musings.from.the.porch

Here are my notes from our planning meetings for next quarter. Don’t hesitate to talk with any of us to get more insight. Bottomline for most of us is that The Porch is something that is satisfying something very deep in many of us - even if we cannot entirely tell why; that we are being challenged more and learning more about Jesus than we have in a long time; that we don’t have this figured out, still learning. And I would add that things like this and like Alpha are disruptive to status quo, and that forces us all to have to think, which is interesting and scary at the same time.

Below is what we covered about Communication, Schedules, Sustainability, and Thinking Long Term.

Do you have any comments? Use the comments link below

Communication

• Personal Invitation
• The format of the Porch allows for / perhaps encourages people to come and go. Building the community will involve a genuine community and experience that is more compelling that other activities. In this environment, it involves taking the active step of inviting others to the blessing of the Porch.  
• Our desire is to see overall growth in the community of people who are following God. This means we will continue to focus on involving people who are not normally part of the “regular church.” 
• Publicity
• We need someone(s) with a good aesthetic to step up to help with communication, publicity, the website.
• We need to create a simpler message that really describes what the Porch is about. 

 Schedule

• Porch Community Nights: Last Saturday of Each Month
• Decision. The last Saturday of each month will be a community night. We will encourage people to join in smaller groups to have fun and fellowship in a birds of the feather format.  
• Saturday nights
• Are Saturday nights still a good time for The Porch? Is Sunday a habit or a requirement? The answer depends. However, for the time being, there is no other time for The Porch to meet. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to move The Porch to Sunday sometime or to start another instance of The Porch on Sunday. This requires a fair amount of discussion with MST and staff if that were to happen.
• That said,  Porch people who are on WCUMC staff have pretty much determined that they cannot continue coming on Saturday night. They are expected to be present on Sundays, and so feel that Saturday is just too much. So, Jason and Stacey and Nick and Megan will no longer be with us. They are sad about this, but it is what they need to do.
• Decision. We decided that we would try to continue on Saturday nights for the next quarter and then see.
• Continuing the Sermon on the Mount
• For the next quarter, we will continue the discussion of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, using the same progressional dialogue style. 
• Introducing Prayer
• We will begin to introduce prayer into Porch meetings. We aim for prayer that is jargon-free, instructs in genuine conversation with God, invites the Holy Spirit to move, allows for listening. We will begin this in conjunction with the Sermon on the Mount

Sustainability and Working Together

• Meals
• Several weeks ago, we agreed that the meal was an important part of the Porch, giving the change to build relationships, catch up, get started at a good time. Preparing meals has been a lot of work for the 3 people who have been doing it.
• Decision. We are going to look into sharing this with Alpha to spread the load. This will begin in late January. In the meantime, we will continue having Porch people doing the work.
• Jobs to do
• Speakers. We need two more people to lead the talks, to join the teaching rotation.  
• Night Of. There are still other jobs to be done to support the community, including setup and takedown, being an “Announcer Guy”, helping with worship, etc. We will ask people, individually, to help rather than passing around impersonal signup sheets.
• Publicity. We need someone who can step up to help with publicity, with creating the easily-understood message of what the Porch is, with building, maintaining the web site.

Thinking longer term

• Starting a new group takes a while. My read is that it simply takes a lot of work to start a new group, especially something as “experimental” as this. Long term commitment and being able to think outside the box is required.
• My friend in Indonesia says that he’s been at community building for over 10 years. “we are starting to come together well now :-)”
• This is something outside the normal institutional requirements, and that may be a fairly big impediment. So, we need to keep praying and thinking. I got dinged last Saturday for not being part of the “real” church, which is symptomatic of this.
• The hard questions for leaders is to ask, “What expectations did you have when this started?” and “What do we believe God wants us to do?”

Still to discuss

• Communication
• Kim can get cards produced at a good price. But they need to be at business card level?
• What should the words be for the card? What should the words be on the reader board 
• Status on planning for a first service project
• Kim suggested the loose change for victimized children (International Justice Ministries), which is what Crossfire is doing. Share the resources
• Woodinville cleanup

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