Welcome To GroupLink
Welcome to GroupLink ! This is the place where we brainstorm and interact together regarding the value of community and group life. Andy Stanley and Bill Willits, in their book "Creating Community," compare community to the front porch of our homes, as opposed to the back porch. Question: What takes place on the front porch that doesn't happen on the back porch? What takes place on the back porch that doesn't happen on the front porch? What is the value of having both front and back porches, when building community?
posted by GroupLink at
7:18 AM
2 Comments:
The front porch is where we interact with the "outside world." That is, those who are not sufficiently known well enough to enter into our private lives. They can be neighbors, visitors, acquaintances from work, solicitors, etc., but the fact remains that most of us feel that they have not "earned" the passage onto the back porch yet. Maybe our thought process is wrong and we should be full of grace and mercy but, in today's world, we have to stay somewhat protected as well. The front porch serves as the entry into our homes and into our hearts as it is not a physical place but an operational/pscyho-logical one. We make assessments mentally and socially about when people have transitioned between the outer circle and the inner circle...oops, mixed metaphors on you...between the front porch and the back porch.
Both front and back porches are necessary to our community/ies as one opens the door and the other deepens the connection...without the open door, we become segregated and stale, losing any contact with community and, more importantly, people; without the deepening fellowship, we lose those who come in by not being open and real with them...welcome without friendship and love is like a vacant lot in the city-- people would love to move in but they don't because of the emptiness that they find there!
That's the college boy in me still coming out...I'm going to get rid of him someday and talk like a real person!! Not that there's anything wrong with college, folks...don't string me up for that comment!
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