{"id":1843,"date":"2024-03-14T14:49:11","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T14:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/riversidehub\/?p=1843"},"modified":"2025-05-29T14:50:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T14:50:45","slug":"accompaniment-listening-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/riversidehub\/2024\/03\/14\/accompaniment-listening-posts\/","title":{"rendered":"Accompaniment – Listening Posts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Riverside Innovation Hub is a learning community made of local congregations who gather together to learn how to be and become <\/span><\/i>public church<\/span><\/i><\/a> in their neighborhood contexts. We convene congregations over two years together, shaped by learning and practicing the artforms of the Public Church Framework in each congregation\u2019s unique context.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Accompaniment is the first artform of the <\/span><\/i>Public Church Framework.<\/span><\/i><\/a> It is the movement out into the neighborhood to hear the neighbors\u2019 stories. In this movement, we learn to engage and listen to the neighbor for the neighbor\u2019s sake. We\u2019ve simplified and categorized accompaniment into four different practices that help us hear our neighbors\u2019 stories. This blog post dives into the third layer accompaniment, engaging listening posts.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

You can also read more about the other three layers – Understanding Demographic Data<\/a> and Prayer Walks in the Neighborhood<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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Listening Posts<\/h2>\n

Written by Kristina Fruge<\/em><\/p>\n

Listening posts might just be my favorite element of accompaniment. As someone who is an introvert at heart, but who also prefers to spend the energy I do have on relationships, listening posts offer a soft landing for accompaniment to begin. Listening posts provide an invitation to be fully present and curious about new surroundings while also creating the potential of connections with neighbors in big and small ways.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A listening post is the term we use to describe the locations that people naturally convene or gather in a neighborhood. This might include the local coffee shop, the ball fields during the summer, a local YMCA, neighborhood association meetings, the local community garden, the town grocery store, the dog park, or even a neighborhood gas station. Your particular context likely has other types of listening posts not on this list, but the common thread is that they function as a sort of hub for people who live, work, worship, pass through or play in that neighborhood to gather and connect. AND, they are great places for listening. Listening posts blend together opportunities for noticing desolation and consolation, as we do in the prayer walks, but also can open doors for one-to-one conversations with neighbors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is some advice to help you explore the listening posts in your neighborhood. Here is a pdf version of the listening post information<\/a> that you can print out to share!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Promotional<\/a>Identify local listening posts.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n

Your prayer walk will help you identify possible listening posts! You can read all about prayer walks in our other blog here.<\/a> Not only can a prayer walk help you locate possible listening posts, but based on your other observations as you pay close attention to desolation and consolation in the neighborhood, you may discover things that you want to learn more about. That curiosity could lead you to a more focused approach in your search for listening posts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You also can ask local leaders, business owners or other neighbors who live in the community where they gather. The local librarian may also be a good resource to talk to. One RIH congregation discovered that another community group was facilitating something called Circle Groups in their neighborhood. These circle groups were gatherings where leaders intentionally invited people from different backgrounds into vulnerable conversations about the things that mattered most to them in the neighborhood. The team members from this congregation were invited to participate and were amazed and humbled to be in a place with neighbors sharing from the heart and in a safe place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, feel free to use our list as a jumping off point to imagine possible listening posts in your neighborhood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prepare to visit the listening posts and to be a good guest.<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n

Accompaniment in our neighborhoods is an invitation to flip the script on radical hospitality. A young leader we worked with was a part of an RIH congregation that highly valued offering radical hospitality in their space. He wisely challenged his team to explore this question – <\/span>What does it mean to extend radical hospitality when we are the guest?<\/span><\/i> They took this imagination with them out into their neighborhood, attempting to apply their core value of radical hospitality from the position of guest, rather than host. And we invite your congregation to do likewise as you visit the listening posts of your neighborhood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What does it mean to extend radical hospitality when you are the guest in the listening posts of your neighborhood? The answer to this question will vary depending on your particular context and the particular listening post you are visiting. However, humility, curiosity and compassion again become important values to hold on to. The importance of these values was explored in an earlier post on prayer walks<\/a> which we encourage you to read, especially since participating in prayer walks in the neighborhood will help you discover the neighborhoods\u2019 listening posts!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the summarized explanation is that in all of our efforts to become vital neighbors, we will find ourselves encountering people and places we don\u2019t know or don\u2019t know very well. We will encounter differences between ourselves and others – whether it be racially, religiously, socio-economically, generationally, or across so many other distinctions. We also expect to experience connection as we discover similarities – love of the same local business, or our pets, or our children, or perhaps share similar fears or longings for ourselves and our neighborhoods. Our differences and our similarities are beautiful gifts – they are what makes up a community and can contribute to the mutual flourishing of its members. However, when ignored, dismissed, threatened or undervalued, these similarities and differences can contribute to harm and heartache in our neighborhoods.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine a time when you have been a guest in someone else’s home or in a context different than your own. How did humility, curiosity and compassion factor into your efforts to be a good guest in those places? Spend time with others in your congregation wondering about how these values help us be radically hospitable guests as you prepare to visit some of the listening posts in your neighborhood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bring some good questions and a goal.<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n

Listening posts are great places to observe and take a pulse on the neighborhood. But hopefully, an opportunity to interact with neighbors as well. If you\u2019re an extrovert, this may be a fun challenge to meet new people but you\u2019ll want to have some questions in your back pocket to help you be a good listener. We\u2019ve shared some of our favorites below, but get creative.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n