denying that we have not done a great job in our little neighborhood right now. However, two of our immediate neighbors are family. So we do spend a lot of time with the family.
Jim: I don't know that really counts.
Martha: Oh, it definitely counts.
Jim: Oh, it counts. All right. So what's really cool is that one of our neighbors, who I've prayed with several times, he works over the road, he builds ice roads in Alaska and the Yukon. One of his kids got baptized at church the other day, and they all came to church, and of course they were comfortable because they knew us, we were there.
So that was really cool. And a couple times I've preached at other local churches and neighbors have come to hear me preach. So that's been fun. But we still need to do the potluck. We got to get it in the calendar for once the snow lifts.
Martha: We have this, i'm not making excuses, I just need to find a better way to do it because we don't have the under the roof space.
Jim: We have a really great garage now. We have a great garage. We also have our office building that we rehabbed.
Martha: So what you're saying is all the listeners should not make excuses either, right? We've got to find a way to get past...
Jim: don't be like Martha and make a bunch of excuses. We've got a building we rehabbed. In fact, you should check out the link on our website. Check out Central Place and the place we're rehabbing here in Marionville, now called The Gathering. Those are QR codes, are they on the website?
Martha: So just go to iWork4Him. com forward slash central place. I can put that in the show notes as well. But then you can see some of the rehab work that we've been doing here and next door in our buildings and just walk along with us on this crazy journey of rehabilitating old spaces.
Jim: Yeah, old spaces. All right, so we got to know our neighbors. We haven't brought them cookies, but we've gotten to know our neighbors here in Marionville and a lot of other people. It's a small town.
Martha: So we've had neighbors bring us cookies.
Jim: Yes, we have. And every week, one of the neighboring things we do for people here in Marionville, Missouri, is we have a podcast. You might want to check it out. It's called Good Place Marionville Podcast on YouTube or Good Place Marionville on Facebook. It's not on podcast platforms right now, but it talks about all the good that's going on in Marionville, and Martha and I are the hosts. So it's a lot of fun just connecting with people. And we interview people from town that share a little bit of the story what good is going on. It's not specifically spiritual based, but it's all about good and it's not gossip.
Martha: That's a good point, Jim. And it really, in a small town like we live in, everybody's your neighbor. And so it's really about getting to know what's happening in town, what's good, who to be paying attention to, whatever might be happening in the schools, things like that. That is one of the beautiful things of a small town, but I know for a lot of people they have Neighborhood areas where they live right? And really, how can you focus on your neighborhood Jim?
Jim: And something we've really learned about being a great neighbor in a small town is you know there's volunteer fire departments in 95 percent of the towns across America. That's a great way to be a great neighbor is join your volunteer fire department. I got to do that recently, well last year in 2024, beginning of the year, as a chaplain. And i've been learning how to be a firefighter for the very first time in life. You know every boy grows up wanting to drive a fire truck . I get to do that. And I get to play with the sirens. And when you're driving a fire truck down the road at 60 miles an hour with the sirens going on, people just part the ways. Not in Florida, but here in Missouri, they actually pull over for you. It's actually very cool. And it's a great way to serve our neighbors. I've had a lot of opportunities to pray with people who are in crisis, which is a lot of fun.
Martha: Even just protecting their property, Jim.
Jim: I climbed on a roof at 2: 30 in the morning once.
Martha: Doing some of the amazing neighboring things.
Jim: All right. One of the really cool things we've got an opportunity to do, and not everybody's going to have the opportunity to do this, is we moved into an old town started 170 years ago, so figure that out, that'd be 1854. There's a lot of old buildings and Martha and I just fixed one up for our offices for iWork4Him, the international headquarters of iWork4Him.
And then we bought another one and we're fixing that up to be the gathering, create a place for people to just be able to gather and have a cup of coffee and maybe get some books and gifts. And there may be another one we'll tell you about on a future episode, but we're loving on our town by investing who we are in this town.
And that's a lot of fun. So we've been preaching, martha's been playing piano and singing in our church. She's done nursery, which I won't do but I went on medical calls, which I don't like to do either because it might involve needles.
Martha: Well and volunteering for our local festival. I feel like that's very neighboring because that's really - the epitome of a town is their festival.
Jim: That's right. Small towns. If you really want to have some fun, come to Marionville, Missouri the third weekend in September and enjoy Applefest.
Martha: There you go. And we'll even host you.
Jim: That's right. We will. Absolutely. We will.
Martha: We will. We'll make cookies.
Jim: Okay, yeah.
Martha: I don't know. You've been talking about cookies a lot.
Jim: Speaking of cookies, I got a great deal for you. We talk all about neighboring both in iWork4Him, the book, and iRetire4Him the book. And what's a practical way to really put your faith into action as a neighbor, not only to your neighbors at work, but your neighbors you live next to at night and on weekends. We encourage you to Get a copy of our book, but we encourage you to get an incredible deal.
We've got books in stock and when somebody buys it off Amazon, Amazon just prints it. So we've got books in stock. We'd like to make a deal: buy a copy of iRetire4Him, or iWork4Him for yourself for $50 and get nine extra copies included in the price. Just pay for shipping. And we'll send you 10 copies of iWork4Him all signed by both of us, and you can give them out to your friends in your small group and talk about how to be a neighbor. Because Jesus said the number one commandment, he summarized the Law and the Prophets in two sentences. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.
That's how Jesus summarized the entirety of the Law and the Prophets. How are we doing?
Martha: Okay. So our deal is buy one book for $50 and get nine more free, and you pay the shipping.
Jim: That's right.
Martha: So what a deal! That's an incredible deal. And we'll sign all of them. That's a nice little twist on there, Jim.
Jim: We'll sign them all for you and the money will go to a good cause. Just loosening up some of our inventory and you will not be disappointed. Martha's dad wrote his stories of living out his faith in his work and faith in retirement inside of our books. His name is Ted Hains. His stories are hilarious, just incredible stories. You're going to love reading these books. They are not boring books because you've listened to our podcast. We're not boring.
Martha: Okay, so let's talk about what are some of our goals for 2025. What are some of our goals, Jim?
Jim: We recently took over the control of an old thrift center. That's the third building we're going to work on and it's full of old thrift stuff. We're going to do buy a bin for 10 bucks.
Martha: We're not really sure all the particulars, but
Jim: okay, but we're going to have a, we're going to have
Martha: a sale.
Jim: We're going to have an incredible sale and bless a ton of people with all the stuff that's inside.
Martha: So what you're saying is that's a way to love on our neighbors? By allowing them to get stuff at a good price.
Jim: But I really think we need to plan the potluck.
Martha: Oh, definitely.
Jim: Maybe we do a car wash.
Martha: It's winter. You're silly.
Jim: It should be an ice wash.
Martha: An ice wash. My car today did not need any extra water on it.
Jim: We'll spray your car with water so you won't be able to open the doors tomorrow morning.
Martha: Okay, so let's talk about other goals though because we've met neighbors, but not gotten to spend much time with them.
Jim: So we're doing this. We have a teeny little kitchen. We live in a little house on the prairie. So Martha, what are we going to do so we can have more people over for dinner?
Martha: We're trying to reconfigure our kitchen so that we can have more people sitting down around the table in the inclement weather, when you can't be out.
Jim: (Jim singing) we're gonna eat. Join us.
Martha: Wow. Wow. We have a little sing along.
Jim: We're recording this a little later in the day. It's nighttime. It's late at night we're recording this. We've never done this before, but we thought it'd be fun just to try. (laughing)
Martha: It's a new year. I was thinking about iWork4Him. This is not too much off topic. iWork4Him, it's going to be how old this year?
Jim: 12 years old.
Martha: That's like a pre teen . I was thinking about that. We're not quite teenagers yet, but it's a pre teen.
Jim: So 12 years and over 3 000 produced podcasts. But our goals: potluck, garage sale, big garage sale, because you know, garage sales, your nosy neighbors always come over.
Martha: Your kind neighbors.
Jim: Your nosy kind neighbors want to come over and see who you are. You know what you really want to do? Put your house on the market and meet all your neighbors, because they want to come over and see your house. I'm just kidding.
Martha: But then you're losing your neighbors.
Jim: You don't have to sell it. Just put it on the market so you can meet all your neighbors. What else are we going to do?
Martha: What are some things like in general that we can do? okay, so we talked about at the beginning of this show, people can start by getting to know who their neighbors even are, get their names, I remember Jim, when we were new in a neighborhood.
We had in your toolbox in the garage a pad of paper, and we Like filled in this little map that we made as somebody would walk by and they'd be like, Oh, my name is so and so we'd be like, okay, remember to write that in the map so that we could remember it because when you're new, that's overwhelming to start to get keep track.
Jim: Husbands, wives, kids, if there's at home, get to know their pet's names because really
Martha: they're going to end up in your yard eventually.
Jim: They are. So here's why Martha's sister, Mary and her husband, Gary, they meet people. They got two dogs and they go, Gary walks the neighborhood with the dogs. And that's an instant conversation.
Martha: That people that have dogs already know that, right?
Jim: We don't have pets,
Martha: but we're not getting a dog just so we can.
Jim: Can we get one of those stuffed ones that walks on?
Martha: No, that's okay. So lots of ideas for how you can take that first step and just get to know their name, introduce yourself, and then take it from there and just say Lord, what is it that I can do to further this relationship and what do you want me to do? And don't push your way in but just be graceful and kind and considerate. Maybe it's pulling in their garbage when you take in your garbage can after it's been picked up. Don't wait for them to get home and take in their garbage.
Jim: Shovel their driveway if it's full of snow.
Martha: Shovel it.
Jim: Offer to watch their house when they go away on vacation.
Martha: Water plants, pick their tomatoes for them if they happen to have 10, 000 tomatoes.
Jim: Only you, Martha, have 10, 000 tomatoes every year. All right, but how does this fit in with the conversation of working with God versus for God?
Here's the deal. God loves all of your neighbors just as much as he loves you. And he expects you to love all your neighbors just like he loves all of them. So when you're loving on your neighbors, even sometimes when they're not very lovable, you're working with God. And if you love on your neighbors, even if they're not always receptive, when they have a crisis in your life, in their life, you're gonna be able to be there because you're the first call they're gonna make. You might not know a lot of people. You might not have really deep relationship with your neighbors. But if they know that you're a believer and they know that you care when they have a crisis, you're gonna be the first one they call because they know that they can rely on you because you're different.
They may say, because you're religious, and you don't have to argue with them that night and say, I'm not really religious.
Martha: That's okay, you can just take it.
Jim: That's right. And then explain to them later.
Martha: I had another idea.
Jim: Okay, as we close out the show, Martha's got a final idea.
Martha: Once you get their name, look for them on social media, somewhere where you can connect with them.
Jim: You mean stalk or actually connect?
Martha: No, connect.
Jim: Okay.
Martha: Most people aren't stalking.
Jim: So People think they're connecting when they're actually watching somebody else's Facebook. That is not connecting, that's just watching.
Martha: But you can get to know people that way.
Jim: You can get to know them, but you have to engage them in contact.
Martha: Hey, this is my idea.
Jim: Oh, okay, sorry.
Martha: What I just was going to say is if you friend them or follow them or whatever it is, then you can get to know what's important to them, so it gives you some points of contact. It also gives you a way to message them that might be, for a lot of people, that's a little less threatening. I've gotten many messages from neighbors saying, Hey, have you seen our dog? It's missing or, Hey, did you know that this was happening or did you see this? Whatever it might be that they have a question on or something that's just another point of contact that does give you the opportunity to get to know them better so that you know what their interests are.
If you see, oh, on the weekend they were camping. Now I know why they were gone. And maybe I should. Tell them I can watch their house, whatever it might be. It's just going to help you to get to know your neighbors a little bit better.
Jim: A lot of great ideas, but the bottom line is we need to love our neighbors. We need to love our work neighbors. We need to love our neighbor neighbors, the ones that we live next to on nights and weekends, and here's a great way to get started. Buy all the people in your small group a copy of iWork4Him. Actually, just buy yourself a copy of iWork4Him or iRetire4Him for $50 and get nine copies free. And then just pay for shipping and we'll get those to you and you can give them out to your friends. You can't even go to Subway for four people for $50 and we're talking about changing your life with incredible stories, incredible content, connections to incredible ministries, and really getting to hear our life story in both iWork4Him and iRetire4Him. Go online to iWork4Him. com forward slash bookstore.
Martha: Yes.
Jim: And then you can get a copy, buy one for 50 bucks, get nine free.
Martha: Awesome. We hope that this gives you some new perspective as you look at the new year and you're thinking, what can I do different this year? One of the ways, simply be obedient to what the Lord says and to love our neighbors.
Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace is our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.