I was attending to some end-of-the-week work on Friday when I got a text from my church-planting coach (Rob Rynders, who is a true gem):
“Buy this book (physical copy) asap.”
Rob doesn’t typically use imperatives unless there’s a good reason. So I bought the book right then and there. (Yes, I gave Jeff Bezos my money, but it was for a good reason!) By late morning the next day, the book had arrived. I jumped right into it to see what Rob was talking about. As per usual, he had not led me astray. Get Together is a book by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto who together make up People & Company. They specialize in what it looks like to build meaningful communities. Whether they center around running, entrepreneurship, non-profit justice work, or any number of other things, these guys show the ways that people come together to accomplish something.
The more I dug into this book, the more excited I became. Front Porch is all about bringing people together in order to diminish loneliness and build stronger neighborhoods. This book has some great tools that will help us along our way.
Part One is Spark the Flame (an unfortunate metaphor, given the wildfires) which is all about what it looks like to get people excited about and on-board for the adventure. The biggest take-aways:
- It’s going to take some bold, brave people with an audacious vision to get something started.
- You can be a part of that—you are bold and brave.
- Meaningful things don’t start because of one person doing things for people. It’s not about doing for, it’s about doing with.
So that’s the invitation to you—to come and do something amazing with us. You don’t have to live in Mountain View or even the Bay Area to be a part of this. We’re looking to equip one another to build strong neighborhoods wherever we are.
If you happen to be in the Mountain View area, you can join us for Coffee on Us this Sunday. If not, we hope to see you next Sunday for our Online Neighboring Gathering.
We hope to see you soon!
In Community,
Sam