Discernment With Our Neighbors

“If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.” ― Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary

If you are looking for a way to begin work towards organizing local people to take an active role in the place where they live, it is a good idea to start with what you know.

When you think of your community, what do you picture? Do you see a grid of roads and buildings? Sidewalks and maybe neighbors’ yards? Often it is easy for us to imagine the hardscape of our neighborhood, but how about the true assets of the community, including its people.

Our goal is to create a map of our community, finding its assets the positive, powerful people and things that contribute ideas, resources and gifts. Include:

• People
• Groups
• Relationships
• Institutions (including other churches, schools, universities, recreation centers, nonprofit organizations)
• Physical Space
• Local economy
• Existing Partnerships

Your first step is to identify the neighborhood boundaries. Work with your Leadership Team to discern what the parameters are of your community. This can be the literal city limits or another natural boundary. Keep in mind that as you develop a deeper understanding of the community, these boundaries may change. This is just a starting point.

Now consider any connections or networks either members of your faith community or Leadership Team have identified during your gifts discernment exercises.

Next you will want to determine who on your Team is called to do the work of following up on these identified networks, creating the community connections, and gathering information about the assets in the wider community. This should be a Committee with several members so that all the work and interviews are minimally done on a two-by-two basis. In discerning the members of this Community, consider that:

• Committee members should be people that the community trusts.
• The size of the Committee will depend on the size of the community you are working to engage.
• Make sure there is a good representation of the diversity of your community.
• They should understand how to interview people and how the information should be recorded. If necessary, you can hold a short information session for Committee members so everyone is working with the same protocol.
• They should be individuals capable of respecting boundaries and confidences.

Communication:

Don’t get off on the wrong foot by simply showing up at a neighbors doorstep with a bunch of questions. Good and consistent communication is key to the success of all community asset mapping projects. It will enable you to develop a relationship built upon trust and openness.

Before you get started engaging the community, consider how you are going to incorporate your results and report them back to the wider community. Will you be creating an online presence? Holding a community meeting? How will you communicate outside the walls of your faith community?

Action: Learning Conversations

Learning Conversations are purposeful conversations with residents and business owners and employees designed to discover the gifts of the residents that they are willing to share related to their passion. The goal is to identify what people care about, their motivation to act, and what they have to contribute, not to determine just what they have opinions about or what “should” be happening.

The goals of Learning Conversations are to:

• Build trust and establish a relationships
• Discover gifts and passions (assets)
• Explore mutual interests
• Discern local motivation for action
• Learn about other people in the neighborhood who you need to connect with

Learning Conversations should:

• Focus on questions and building trust – do not give answers
• Be framed in terms of “what resources are available” not “What do you need?”
• Invite next steps, ask people to become involved
• Always end with “Who else do you know that I should speak to?

The following are some potential questions that can be asked during a Learning Conversation.

• What 2 gifts, talents or skills do you have that make you a valuable family member, community resident, and friend?
• What 2 skills make you especially good at your paid or volunteer work?
• What 2 organizations are most effective in this community and why?
• What is something that you love to do so much that you get lost in it for hours without getting bored?
• What do you care about? (What issues and concerns do you want to work on?)
• Concerns? What should we do that you would work on?
• What associations and institutions do you have strong relationships with?
• What would your possible roles be?
• Who else should we should contact?

Start by interviewing people connected to your faith community, then branch out from those individuals to “people they know”. Just by working through existing connections, you will complete a significant number of interviews and begin to get the outline of a good asset map.

Action: Community Meetings

Another approach is to invite the wider community into a meeting where you will jointly discern assets. This will work best if your faith community or several of your members are fairly well-networked into the community. In order to help ensure success, incorporate the leaders into both the planning and execution of the meeting. You will also want to identify individuals who should either help with facilitation or invitation.

Ideally, you will hold this meeting in a community room or recreation center – wherever there is a natural and neutral gathering space.

Create a public (online) space to report results and allow feedback.

Action: Focus Groups

Another alternative approach is to put together a series of Focus Groups, which are meetings of individuals who have been chosen because they represent the breadth and diversity of the community, including leaders, community members and the different groups in the neighborhood. The positives of this approach are that they require fewer participants and can be accomplished in a more controlled manner. The negatives are that if you do not thoroughly research the neighborhood you may miss an important community member or individual with assets that may not have yet been discovered.

Celebration: Community Gathering

Now that you have developed stronger connections within the community, celebrate this accomplishment by holding a picnic or gathering to which you invite both congregation members and the wider community. Be sure to publicize the event in a wide variety of ways and, as much as possible, issue personal invitations to the wider community. This is a great time to show both your appreciation and hospitality – and to reinforce relationships you’ve started to develop.