Labor Day is coming

Mark your calendars, Labor Day is coming. Typically this is a long holiday weekend, the last hurrah before the Fall kicks off in full swing (or for those of us in the South, before Summer continues its strangle-hold on all of creation until that one week time span we refer to as “Fall” finally shows up around the end of October.) The point is that it is a brief respite in a typically overloaded schedule. Some of us may even now be thinking through a last minute trip to the beach or the lake. I have an idea. Why not stay home and throw a party?

Think about it. Most of us with kids are diving into school in the next week or so anyway. You are in town. Many of us don’t really have the money (come on, take a “Dave Ramsey” honest look at your accounts) to do a last minute vacation anyway, so why stress out the credit card? Why not stay home and invite 2 or 3 or 10 or 20 neighbors over and introduce everyone to each other? Imagine the gospel impact in your subdivision just by throwing some burgers on a grill!

Steve McCoy over at The Subtext has the following great thoughts on this subject.

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Last weekend we had a cookout. It was mostly community friends we’ve connected to through local school involvement, but we also invited a church friend or two and a visiting couple from the previous week’s worship service. We had about 40 people there, some I knew well and others I met for the first time. It was a blast. Here are a few things you should do to make your cookout a hit.

- Introduce people. If you are bringing folks together who don’t already know each other, and you should, make sure you introduce them so they all feel comfortable.

- Have plenty of good food. We had too much food because we wanted to be generous. Nothing like a cookout where you feel underfed. And make it good food, please. I don’t want to come to your house if you are going to buy the hot dogs with the highest amount of rat hairs and bone chips. Not all hot dogs and hamburgers are created equal. Get quality stuff. And spice it up. We got burgers at Sam’s and then added a layer of Famous Dave’s burger seasoning. People raved about the burgers, though most of them didn’t know why. You want your neighbors happy.

- Let people bring something if they want to. Sometimes people feel obligated. Sometimes they really enjoy bringing something. Don’t presume on people and don’t ask them to bring something. But if they want to bring something it can be a good thing. It makes them feel like they’re a good neighbor too. For our Memorial Day most everyone insisted. Some brought a dish, or chips and soda. One family brought a ton of Edy’s ice cream they got for free in a contest. It added a super-charge to the cookout that none of us could probably afford otherwise.

- Have plenty to do. We had more games we didn’t use than we used. You are providing opportunities, not a schedule. We had kids playing baseball in the church field, jarts, football, a fire pit as it cooled off in the evening, lots of lawn chairs, sparklers for kids after dark. And think of the little things, too. We fogged the yard before people came to kill most of the mosquitoes and then we had several cans of Off available. We had sunscreen. We had music. We tried to cover all the bases, though we learned a few bases we didn’t cover as well as we will next time.

Make this summer a great one, one where you grow in your relationship with folks around you by participating in the life of your suburb, serving your neighbors rather than waiting for someone else to serve you, and firing up the grill to bring people together.