Modern Day Moats

I think that the modern day moat is a front lawn, the draw bridge is the garage door and the carriage is the car. If you stare straight ahead driving past your neighbor’s house and don’t look at them, you can pull right into your garage and not have any reason to make contact of any kind. That is, until they behave badly like, for example, playing loud music.  Then someone picks up the phone and calls the Police, “911. What is your emergency?”

One of the more common 911 emergency calls is for… you guessed it, loud music. People do not always share the same appreciation for a particular style of music played at high volumes. For whatever reason, it seems right to call a police officer to tell a neighbor to turn down the music rather than ton walk next door and ask in person. I guess 30 feet of lawn is too far to walk. That or there are alligators hiding in the tall grass. Thus my job is to deal with one grown adult who calls the cops to tell another grown adult to turn music down. Really?

People calling 911 tell the dispatchers that they want no contact. That means I am supposed to walk up to the door of some stranger, who is doing nothing other than listening to loud music on a Saturday afternoon, and tell them they are in violation of disturbing the peace.

“Who called on me?”

“I can’t tell you.” I might as well say, “Neener, neener, neener!”

Sorry but this is not the job I signed up for. After going to the same loud music calls in the same neighborhoods over and over, week after week. I had enough. This had to stop. It was time to drop the drawbridge, cross the moat and storm the castle. 

What is it about people separated by twenty feet of grass that were unable to talk for 15 seconds? “Hey neighbor, can you turn your music down please?” “Sure.”

So I take a different approach with neighbors that can’t get along. I go right to the front door of the person calling to complain:

“Hi, are you the person that called about the loud music?”

“Yes.”

“How many times have you called the police for loud music?”

“Four or five.”

“Have you ever gone next door to introduce yourself?”

“No.”

“Let’s go right now.”

They usually look a little surprised but I don’t give them a choice. This is the procedure we use for these types of calls. We walk across the 30 feet of grass from one castle to the other.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Who is it?”

“Hi, this is Mike Aspland from the Police Department. I wanted to introduce you to your next door neighbor, Joe. He wanted to ask you a favor.”

“Uh, Hi. Can you turn down the music?

“Sure no problem.”

Ladies and gentlemen we have a relationship!  Cops never have to go back there again.

What is it about our culture that says it isn’t ok to ask someone to quiet down? Will they be offended? Will they not like us? Will they, God forbid, get to know us, start a friendship, go to church with us and maybe accept Jesus?  

Jesus talked about dealing with neighbors 2,000 years ago.

Luke 11: 5-10, “Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Do you know your neighbor? Don't wait for something annoying to happen before you venture out across the drawbridge. 

Next Services 100 Miles

This is a story about a road sign and a trunk load of evidence. How do you get rid of a bunch of evidence that you can’t throw in a dumpster? Burn it at a power generation plant that converts trash into electricity. It’s that simple. The catch is it requires two people to spend most of a day driving to the central valley of California where the plant operates off of Interstate 5 at the Crows Landing exit.

The facility is enormous with semi and garbage trucks dumping everything from trash to loads of expired candy, unsold furniture sets and anything that can burn. A huge crane grabs all this stuff and drops it into a hopper ten yards by ten yards wide that feeds into a furnace. The stuff burns, the heat turns turbines and electricity is pushed out onto the grid. We lugged our evidence to the side of the hopper, dropped it over and watched it slide into the pit of fire. 

We finished up and headed back to the police department. Somewhere along the way, I noticed a sign that read: “Next Services 100 Miles.”

I get an idea.

What if we provided police services to people using the principal: Next Services 100 Miles? 

Next Services 100 Miles captures the expectation that we should work diligently to ensure people understand the criminal justice process, leave the Department with their questions answered and don't get the government run around. We take a few extra moments to explain the “why” when we respond to requests, answer questions or provide help. It doesn’t matter if a person enters our building through the front door or the jail door.

Next Services 100 Miles means that “customers” will not have to go anywhere else for answers. We might send people to other places for services but we make sure they understand the process and what to expect. We offer more than a business card to people who come to the front counter or the booking counter.

In the book God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis, he responds to a colleague who had questions about one of his essays. Lewis wrote, “I come into the matter at all only because my answers fail to satisfy him. And it is embarrassing to me, and possibly depressing to him, that he should, in a manner, be sent back to the same shop which has once failed to supply the goods.” Lewis understood the principal of Next Services 100 Miles.

The Apostle James calls us to action as a demonstration of our faith. James specifically talks about doing more than saying, “I will pray for you.”

James 2:14-17 “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

1 Peter 3:15 says that we should, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." Our challenge is to be ready to act after we give an answer. Ask to pray with a person beyond telling them you will. Know where to refer someone who needs food, clothing or shelter if they ask for help. Explain why you believe in Jesus. Treat everyone as if they have to travel 100 miles to get the next answer, the next meal or the next opportunity to meet Jesus.