White Rock UMC - Home Groups

A note from Jennifer Locke

A church doesn’t feel like a home without relationships.

When my family and I began attending White Rock in spring 2021–as we all were emerging, awkwardly, from the pandemic–we wanted relationships. Community. We had a hunch that White Rock might be a good place to find this community. We wanted to build something here; to get to know like-minded people who cared about following Jesus and would help us through the ups and downs of our lives.

But finding community at church is not always easy. In fact, it can take a great deal of effort. Sunday only comes once a week. Attending church–especially a new church–is a vulnerable act. Will anyone say hello? Will there be anyone to connect with on a level that goes beneath the surface? If you get a good thing going, how do you keep it going?

Creating and deepening community has been my family’s primary objective since we made WRUMC our church home. I’m interested in every avenue through which that can happen. Now, we have community on Sunday via our Sunday school class (the parlor class). We also have a small group with whom we’ve been meeting since 2023.

Our small group members all have small kids who are involved in about a million different things on any given night of the week. Maintaining our gatherings has been anything but convenient. Our small group is scrappy and imperfect–yet I and my family are committed to it because we see the value of walking through life with people who are also willing to sacrifice convenience for connection.

There’s no blueprint; we’re making this up as we go along. But somehow, that’s enough; if enough of us keep showing up over and over again, we get to experience the joy of being witnessed by others who want the best for us, who know our private hopes and concerns, who love our rowdy kids, who take our prayer requests before God when they leave our gatherings. Each of us holds space for the other. It is the church in miniature, the church close up–and that is how I like the church best.