My neighbour, who lives directly behind me, who also does the exact same job I do at another church, had a Christmas open house at his place so that we could meet, spend time, and get to know more of our neighbours in our complex. We had a good time, didn't really get many of our neighbours out, but some did come.
It's the third or fourth time we do this and we've gotten to know some of our neighbours better, it always seems that when we start there's a real awkwardness about the moment, but eventually people connect on this or that thing and things warm up.
At the end of the day, I don't think once or twice a year thing works. Relationship is an all the time thing. I walked away feeling like we need to spend more time together if we're really going to develop relationships with people. However, as my friend Chris (at our greenroom) as noted in a recent blog, in order to do build those kind of relationship we need to have the time to do it...and in order to have that time...we need to be freed up from a lot of the business that we've had in church. But that's another post.
Posted by ed | TrackBack