Listening Campaign | House Meetings with Greater Boston Interfaith Organization
April 20, 2018
This Spring and Summer at Reservoir, we’ll be participating with a number of other congregations in Greater Boston Interfaith Organization’s House Meeting Campaign. At Reservoir, we’re calling it our “Listening Campaign” because it’s an opportunity for us to engage in holy listening with one another.
House meetings are a cherished art of community organizing that build community and power. At our house meetings, participants will be asked to name a public issue of justice that they really care about, and then to share a story for why they care about that issue. Community group leaders will have the opportunity to hold a house meeting during one of their regular gathering times, and leaders from our community will also be hosting gatherings to share stories around particular issues.
The goal of the house meetings is to facilitate story telling so that we can listen to one another across different experiences, better understand our community needs and passions, and discover ways we can equip one another to take action. Our hope is that these gatherings will be rich and bonding for our community and that what we learn from our gatherings (along with what’s learned in other congregations) can be beneficial for our city and state.
We expect that these, among other great things, will be fruits of our house meetings:
- Discovery of passions around public issues Greater Boston Interfaith Organization is already working on, and elevation of passionate leaders who might want to participate in that work.
- Discovery of other actionable public interests that, if wide interest is shared across many congregations, might inform GBIO’s future work.
- Strengthened and enriched relationships between Reservoir community members.
- Better pastoral care and communications from Reservoir’s staff, resulting from better appreciation of our community’s needs, passions, and gifts.
- A community encouraged in its contribution to justice work, and inspired for more action.