Building Community
We’ve been on a grand adventure this summer at church with our Summer Vacation emphasis, Discipling Through Community, (see my post June 10th). This past Sunday, June 29th we continued to see how people are hungry for a feeling of community, of belonging to a larger family. We had a picnic.
Nothing high tech, nothing that flashy, just bouncy houses, a dunking booth, food and squirt guns. We mixed in a lot of food, some music, threatening weather, and did I already say, squirt guns.
Around 550 people came! The really cool part was how many were brand new faces, people I didn’t know. Someone remarked that the crowd looked like a community outing, not an internal church event, because there were so many people that were new. Everyone had a great time. People said, “we need to do this every month”. Every month would be a challenge, but the message was clear. People want more opportunities to spend time together and have fun. We want to hang out with people older than we are. We want to hang out with people that are younger than we are. We want to hear your stories, we want to be a part of your life.
We don’t know where this is going to end. We’re just going to keep providing opportunities for people to build community with each other, and let God do the rest.