A Neighborhood Pork Roast…
At Community of Joy, we really want to be a place where relationships matter…. so when we renovated a church into a ministry center in a great diverse neighborhood, we set out to meet the neighbors.  Yesterday, Sept. 23, we held a Pork Roast after our worship gathering for the neighbors. We went door to door in a two block radius of our building two weeks ago and handed out or left invitations to the festivities… the invite also included worship.  We also put out a large lighted sign inviting the neighborhood.  Everything was free… we also challenged our folks to invite 3 people to come. I am happy to say that we doubled our normal worship attendance yesterday and had neighbors coming from all directions…. don’t know how many came… I would venture to say aroudn 150 – 200 in all….check out my blog for more info and pics…. www.martinhutchison.blogspot.com.  There was no agenda other than saying we are happy to be here and we want to be a positive force in the hood. What are others of you doing to engage your communities?
24 Sep 2007 Martin Hutchison
Awesome, Martin! God is good!! I hope your neighborhood made a BIG impact and that those who visited will return to check-out your congregation again.
How’s the new service schedule working out? I read your blog that attendance is up! Do you have any stories to share for others who are thinking about two services?
I would love to hear how others are engaging your communities, too!
Jeff Glass
Martin and all,
I’d like to share about an event called Light the Night. Instead of a Halloween alternative for our own church kids (which just seems purposeless to me), it’s a community event.
Basically, it’s like a big, free festival: games with free candy and toy prizes, cotton candy, hot chocolate, puppet shows, Veggie Tales running, and lots of interaction. The key is to hold it at a home – not a church parking lot. Get into the community instead of bringing them to your turf.
We light up the place with Christmas lights, bank lights, flood lights, etc., to convey the message that Jesus is the light while celebrating life and light. Every child is given a small bag with accountability information on who is sponsoring the event, a tract, etc.
When we do it, we put everyone in the church on a team according to spiritual gifting: administration, service, evangelism, intercession, etc. to help them see how to use their gifts as a body.
While we saw the benefits of training people in their gifts while spreading the message of Jesus Christ, we were surprised at the amount of community building that took place. Parents waiting for their children start visiting with one another and building relationships. Because it’s a small event geographically, people know they are meeting neighbors rather than random people who may drive in from the next county for a parking lot event.
We very intentionally don’t advertise it as we want to impact a relationally sized area. We’re new to this congregation so we are doing it at one place this year for training looking forward to three sites next year for our church alone. We’re inviting area pastors to drop in and consider hosting some sites of their own next year.
The idea is to get more homes doing it, not making it bigger. Those who began it promote having all the churches in the community doing it with a sense of continuity, rather than making it a mega-event.
Anyone who’d like to know more or wants to see pictures, just ask!
Blessings,
Lisa G. Yoder