We’re socially isolated. We can’t gather in groups. We’re working from home. We can’t even go to church.
How are Christians meant to express their faith in these strange days of COVID-19?
It’s tough, I agree, but there are plenty of ways to love your neighbors, even during lockdown. Here’s 35 simple ways to love your neighbor as yourself, even at a distance.
PRAY
1. Do a regular prayer walk in your neighborhood, praying for each household.
2. Pray in general for those infected, those at risk, and for decision makers.
3. Offer to pray for your neighbors.
4. Host a front yard prayer meeting (appropriately distanced, of course).
ENCOURAGE PEOPLE
5. Chalk messages on the sidewalk at night so it surprises people in the morning.
6. Set up a chalkboard in front of your house and write messages for passersby.
7. Talk to your neighbors as you walk (keeping your required distance, of course).
8. Join or launch a front window bear hunt for the local kids.
9. Begin podcasting or blogging to share your thoughts and encourage others.
10. Leave a note for your local postman.
GIVE TO OTHERS
11. Launch a street Facebook or WhatsAp page to share needs, ideas, and encouragement.
12. Deliver gifts (hampers, toilet paper bouquets, cookies) to your neighbors’ doorsteps.
13. Rally people at your local supermarket to buy extra groceries for hampers for those in need.
14. Offer one of your spare rooms to a backpacker or asylum seeker for free or cheap board.
15. Ask people to donate laptops and tablets for families who are homeschooling and don’t have access to technology.
16. If you live in an apartment, lower a basket by rope filled with comfort items for the homeless
17. Raise funds for a cause using an online donations platform
18. Try to form a coalition of pastors, business leaders, community leaders, and others to help meet the needs of families and those in financial difficulty
19. Set up a little pantry outside your home and fill it with toilet paper and non-perishables
20. Set up a community street pantry that everyone can donate to.
SERVE OTHERS
21. Drop notes in your neighbors’ letterboxes offering practical help.
22. Offer to do the shopping (including the pharmacy) for your elderly neighbors.
23. Add a ‘love your neighbor’ page on your church website where neighbors can offer help and seek help
24. Intentionally support small local businesses.
25. Volunteer at a local non-profit or charity.
26. Clean up trash from the streets and parks.
27. Write letters to politicians to release asylum seekers who are now at higher risk of getting sick.
SOCIALIZE
28. Make a list of all the people you’ve wanted to catch up with and haven’t, and then call or message them to check in on how they’re doing.
29. If you’re musical, hold a balcony concert, or a sidewalk or driveway concert.
30. Hold a “Dinner on the Driveway” night for everyone in your street.
31. Host a virtual dinner party using Zoom.
32. Project a film onto the side of a building for your neighbors to watch from their front yards.
by Brugel Creative
11 thoughts on “35 ways to love your neighbors right now”
So good! Thanks Mike.
Our church is posting a weekly Love Your Neighbour challenge, this should give us plenty to work with
Lots of families doing it tough. Trying to work . Home duties. Tutoring kids.
Lots of support needed for them.
Make a meal for your family or family in yr neighborhood.
Meals for those in your community.
Absolutely fabulous ideas. Thanks so much for thinking them up. Someone has posted this to my Random Acts Of Kindness Group which is just wonderful. https://www.facebook.com/groups/687763461707232/
Hey Margaret wouldn’t it be wonderful if all church members took some of these ideas and began using the around their homes
Thanks for all the hope and encouragement. Jesus reveals himself through us!
Please note that it would be illegal throughout Australia to do #4 (host a front yard prayer meeting) and possibly #1 (do a regular prayer walk in your neighborhood – unless the prayer is incidental to the walk, which is legally allowed as exercise).
Bring someone into your home who may be asymttomatic with covid????
I can’t even bring my own cystic fibrosis son into my rural home to get him out of his apartment in Toronto by his own request.
HELLLOOOO.
Oh well, then, you’ll just have to choose from the other 34 ideas.
Many great ideas to choose from and get to work.
Thank you so much!
Wonderful ideas. Loved the TP BOUQUET ! Stranger in your home – NOT !
Add : ” Distant Social Hour ” Take your folding chair and drinks to Friends / neighbors
driveway or deck to toast demise of CoVid !
I appreciate the suggestions & don’t quite understand why so many complain about this one or that one. It’s quite simple, use your brain & come up with a few others that will not be illegal, dangerous to your health or that won’t scare you. The whole point, my beloved is to be pro active, to initiate a good will effort to help others in your circle of influence, or to initiate a chain reaction of good deeds in your neighborhood… Don’t like all 35 of these ideas, do 1 or 2, rarely will anyone try to do all 35 of them, so please; be kind to our other readers who need hope & to the writers who took the time to inspire us, it’s the least we can do!
THANK YOU, Michael Frost. These are all wonderful ideas… I have a few of my own that I am putting into practice, slowly, but trying, as I too meet resistance, lol. Stay happy & in the Lord, my Friend!