Around 18 months ago, when Alternate[Or], our missional community,  first started meeting, one of our team suggested we have a regular social time - a chance for everyone to hang out and get to know each other a bit better.

Funnily enough that person never came back, but we took up the suggestion and for the first month or so 4 of us met fortnightly at the beach for a Sunday afternoon BBQ.

Soon some of the young guys I was associated with through my informal mentoring and work in social services, began to come along and join us for a  feed.

What started as a way of the team getting to know each other better fast became a means of engaging the disengaged youth I was involved with, in an aspect of healthy community quite new to them.

I began to see this as a means of providing social and emotional support for these guys.  Of connecting informally - away from the counselling room or the court house or other professional environments.  A couple of our un-churched friends also cottoned onto the benefits and began to join in along side us as we tried to model an example of healthy community - no drugs, no expectations, just good food and a chance to hang out.

18 months down the road things have progressed well.  We have a solid core of regulars - unemployed, marginalised youth, a couple of single dad families (also from the margins of society) and an expanding network of friends of the original partakers - coming along and joining in as trust and friendship is conferred.

While this has proved a fantastic way of building friendships I am beginning to feel like the time has come to re-think our Social Sunday BBQs.  Half the team (the Christians) have not accepted it or the people who come along and don’t or won’t participate.  This is a struggle for Alyssa and me, particularly given the core purpose  of our community - Mission, with a healthy emphasis on this as a corporate activity.  One of our most committed “servants” (those of us who participate in order to serve those who come) is not a believer.

One member of the team has left because of the BBQ (it didn’t meet their needs) and the murmuring from others is that the BBQ should be shelved.

Today is Social Sunday - it’ll be my first in 6 weeks because  of my surgery.  I enjoy these times and feel the need to build more into them - to use them as a basis or springboard for other opportunities for action in community and among those we serve, but I don’t know how viable this will be as a “community” activity if half the “community” won’t join in!