July was the big block party. We were all very excited because we knew at the very least we were going to have fun. I borrowed my godchildren for the weekend ages 4, 3 and 2 since none of us had kids so we needed a kid element to get the families out.
It was a great success! We had over 60 people come out that were not part of our family. The washers tournament was the biggest pull that brought everyone together confirming that we do in fact live in the south.
Everyone was so grateful that someone had put this together. There were neighbors that had lived in the neighborhood 20, 30, 40+ years who said it had been about a decade since they had had a block party but that they had done them every year for a very long time before that. The newer neighbors were glad at the opportunity to meet other people in the area.
After the party was all said and done we realized we really did more work than was necessary. Very little of the planned activities actually happened in the time that we planned them. Kids pretty much just played with everything the whole time. Water was a big hit. We made WAY too much food because most people brought out their own food. Even our music became obsolete when the neighbors brought out their karaoke.
Block party!
As had become our rhythm, after a major event, we did some resting. We took the month off in July from organized time which meant no huddles and no family dinners. We officially stepped out of Robert’s huddle because we needed to focus energy on our family as opposed to transitioning the church. Not only did we want to rest and prune back to make space and conserve energy for the fruit that would come, but we also were all going to be on various vacations for the month of July. Also, with the bakery on the table, we wanted to take a step back and pray into what the next season would look like since it was potentially much different than what we had been doing up until now.
One of the “vacations” that Jarred and I went on was the Vineyard Global Gathering. There was so much from that week that God did in our hearts, confirming we were to plant a church, the blessing of our family and connecting with other TOM members (only one of whom was at the Vineyard conference. The other three were just in the area so we visited them).
Robert signed up for a side meeting about missional communities. He had three extra tickets so he asked those of us in his huddle to come having one representative from each household. It ended up being me, Robyn and my mom. At this meeting, we realized that the Vineyard did not officially have anything to say about missional communities so we were at the “Damn Historic Meeting” that started the conversation. Of the 20+ people that were there, 3.5 of us were doing missional communities. Robyn and I were two of them, mom was the .5. When we got back from the meeting and I talked with Jarred about it, we realized that we had accidentally fallen into the forefront of the MC movement with the Vineyard. That was the genesis of this blog.
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