About a year ago our community decided we needed a sign out front. We wanted to declare our presence to the neighborhood. We purchased a yard sign that says Sellwood Faith Community and we started our weekly practice of writing positive, loving messages on a chalkboard. We wanted to be a hopeful contributor to our neighborhood and it was one more way of telling people about who we are. We knew that it was an incredible long shot that anyone would ever come to one of our events because of the sign, but more likely that someone we had already engaged with would recognize us and be more interested in what we were doing.
We knew this because in all of our training and seminary classes the statistics on evangelism show that relationships and repetition are the most fruitful ways to connect to people. You have to tell your story again and again. You have to listen deeply to the people around you. And you have to invite people into the places where their story and yours meet. This is hard work yet I’ve seen the fruit of it from our chalkboard in people taking pictures of it, of the comments I get from friends at our daughter’s school, and just seeing someone smile as they walk past reading it. We’ve had people come to dinner or worship who have found it very helpful to have the yard sign so that they know they are in the right place. It can be intimidating to walk up to someone’s house not sure if you are in the right place. Much like office or sanctuary signs in a traditional building the yard sign indicates place. It’s a small detail that helps us be hospitable. Paying attention to these kinds of details makes it just a little easier for people to risk coming here and trying out this community. And sometimes you get a holy spark of luck.
According to the city of Portland about 16,000 cars pass our house each day. Most mornings a steady stream of vehicles sits idling in front of our door. This means that in the time the signs have been out over 5 million people have passed by. And this week we had one of those 5 million people be that long shot and decide that here was something worth looking at more deeply. She googled us, read past blog entries, and decided to risk a little further and come to dinner. The odds are terrible. One out of 5 million. And yet this is why we try. We put ourselves out there in all the ways that make sense and we share our story over and over and listen as much as we can until something clicks somewhere. This is the hard work of hope. One person described it as being water on stone. The drips over time change the stone. Consistent yet gentle, persistent yet slow, this is the work we do here. I am so thankful to see the perceptible, yet slight difference we are making. Hope is in the works.
-Eilidh
Recent Comments