Denver Seminary

My Giving Opportunities With the insights you have gained about your giving personality, we hope you'll be encouraged to excel in the grace of giving to the work of God's kingdom. Among the opportunities to support church and ministry organizations, we invite you to prayerfully consider Denver Seminary, too, according to your giving personality. THE DRIVER – COMPETITIVE Giving Strength: Will act boldly and write the check Denver Seminary's 959 current students will have an average debt of $40,089 upon joining our 4,841 alumni after graduation. Scholarships support these students to pursue God's mission and reduce their need for student loans. THE ANALYST – METHODICAL Giving Strength: Passion for details and finding solutions Give us a call, and we can go through the details of Denver Seminary, answer any questions you have, and share our vision for growth. We'll give you a copy of our annual report and even buy you a cup of coffee! THE CHAMPION – SPONTANEOUS Giving Strength: Committed champion The people you introduce us to are important. Maybe this season, you could bring a friend to an event, tell someone about Denver Seminary, or encourage someone to sign up for classes. THE ENCOURAGER – HUMANITARIAN Giving Strength: Committed encourager We think you'd like to know about our alumni and how they are serving Christ. For starters, meet some of them in this magazine: Brian Gray on page 7 and Benson and Rochelle Ngatia on page 16. Denver Seminary will host a Women Doing Well Conference on September 18, 2015. For more information, contact: Jessica Brown 303.357.5891 jessica.brown@denverseminary.edu CHURCH ENGAGE 11 The Art of Neighboring When Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself," what if he meant that we should love our actual neighbors—you know, the people who live right next door to us? Jesus boiled the contents of the entire Bible down to two commands: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. In the book of Luke, a man responds to this teaching by looking for a loophole. The text says, "In order to justify himself, he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'" Nearly 2,000 years later, many of us are still looking for a loophole. It's tempting to define the word neighbor in a way that fits into the life we are already living. For most of my life, when I read the story of the Good Samaritan, I made a mental leap to, Everyone is my neighbor, and since I'm involved in a lot of good things, I'm basically neighboring all the time. However, when we aim for everything, we often hit nothing. And when I aim to love everyone, I end up loving very few. My awakening to the power of neighboring occurred a few years ago when I was in a room full of pastors and leaders who were trying to discern the best way to serve our city. We asked our mayor for his opinion, and he told us that the smartest thing we could do would be to start a neighboring movement. He pointed us back to Scripture by saying, "The answers to our city's biggest problems lie in the strength of the relationships that neighbors have with one another." That statement prompted our pastors network to challenge the believers in our city to start a neighboring movement. The outcomes have been significant. Great things happen when believers commit to take the next step with their literal neighbors. Jesus was a genius. When he was asked to condense the Scriptures into one command, he gave us a simple, strategic plan with the potential to change neighborhoods and cities overnight. Now all we have to do is do it. Dave Runyon EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CITYUNITE Dave is the co-author of The Art of Neighboring. For more information, visit www.artofneighboring.com.

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