Book Review: Neighborhood Mission Trips for Everyday Christians

 

Neighborhood Mission Trips for Everyday Christians, reimagines the mission trip not as a distant excursion but as a walk across the street. It’s a book for ordinary Christians who want to live missionally, starting in their neighborhood. 

This book is a practical, devotional-style guide that empowers Christians to see their own neighborhood as a meaningful mission field. Written for individuals, small groups, and churches seeking to reimagine outreach, this book brings the structure of a short-term mission trip into everyday life—without passports or plane tickets.

Combining Scripture, personal stories, devotionals, and practical guides, this book equips individuals and churches to cultivate deeper relationships, overcome social isolation, and love their literal neighbors in tangible ways. This is not a theological treatise or a feel-good collection of ideas. It’s a blueprint. Readers are walked through a week-long neighborhood mission trip complete with daily themes, suggested activities, Scripture-based devotionals, and long-term strategies for building belonging in their community.

Drawing from the author’s 20+ years as a community development specialist, a deacon and a mission leader in his local church, along with leadership in neighboring initiatives, this book integrates Biblical teaching, spiritual formation, and hands-on action. It offers a six-part framework that includes:

  • A theological and cultural rationale for neighborhood-based mission
  • Daily devotionals and Scripture-based reflections
  • Practical activities and schedules for a week-long mission trip at home
  • Tools to overcome fear, isolation, and “retreat mentality”
  • Resources for churches to launch a neighboring movement

What sets this book apart is its hybrid nature: part devotional, part workbook, part community guide. It fills a unique niche at the intersection of Christian living, missional discipleship, and community engagement. Churches often emphasize global missions or internal ministries—this book helps them activate everyday believers right where they live. It resonates strongly with books by my friends Alan Briggs (Staying Is the New Going), Dave Runyon (The Art of Neighboring), and practitioners with movements like The Hopeful Neighborhood Project.

Purchase your own copy of the book today on Amazon.


Written by David L. Burton

MORE INFORMATION

Take the Engaged Neighbor pledge and become part of a movement! The pledge outlines five categories and 20 principles to guide you toward becoming an engaged neighbor. Sign the pledge at https://nomoregoodneighbors.com. Individuals who take the pledge do get special invitations to future events online and in person. Contact the blog author, David L. Burton via email at dburton541@yahoo.com.

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