This girl? This girl right here?

She’s an answer to my prayers. For several months I’ve been asking (begging?) God to send me a helper, someone who loves Him and her neighbors like crazy… and just maybe has some experience with techie stuff and tools for sharing this neighbor-love.

In walks Bailey.

She’s a clever millennial who puts her seminary training to use on her own streets. She writes, she speaks, she mommies, she serves. I’ll let her tell you our story, and you can look forward to hearing more of her voice as we collaborate on new tips, tools and techniques for loving your neighbor… without ever being weird.

When Social Media Connections Actually Connect

by Bailey Hurley

Two years ago, I moved into a new neighborhood with my husband. As ambitious newlyweds, we wanted to connect with our neighbors and intentionally seek out opportunities to invite them into life with us. The idea seems good in theory, but we were a bit hesitant about knocking on folks’ doors to see if they would like to be friends. So, I turned to my favorite resource—books.

Amy’s book, How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird, sounded like the exact thing we needed to get started on creating relationships with those next door without scaring them off. As I was reading the book, I took to Twitter to let Amy know how much I was enjoying her words. Amy responded back and I immediately squealed and told my husband because how often does an author respond to your Twitter musings?!

I was elated.

Actually, I was beyond elated. As a writer myself, I deeply wanted to connect with other writers for wisdom and partnership in this difficult call of sharing God’s truth through the written word.

A year later, Amy and I reconnected and she blessed me by writing a guest post for my blog. Overwhelmed by Amy’s constant generosity, I reached out months later to ask how I could serve her and her ministry. As God’s timing goes, Amy was looking for a partner-in-crime to assist How to Love Your Neighbor.

So, two years after “meeting” on Twitter, we had our first phone call and continued this new friendship.

We are excited for the way God can use two women in different seasons of life to bless this community and your neighbors. We are brainstorming, planning, and often finding ourselves on creative tangents about fun resources just for you.

I’m learning alongside with you as I continue to pursue a friendship with my neighbors and I hope my experiences, good and not-so-good, will be a testimony to God’s design for us to “love one another” (1 John 3:11).