Here's an interesting detective activity to try sometime. Get in your car and drive to a relatively new housing development — one built in the last 20 years. Get out of your car and walk through the neighborhood jotting down some of your general thoughts and observations about the homes.

Your thoughts might include: they're big; most have 2-3 cars in the driveway; how can so many young families afford such big homes; so this is where minivans go.

Now get in your car and drive to an older neighborhood in the city — one built during the 1930s or 40s. Do the same thing as you walk along the sidewalk.

You might note: the sidewalk is kind of broken and uneven; the quality and care of each home varies widely; looks like a smooth-talkin' Sears siding salesman was through here about 1965; I haven't seen this many cars from the 1980s since … well … the 1980s.

If a thousand people were to complete this activity and mail me their observations, my guess is that very few will have noticed one of the most striking differences between the two distinct generations of neighborhoods.

Most of the older neighborhoods have front porches. Some might be screened in now, but the architecture of the home cannot be concealed. Seventy years ago people built homes with front porches. Today's homes do not have front porches.

This significant difference between the two neighborhoods should have been easy to detect. Unfortunately — and this is part of my point — our society no longer has a place for front porches, so much so that we don't even notice when they're gone.

The front porch is a residential symbol for slower moving, conversation-based daily patterns and relationships. The front porch meant you had time to sit, time for people, time to talk, to do nothing.

Today the corresponding residential symbol is the automatic garage door representing speedy and efficient movement between privacy and scheduled activities. We can't be bothered getting caught up in a conversation with the neighbors, because we only have fifteen minutes at home before we have to head out for the next activity.

There was a time when a neighbor could stop by for a visit without having to call way in advance to "see if you're going to be available and would it be convenient for me to drop by just a for a few minutes I won't take up much of your time because I know you're busy so would the day after Memorial Day of 2004 work?" delivered in a characteristically rambling run-on sentence after the beep of an answering machine Front porch talk-about-everything-under-the-sun relationships have given way to shopping mall "bump into-istic" relationships. "Howyadoinggoodtoseeyabye" is now a one word greeting. Conversational English hardly needs to be taught in schools. Who needs it? Fruit flies last longer.

The front porch. It represents a bygone era. There's no way to measure the impact of the collapse of a front porch culture. But my guess is that it is enormous — and ultimately very harmful.

I am convinced that the apparent rise in emotional problems such as depression in the past couple of generations is due in large part to the absence of time for chat-based relationships. We were designed to chat. Relationships only grow healthy through chat. When chat doesn't happen our souls grow malnourished.

To nourish our need for chat the church often prescribes accountability groups for "sharing" and "open discussion." If you're like me you have a negative visceral reaction every time you are subjected to a "scheduled time" for sharing. Sure, these choreographed times for relationship-building may be of some help, but it often feels like I'm slurping a bottle of castor oil. Another force-fed remedy from a bygone era.
The only true solution is to radically alter our life patterns so there is unscheduled time, and plenty of it, for chat. If the church really wants to help God's people love their neighbors and lead them to Christ, she might start by helping people learn how to rebuild the front porch in their lives. She might try calling us to repent of our busyness and the way we demand others to be quick and busy.

Margie and I just moved into a new home designed for hosting prayer retreats. It took a year to build — a year of significant disruption and disorientation. A year of frustrating delays, because we had to "get on" with our ministry plans. We learned how our "things to do" list can create expectations and time-tables for others and impatience in us. By God's grace we resisted those attitudes, and our builder is still our friend.
Our new house has a front porch — and automatic garage doors. Now the choice is ours. We want to choose front porch relationships. I hope the church helps.