Discovering a Posture of Proximity

NOTE: Take a moment to read my top 30 tweets from "The Power of Proximity" after reading this review.

My journey into proximity started when we began attending Fellowship Bible Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado over a decade ago. This missional community was different than other churches we had attended. Instead of going "out there" to serve, our church was engaging with our community and its needs at every turn. Whether it was at-risk kids, broken people hiding in the suburbs, tough bikers or struggling homeless families, I watched God mend hearts. While our family was only engaged in some very targeted ways, being a part of this body gave us a new perspective on living among people in need and walking alongside others on life's journey.

I knew there was something powerful about walking alongside those in need in a more incarnation way but I didn't always have words to describe the power of what was going on. It wasn't until I attended Bryan Stevenson's Global Leadership Summit talk in 2017 that I got a word to describe the posture of service. That word was "proximate."

As my wife and I were on a sabbatical following the Global Leadership Summit, that word kept coming back to me as a significant idea that I needed to study further. It was during that time that I had a conversation with my friend, Michelle Warren. She and I had worked together on a refugee advocacy event and I had appreciated her work. But when she told me about her new book "The Power of Proximity," she had my attention. I knew God was challenging me to stop, read and learn.

"The most profound move you can make to address pain and injustice is to become proximate to it." Michelle Ferrigno Warren

The most profound lesson from this deeply personal book is simply that proximity makes a tangible difference in our ability to impact someone's life. While that might seem obvious, our society is living in a very different place generally. We retreat behind garage doors, phone screens and tinted car glass to avoid the needs of others. With all of the amazing advances in technology, we have found many ways to stay comfortable, keep pain at arms length and avoid getting involved.

This book challenges that posture head on. Michelle explains that, "Proximity to the poor does not just reveal what we don't know, it teaches us things no article, conference, class or book can convey." That idea is foundational to her approach. She challenges the reader that simply thinking about the problem will never allow us to make a difference. For that we have to get close, get messy and take a risk.

She goes on to eliquently make the case for why poverty and injustice must be addressed . . . both at a personal level and an institutional level. And it is the very proximity she advocates that makes her case. It is clear that as we become proximate to the pain and injustice of the world, we must respond.

Michelle's personal story is interwoven throughout the book and it is clear that she has lived her topic. It would be so ironic if an author wrote about proximity but did not live it in a meaningful way. That is not the case with this book. She has lived a life of sacrificial service and is now teaching us out of the joy, pain and daily realities she has experience.

As she walks through the challenge of taking a proximate posture, she recognizes how scary it will be for many and how much fear there may be. I love this quote as she challenges people to move beyond fear, "Choosing courage is doing the next hard thing in front of you, not worrying about the consequences or what others are doing."

But, importantly, she goes beyond the personal action of the individual to talk about injustice within systems. I'm a big picture person and she widens the lens of the issue to talk about how proximity can help people to address macro problems in society that lead to injustice. But if you don't like to think about the big picture, she has plenty of insight into what you can do on a community level as well. She balances both views well.

Finally, she ends with a focus on hope. I'm proud of Michelle for ending this way when so many others end with a hard hitting challenge for people to "get with the program." She rightly recognizes that no amount of cajoling will move people into proximity. It is only a deep hope in what God is doing in the individual lives of each person on this planet that can mobilize us to leave safety, comfort and the known for the proximate.

“It is with eyes wide open to the pain, stagnation, brokenness, and oppression in my proximity to the poor that I wake up in the morning and drink my big glass of hope.” Michelle Ferrigno Warren