One Cohort Ends And Another Begins!
Another amazing cohort of our faith-based program, the Good Neighbor Experiment (GNE), has come to a close! And our Joshua cohort is underway!
This was my (Ian) first cohort as the new GNE program director and it was such an honor and a blessing to be a part of. The Good Neighbor Experiment has seen many changes over the years, but it has always been a learning cohort that shares best practices and mini-experiments designed to help individual church members and whole congregations get to know and love their actual, immediate neighbors in many practical ways. Using Asset-Based tools, GNE works on deepening neighbor relationships and community connection across the congregation, with the neighbors surrounding the church, and with the neighbors living near the homes of each member of the church.
The Deuteronomy cohort was the first with a brand new curriculum, geared to cover all of the same scriptures, stories, conversations, games, and mini-experiments in just 4 months! We had 6 churches participate- all United Methodist- and it just so worked out that Texas and Ohio really represented! We had churches from the whole range of contexts- the rapidly-growing suburban Arlington, TX, congregations in Houston and San Antonio, and a mix of rural and suburban churches in Ohio- Tallmadge, Streetsboro, and Brecksville! And special thanks to Rev. Jessica Wright and Rev. Ray Altman for pouring so much care and love into this cohort as our facilitators.
Churches started with a 4 week worship series on joy, relationship, and abundance- the Key Ingredients of Neighboring- and then spent the rest of the cohort, 15 weeks, diving into each of those more in-depth in "labs". At the start of each lab, and again at the end of the cohort, all churches came together on zoom to celebrate, share, and learn with and from each other.
As always, The Neighboring Movement thrives on stories.
There was Cory’s story about getting to know the people on his neighboring team and other church members more during the cohort than he ever had in 17 years of attending his church!
There were many stories from Streetboro UMC’s challenge for each member of the congregation to host someone they didn’t know that well for dinner at least once during the cohort.
Jessica shared the joy of getting to walk through all of these steps at a new church and with new neighbors
A participant shared a story of his new neighbors inviting him to a housewarming party, sending him condolences on the loss of a loved one, and showing interest in joining the young adults group at the church
And many more!
Coming out of the Deuteronomy cohort, we at The Neighboring Movement also emerged with a strong emphasis on investing special focus into our alumni network that we will carry into 2024. We welcome Grace UMC (TX), Streetsboro UMC (OH), St. Matthew’s UMC (TX), St. Andrew’s UMC (TX), Tallmadge UMC (OH), and Brecksville UMC (OH) into our alumni network!
It is hard to believe but my (Ian) second cohort, Joshua, is almost halfway done!
We currently have 7 churches participating, and these just happen to all be in Kansas and North Carolina! Rev. Heather Kilbourne and Andrew Hudgins of the NC Rural Center recruited 4 of our churches and have done a great job cheering those churches on throughout the cohort. We are blessed to have 3 churches in Kansas, including our previous alumni Grace UMC. So far, this has proved a savvy group and there is a lot of great energy around our ReCycle and around “designing to neighbor!”
It has been such a joy and the best kind of challenge to work with these two cohorts. I have the best job in the world and can’t wait to see what the rest of 2023 has in store!
