The Network at work.

Bret Tredway ~ | Westminster, CO

After living in our neighborhood for 8 years my wife and I decided to stop talking about having a block party and just do it. Our neighbors are all very successful and busy people and we only knew two out of the 16 neighbors living on our street. Everyone was willing to wave at you when driving by but that was about it.

We knew what we wanted to happen but didn't know if it would or if anyone would even come. Sheri is a creative scrapbooker so she made these really neat invitations that we mailed out three weeks before our party. We then sent out a reminder the week of the party. We rented a big blow up castle that filled half of our back yard(for the kids), I smoked some meat and we invested a pretty significant amount of money in food and drinks...just in case people showed up! We couldn't believe it when 75% of our neighbors came! People that had lived in our 10 year old neighborhood from the beginning had not ever really gotten to know each other. People stayed and talked and kids played and it was after 11 pm when the last neighbor left. This was a successful neighbor loving event but the party was just the beginning. We started to be invited over for dinner, neighbors now stopped in front of our house to "catch up" on life! The atmosphere of our neighborhood had changed all because we took the chance, invested some of our money and reached out to our neighbors. It wasn't a "religious" event but we have had several discussions about God since then as the Holy Spirit has directed our conversations. Next week we are getting together with some of our neighbors to eat together and talk about God's Word. I guess Jesus was right, loving our neighbors is the key to showing them the difference between religion and relationship. He does the work of drawing people to himself, we just have to do the loving and giving!