What’s Your Front Porch? Lessons from the Summer Book Club with Leonard Sweet

This summer, the Fresh Expressions Book Club dove into Contextual Intelligence exploring how churches can better understand and engage their communities. In July’s live conversation, Len Sweet offered rich metaphors and practical tools for reimagining ministry in a changing world.

Here are three takeaways that sparked insight and imagination:

1. What’s Your Front Porch?

Len posed a powerful question: “What is your front porch?” In a culture where the front porch once served as a space of welcome and connection, many churches today have retreated indoors. Len challenges us to “front porch” our churches—create relational spaces where neighbors feel at home.

Whether it’s literal or metaphorical, your front porch might look like:

• Parking lot parties with grills and games
• Tailgates after high school football games
• Storytelling around firepits
• Summer singalongs and ice cream socials
• Cocoa and s’mores in winter

Len calls this “Tale-gating”—gathering around stories, both ours and our community’s. What does a front porch look like in your context?

2. Know Your Context

During the conversation, Len recalled a moment when he completely misread his audience while on tour in Australia. He kept urging the crowd to follow the “North Star”—only to realize later that people in the Southern Hemisphere navigate by the Southern Cross.

That’s the heart of contextual intelligence: learning the language, metaphors, and rhythms of the people around you. To meaningfully share the Gospel, we must become students of the place we serve.

3. Be a G.O.O.D. Church

Len reminded us that effective ministry often begins outside the building. He encouraged churches to be “G.O.O.D.”—Get Out Of Doors.

Rather than relying on people to come to us, how can we meet them where they already are? What would it look like to become the presence of Christ on the sidewalk, the soccer field, or the town square?

Whether you’re rethinking your metaphors, planning a block party, or exploring your own community’s rhythms, Len’s wisdom helps us reframe the church as a relational, imaginative presence in the neighborhood.

Don’t miss our final Summer Book Club gathering—more inspiration ahead!