Meet-ups are events hosted by people of Open Life that involve interests or passions of the host person. Meetups connect people around common interests that exist in our church community. Whether it’s soccer, gardening, hiking, or a special cause—anyone can host or join a Meetup.

Meetups are events hosted independently by people that attend Open Life Church. These events are not planned or coordinated by Open Life Church, but rather by the host themselves. Open Life Church only communicates the existence of the Meetup and encourages participants to RSVP directly with the meetup host.

No, we’ve made it simple and easy to host a Meet-up. Just visit out Meetup Hosting Site to find more information and be sure to read the Host Kit on that page to get started. Once we have all of your Meetup information we’ll have you do a quick background check (if you’ve never completed one with Open Life). We’ll post and communicate all the Meetup details to the church and you can prepare for hosting your Meetup.

People will find out through all the streams of communication that Open Life utilizes in addition to all of the ways the host creatively communicates their Meetup. This will include, but not limited to, listing on the Meetup webpage, announcements on Sundays, direction on openlife.church/next steps, on the Open Life Church App, Next Steps Weekly (e-news), social media, and other forms of communication. We’re always open to other ideas.

Meet-ups and Groups are meant to be complementary and mutually beneficial activities for people within Open Life Church. Whereas groups will usually be a fairly regular activity (weekly or every other week meetings), Meetups are one-off events or events with a frequency of once a month or less. Whereas groups will usually have the same participants each time from the startup, Meetups are encouraged for anyone to attend each time. If groups form out of Meetups, that is terrific. If groups want to host Meetups so that more people can be involved, that is wonderful. 

Meetups are events hosted by you, the host, so the liability for Meetup hosts is equivalent to inviting friends to participate in a private event you’ve organized. 

This is not a problem as long as you communicate those costs/requirements clearly on the Meetup host form and in your communication to those participating leading up to the Meetup how those costs/requirements will be handled (ie. Registrations, Transportation, tickets, etc.)

Most often, any costs related to a Meetup should be handled by the participants of that Meetup as organized by the host. Open Life Church will consider funding for service related Meetups that bring benefit to our community (ie. School Supplies, Tools or Supplies for a renovation, etc.)

Meetups communicated by Open Life Church should have a primary activity that is not related to the consumption of Alcohol. Due to the fact that alcohol is heavily abused in our society and we are not able to know or understand things that are going on in any one person’s life, we choose not to promote public invitations to consume alcohol. Hosting an event where alcohol is available is fine (ie. dinner at home or restaurant, trivia night, A meet-up at Post & Pour, etc.), but a Meetup to “enjoy drinks together” will not be promoted.

Please notify jadonh@openlife.church, and we will no longer publicly list your group so that no one else tries to sign up.

Don’t fret, you can cancel or postpone your event this time around and reorganize for a future date or with a new idea. Please communicate with jadonh@openlife.church if you make this decision.