ADMITTING YOUR SITE NEEDS HELP

has two programs, the Churchill Way ENP and 5 Star ENP, in addition to 40 hours of security per week from Smith Protective Services.

“It’s all about deterrence. It’s not really about catching people,” says Bruce Wilke, president of the Hillcrest-Forest Neighborhood Association.

The Northaven Park ENP serves more than 300 members in Northaven Park, Royal Hills and Park Forest. When it was established in 2011, residents experienced an average of 10 nonviolent crimes per month, communications director Donna Denise says. That number has decreased to two crimes per month since ENP was enabled. But peace of mind, more than anything, is the program’s largest benefit, she says.

“It’s one thing to react to crime after it happens, but it’s another thing to be proactive and preventing crime where burglars, thieves and mischief-makers can cause problems,” Denise says.

The program also gives officers the opportunity to make extra money within the department, Gates says. Dallas police officers’ base salary ranges from $46,870 to $74,172, according to the department’s website. This is significantly lower than other municipalities, such as Austin, which offers $58,681 to officers upon graduation. The disparity in pay leads some officers to seek additional part-time work.

The ENP program isn’t correlated to employee retention, though, Watson and Mitchell say. Officers who leave Dallas do so because they don’t want to parttime work, not because of opportunities within the department.

The program is beneficial to every neighborhood in Dallas, Mitchell says, regardless of their crime rates.

“We’ve always been low crime, but you can never be too low crime,” Wilke says.

WORSHIP

By GEORGE MASON

Worship

BAPTIST

PARK CITIES BAPTIST CHURCH / 3933 Northwest Pky / pcbc.org

Worship & Bible Study 9:15 & 10:45 Traditional, Contemporary, Spanish Speaking / 214.860.1500

WILSHIRE BAPTIST / 4316 Abrams / 214.452.3100

Pastor George A. Mason Ph.D. / Worship 8:30 & 11:00 am

Bible Study 9:40 am / www.wilshirebc.org

Disciples Of Christ

EAST DALLAS CHRISTIAN CHURCH / 629 N. Peak Street / 214.824.8185

Sunday School 9:30 am / Worship 8:30 am - Chapel

10:50 am - Sanctuary / Rev. Deborah Morgan-Stokes / edcc.org

LUTHERAN

FIRST UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH / 6202 E Mockingbird Lane

Sunday Worship Service 10:30 am / Call for class schedule. 214.821.5929 / www.dallaslutheran.org

METHODIST

FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH RICHARDSON

503 N Central Exwy / fumcr.com / 972.235.8385 / Dr. Clayton Oliphint

8:45, 9:45, 11:00 am sanctuary / access modern worship 11:00am

GRACE UMC / Diverse, Inclusive, Missional

Sunday School for all ages, 9:30 am / Worship, 10:50 am

4105 Junius St. / 214.824.2533 / graceumcdallas.org

PRESBYTERIAN

PRESTON HOLLOW PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH / 9800 Preston Road

Services: 8:15 am Chapel, 9:30 and 11:00 am Sanctuary

Senior Pastor Matthew E. Ruffner / www.phpc.org / 214.368.6348

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

How well do you know your neighbors?

I don’t know mine well enough. But neighbors are more than just the people who live on your block. They are people you work with, whose kids go to school with your kids, who share your humanity yet maybe not your ethnic origin or skin color or buying power.

The elections last fall were just more evidence of our isolation from each other. In my own church, a vote last fall on a matter that proved controversial also proved we didn’t know one another as well as we assumed.

What is happening to us and what is the remedy?

When sociologist Robert Putnam wrote the book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” he pointed out the loss of social subgroups in the rhythm of our week that once provided sympathy for our neighbor and satisfied our need for belonging. We used to bowl in leagues; now we bowl alone (or only with friends and family). We used to have strong civic organizations like Kiwanis Club, Lions Club, Exchange Club, Masons, Shriners, etc. These still exist, but they find it harder to attract new members these days, especially younger ones.

When participation declines in groups that bound us together across demographic lines (yes, I know they once were bastions of segregation but credit efforts over time to change that), the tendency is to fulfill our need for community virtually instead. We spend more time on Facebook than we do face to face.

Facebook knows this and wants to be part of the cure, even as it acknowledges it has contributed to the disease. Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has issued a lengthy manifesto laying out the ways it will seek to promote physical social encounters. “[L]arge percentages of our population lack a sense of hope for the future. It is possible many of our challenges are at least as much social as they are economic — related to a lack of community and connection to something greater than ourselves. As one pastor told me: ‘People feel unsettled. A lot of what was settling in the past doesn’t exist anymore.’

“Online communities are a bright spot, and we can strengthen existing physical communities by helping people come together online as well as offline. In the same way connecting with friends online strengthens real relationships, develop- ing this infrastructure will strengthen these communities, as well as enable completely new ones to form.”

I was not the pastor he mentioned, but I might have been. The church sees this unsettling and feels its effects, too. But religious communities continue to be places of belonging that can be a laboratory for community as unity-in-diversity. That is, if we don’t all hunker down only with “people like us.”

Genuine faith leads us toward others, not away from them. If we are moving away from people, it follows that our faith itself is weakening. If you want a vital faith, get engaged in a spiritual community that challenges you to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

George Mason is pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church. The Worship section is underwritten by Advocate Publishing and the neighborhood businesses and churches listed here. For information about helping support the Worship section, call 214.560.4202.