First of all the disclaimer: I am about to mention negative feelings I have about a place that many of you love. This is not a commentary on that place, your choice to live there, or anything like that! Keep in mind too, my criticism is very specific and I hope the way you live proves me wrong!
I have built quite a few homes, not as a builder but as a carpenter. I have built most of those homes in subdivisions or housing developments whatever you choose to call them. Though I loved the inside of many of the homes we built I couldn’t stand the outside… Not because I thought they were ugly but because I thought the outside of every one of them portayed a lie… I would wager that not many of us like lies, being lied to, or any kind of falsehood in general. God doesn’t talk about lying in favorable terms in the Bible, my parents hated it and the times I have tried to slip a half truth or incomplete truth past my wife have not ended well for me. But I contend that almost ever house in every housing development lies each and every day and the lie is permanent. You ask how can a building lie? Well this is how. Every house I see in every subdivision has a front porch on it… to me that says that by design there is enough value placed on using that porch to justify the extra cost and loss of square footage in the home.
Now I know practically the porch serves a lot of purposes in a mechanical way to protect the door opening from leakage from wind or air. But most often that door rarely if ever even gets used. Everyone uses their garage door and a garage really protects that entry door much better.
My beef was always, “why have a front porch, beautiful or not, if you are never going to sit on it!” It feels like a lie to me every minute of every day… Building concrete steps, cedar posts and beams, expensive outdoor furniture that needs replaced from sun damage and not use, and outdoor decor for every season. I know Home Depot and Hobby Lobby both love those front porches but I do not.
If the porches get used all of my frustration goes away. Really a house can’t lie, it is the cultural value that we put on a front porch that we never use, it’s us, the people that lie. And really this criticism is not pointed at any of you individually. If you have an HOA or a contractor worth his salt they are all going to require or recommend a nice front porch on your house. It’s not an individual problem its a cultural one. Now that we have airconditioning the necessity of sitting outside in the shade to catch the breeze is no longer advantageous. If I were really consistent with my line of thinking I would maybe critisize airconditioning and you will never catch me doing that. The two things any house I live in needs are a coffee pot and air conditioning, everything else is optional.
It is this cultural loss of the front porch culture that grieves me. In many parts of the world or even in more urban parts of our own country this is not completely lost. In our Central Plains western culture though it is on life support if its not completely dead. At the end of the day though I can be ok with it. It is what it is. Rather than try to fight the battle of the physical porch I want to highlight two things that I think we lose and that we do have to fight for. The porch provided both regular interactions and random interactions with our neighbors or those travelling through our neighborhood. Sitting out in the best parts of the day on your porch would facilitate interacting with neighbors. Try and have 6 or 8 kids living on the same block stay on the porch with their parents who are trying to relax or cool down in the breeze… It’s not happening. They will be in the street playing or all collected around an event in one yard or another. The adults too couldn’t avoid interacting completely, hello the playgroupnd of the extrovert! To the dismay of every introvert they would be at the mercy of their talkative neighbor unless they were so committed to isolation that they would rather drip sweat than sit outside. We also lose those random people walking or driving by that might stop and chat because they see us out on the porch. For a person like me who love community and connection I feel like the richness we lose is immeasurable by not having more of these regular and random interactions with other people.
How is this all about Summer Quest? I promised that in the title… and so far have been a liar myself. I think Summer Quest is the spiritual and literal front porch of our church. It puts us outside, unignorable to the neighborhood and passers by. We get a chance to be together on mission with our regular people, fellow church memebers and our actual neighbors where we live, and it sets us up for random people that we either invited or who see us and come to check it out. Sure we are outside and in my case always a little sweaty but we are giving that chance that a relationship will spark. My kids have friends with other families at church simply because we all walked together to pass out invites for Summer Quest together. Now that I bought a house and am no longer renting I know that kids in my immediate vicinity and see lots of others that are totally near enough to be invited. I know they will be bored this summer because every kid is and that like any kid if they get an invite to come off their porch to something fun and engaging it will get their serious consideration. Summer Quest to me embodies the true spirit of the front porch. Though Plumbrook Park, which is my site for this summer, looks nothing like a front porch I hope our site is as inviting as I imagine the best porch was in days of old. I can’t guarantee that any meaningful relationships will happen but the opportunity is there and I am praying God moves to do His work in creating them. Summer Quest is a great tool in His hands for this to happen.
Please consider your role in Summer Quest this year. We still need Site Coordinators and since God has identified the sites that means He has also prepared some of you to fill those roles. Reach out to Amy, our Children’s Director, to get your assignment and enjoy the beauty of our front porch. amy@gccnewton.com
Blessings,
Will