About Called to Transformation

What we would like to do is change the world – make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended for them to do. – Dorothy Day

Called to Transformation: An Asset-Based Approach to Engaging Church and Community is centered around the belief that individuals, groups, and communities have the gifts they need to address the needs they see around them. 1 Corinthians 12 tells us that each of us are given different gifts to serve the community and we are all a part of the body of Christ working together.

It is our hope that Called to Transformation will help faith communities and the communities in which they serve:

discern their gifts from God and how those gifts can be used to the benefit of all
be in partnership and engage with one another as they work together
move from thinking that there is an inadequacy they are unable to address to believing they have an abundance of gifts and strengths to address the needs

This guide is for any individual, congregation, organization, or community wishing to shift away from the “needs” model of development and instead engage a life-affirming, asset-based approach.

While it is entirely possible to engage this program without additional training, we are providing the opportunity to go deeper into this process and perspective. We are hosting Facilitator Formation Training sessions in the fall of 2015. You can find out more information on the Events and Trainings page.

Called to Transformation is a strategy to incite local change and development based on the theological perspective that God has gifted us with all things necessary to realize shalom – the state of living in peace and prosperity as the people of God. This asset-based approach will help your community focus on the gifts, strengths, and abilities you already have in order to involve all of your overlapping communities in action and engagement with one another.

We often start with a need we see and want to respond to that need by asking people to sign up to help or volunteer for the cause. Using an asset-based approach, we flip that on its head. We begin with what gifts and assets we as individuals and communities already have.

Those gifts and assets, once articulated and connected, allow us to see a new and different future. They empower people to use their given gifts, to imagine something different, and then respond to what they are being called to do. Whatever you need is in the room, in our communities, in our hearts, and in our souls. An asset-based approach invites us to use our gifts in the service of each other and the community to create the community God calls us to be.

By working from an asset recognition and reinforcement philosophy, the asset-based approach seeks to help individuals and communities believe in themselves – – their knowledge, their abilities, their values, their worth – – and thus to break through traditional hierarchical perceptions of power and cycles of dependence typically reinforced by an over-emphasis on outside actors, outside actions, outside solutions and outside funds. This is a new way of leadership development because you let your gifts and passion lead you to mission and ministry.

Many national and international initiatives approach humanitarian aid and development from a needs-driven or deficiency-oriented perspective. This over-emphasis on needs and gaps often leads to the creation of service delivery programming that in turn creates recipients and beneficiaries frequently labeled (and often consequently stigmatized) as vulnerable, marginalized, and/or poor.

Called to Transformation contributes to the transformation and healing of a hurting world by encouraging its staff, partners, and wider constituency to act as catalysts that ignite people through an appreciation and affirmation of the gifts that exist. By recognizing and reinforcing people’s assets versus simply their needs – – by recognizing and reinforcing people’s gifts, ideas, decisions and existing resources – – we can contribute to:

Healing: Restoration or reinforcement of people’s self-worth, affirmation of human dignity, and healing from prior social divisions, neglect, stigmatization, and/or other forms of suffering.
Empowerment: Recognition and reinforcement of people’s sense of power and choice, recognition of possibilities, and use of existing “assets” to shape their lives and improve their situations.
Sustainability: Self-promotion, social capital and resilience strengthening, and the continuation of people’s actions (and action-related results) beyond the “life of a project.” This sustainability is based on motivation and possibilities for change that come from within an individual, a group/association, and/or a community, as well as new connections (i.e., bonds, bridges and linkages) established between individuals, groups, communities and formal structures (national governments and private sector).

Working in partnership, The Episcopal Church and Episcopal Relief & Development seek to transform how we view ourselves and in turn connect with colleagues, partners, communities, and constituencies. Through more intentional recognition and reinforcement of people’s existing assets we can strengthen our role as catalysts that ignite people to engage in their own discovery and sustainable development that comes from within.