Infusing Joy into Your Community Event
When the purpose IS fun.
I recently received a note that reminded me of the use of a clear purpose for a gathering, especially when organizing with others. A woman wrote me the following: “This summer I spearheaded a party for my church because we needed a reason to have fun together after a difficult few months relationally. The purpose was clear - fun - which helped me convince the staff to rent a dunk tank.”
Her small church in North Carolina has had a rough year. The pandemic made them unable to worship in person. The racial uprising then revealed deeper tensions within the congregation. “There’s been a lot of missing each other,” she said. “After the murder of George Floyd, in a lot of Christian circles, there’s just been a whole sweeping generation of people who are like, wait a minute. What is it that we have been taught? There’s been a lot of deconstruction happening for a lot of people,” she wrote me. This made it especially hard to have difficult conversations once people started coming back. She really needed a way to connect the congregation again. Her solution: A Parking Lot Party.
She teamed up with three other volunteers and started planning. They’d have it in the back parking lot of the church. They’d grill. They started brainstorming activities: Hula hoops! Sidewalk chalk! Face paint crayons! Snowcone and cotton candy machine! They even had an in-house cover band. Then someone jokingly suggested a dunk tank. “Too much? Dunk the Deacon? 😂 ?” It was $250. Was it insane to spend their limited budget on a dunk tank?
She wrote back to the group: “Yes to the dunk tank, and here’s why.” She wrote about the purpose of being together and “creating a shared joyful spectacle where we are all focused on the same thing, which can be hard to do when you have a larger gathering.” And reminded them that the deepest need of their community in this tender moment was to have fun together. They got the dunk tank. “When you name what matters about...gathering it gives you the easiest permission to fight for the right stuff and also let things go,” she wrote me later. She said everyone just had a ball. They were laughing and playing and enjoying and remembering each other. After the gathering, folks kept calling her to thank her and just kept on saying “we needed this.”
Now did the dunk tank solve their problems? No. Is the Parking Lot Party replacing challenging conversations? Absolutely not. But she had an instinct that for people to have the will, desire, and courage to continue facing one another when the going gets tough, they needed to remember how much they enjoyed each other too.
A purpose need not be Serious. Purpose is simply a way of discerning the specific need of a community in a particular moment. And sometimes, the deepest need, particularly in a difficult period, is laughter and humor and joy. And she could help her team make practical decisions, like whether to splurge for the dunk tank or not, because she was able to articulate the purpose.
I hope you can find your version of a dunk tank this summer with the people you want to keep walking with.
Inspirations
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