Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Faith-Rooted Organizing Brings People Together to Create Change" for Monday, 6 February 2017
Faith & LeadershipRECONCILIATION, RACIAL & ETHNIC
Peter G. Heltzel: Faith-rooted organizing brings people together to create change
Faith-rooted organizing brings people together to create change
THE CHURCH IS A SPIRIT-LED MOVEMENT FOR LOVE & JUSTICE IN THE WORLD
Image courtesy of Peter HeltzelThe church is a Spirit-led movement for love and justice in the world, the co-author of "Faith-Rooted Organizing" says in an interview. We are called to go outside the church and into the community to share the love of God.
Community organizing is in many ways about empowering people and achieving democracy, but faith-rooted organizing takes a very different approach from that of its secular counterparts, says the Rev. Peter G. Heltzel, the co-author of "Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World."(link is external)
Saul Alinsky, considered by many the founder of modern community organizing, for example, emphasized building relational power based on self-interest, Heltzel said.
"In faith-rooted organizing, we're calling on people to build relational power from the deepest wells of our faith," he said. "Instead of appealing to people's self-interest, we call people to live out their dream connected to their community's dream and God's dream."
Heltzel, an associate professor of systematic theology and the director of the Micah Institute at New York Theological Seminary, and his co-author, the Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, were at Duke Divinity School recently to teach a seminar at the Duke Summer Institute for Reconciliation(link is external).Heltzel spoke with Faith & Leadership about the book and faith-rooted organizing. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: What is faith-rooted organizing?As ministers, we are great at gathering people to get our praise on and hear the word of God proclaimed from the pulpit. But what would it look like if we gathered people to join a boot camp for liberation, equipping them with the tools they need to truly change the world?
Faith-rooted organizing is bringing people together to create systemic change in our communities and world in a way that is completely shaped and guided by our faith. The term "faith-rooted organizing" was coined at Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, when the Rev. Alexia Salvatierra was executive director and the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. was chair of the board. Alexia and I wrote the book as a primer on organizing for faith leaders around the country.
Christians have always been moved by our faith to do justice and have been at the forefront of many of the historical movements that sought to build a better world, including the abolition movement and the civil rights movement. From Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer, African-American faith leaders have organized for racial and economic justice. So our call is to get outside the church, go out into the community and share the love of God with the people of God in concrete ways.
Q: My impression is that, aside from the work of black churches, community organizing has been mostly a secular movement. Why haven't mainline and other predominantly white denominations been more involved in community organizing?Well, churches are interested in their own institutional survival. And unfortunately, they think very small. They want to recruit members to be active participants and tithe so that there's a budget to support the ministry and the congregation, and the church as an institution.
But I think that the church is a movement, a Spirit-led movement for love and justice in the world. And the only way this movement is going to grow is through building coalitions for justice, advocacy and change with strategic partners in our cities and states.
White affluent churches can offer their space, their financial resources and their wisdom and connections as leaders at the faith table, because these churches are tied into elite relational networks in the powerful institutions, be they financial, educational or government.
Faith-rooted organizing creates a strategy for building partners through face-to-face meetings where you talk about your dream and how it connects with the community's dream and the dream of God. And then you go out into the community and launch a poor-led, faith-rooted campaign for justice -- for example, a campaign for living wages or a program to bring the community and the police together in dialogue.
Within the evangelical world, 19th-century evangelicals like Jonathan Blanchard, the president of my alma mater, Wheaton College, and Charles Finney, the president of Oberlin, were abolitionists and fought against slavery from a place of deep conviction in their Christian faith.
But with the rise of fundamentalism in the early 20th century, many evangelicals tended to hunker down in a fort mentality, with the wagons circling the fort, and they were not engaged in culture and politics.
And then we see this faith-rooted abolition movement re-emerge in the civil rights movements in the '40s and '50s and '60s. And later, we see a kind of reactionary conservative community-organizing movement in the Moral Majority launched by Jerry Falwell in 1979.
This morning, we heard the Rev. William Barber(link is external) speak at the Summer Institute for Reconciliation. He's inspiring North Carolina and the nation to join and buy into a poor-led, faith-rooted fusion political movement for justice for all of God's children.
We're at a crossroads in America. And I call on every American Christian and every American to get up off the couch, walk out the door and cultivate friendships with people of other races and ethnicities and religions.
Get involved in your community boards and advocate to your elected officials and build the love of community in your neighborhood, because there's a lot of fear and pain in our country right now.
Like Jesus says, "Fear not." We, as Christians, have a message of healing and hope. In the power of the Holy Spirit, we're called to be healers and reconcilers.
Q: Who's the target audience for this book? What kinds of churches should be doing faith-rooted community organizing?When Alexia and I wrote it, we had a heart to reach Christians, especially members of evangelical and Pentecostal churches who had tended to be either apolitical or politically engaged with the religious right, focused on issues like abortion and marriage, and encourage them to go out into their communities and talk to people to find out what the pain and problems and injustices are.
Q: Tell us about your model of community organizing. How does it work?Community organizing is our pathway to achieving democracy. Saul Alinsky(link is external)emphasized building relational power based on self-interest. In faith-rooted organizing, we're calling on people to build relational power from the deepest wells of our faith.
So the way that we organize is as important as whether we achieve our objectives. Instead of appealing to people's self-interest, we call people to live out their dream connected to their community's dream and God's dream.
Alinsky sought "winnable victories," but we are seeking a sustainable movement for the long haul. We don't care if we win or lose but that we're in the right fight.
And we refuse to treat people like targets. When I hear the word "target," I think of a compound bow shooting an arrow at a bull's-eye. It's a militaristic image that was part of the postwar imagination.
We believe that the elite leaders we advocate to -- the elected officials, bishops and seminary administrators -- are children of God. We want to appeal to their better angels. And in the spirit of Gandhi and Dr. King, we want to organize with nonviolent love.
Q: What does this look like in action? Give us an example.In New York City, clergy led a living wage campaign from 2010 to 2012 during the administration of Mayor Bloomberg. He and Speaker Christine Quinn of the New York City Council did not want to raise the living wage.
When we as faith leaders went to meet with Speaker Quinn in December of 2011, we shared symbols of our faith. Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid delivered a prayer to Allah, Rabbi Michael Feinberg lit a menorah for Hanukkah, and then Mother Chloe Breyer delivered a framed photograph of Mother Teresa. We were appealing to Speaker Christine Callaghan Quinn as a good Roman Catholic, with its long tradition of Catholic social teaching, and asking her as a good Irish Catholic to pass the bill.
So we hope to inspire people to live into their best selves on behalf of everybody, so everybody can make a living wage, so they can pay their rent and return home to a warm hearth, where they can love and be loved.
Q: Community organizing is almost by definition practiced by and for communities without power, communities that have been marginalized in one way or another.That's right.
Q: So what is the role for more affluent, privileged congregations? Do they have a role in this? What can they do to help this process?Two years before Dr. King was killed in 1968, he and his colleagues at the SCLC began planning for a Poor People's Campaign, with a tent city occupying the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which they did in 1968. They made five demands to the president of the United States, the Congress, the Senate and relevant agencies around living wages, access to education, affordable housing and health care for all.
It's important that we understand that the call is to mobilize a poor-led, faith-rooted movement for justice for all.
What we see in the Black Lives Matter movement today is that young 20- and 30-something black leaders are stepping up to dramatize the injustice in their communities -- in Ferguson, New York, Baltimore, Cleveland.
It's important that we understand that we're working toward living out King's Poor People's Campaign today, which is a poor-led, people-of-color-led movement for justice.
Q: What is the role of white, affluent, mainline evangelical churches in the movement today?I believe that every town in America should have a space, an interfaith table, where leaders from all the faith communities in town can gather monthly to talk about the problems in the community and how we can work together.
In order to host those meetings, we need a meeting space and somebody to pay for the catering and for the lunch. And you need volunteers or staff to maintain a database and communications through email and phone calls or a phone bank.
So the white affluent churches can offer their space, their financial resources and their wisdom and connections as leaders at the faith table, because these churches are tied into elite relational networks in the powerful institutions, be they financial, educational or government.
Q: Is a faith-rooted organization politically left or right? Can it help overcome this current political polarization in the country?Rev. Barber's concept of fusion politics is very compelling, because it argues that people can come to the table with different issues but work together. An African-American may want police reform. A Latino may want immigration reform. A white may want living wages. The LGBTQ community may want peace and safety for people of different sexual orientations.
Faith-rooted fusion politics opens up the table where people can come together to break bread and share their passion about an issue and then strategize together about how we can reconstruct a new society in America.
Getting to that faith-rooted fusion political table is not easy. It takes organizing. You have to invite all these different groups and people who will naturally be in their own enclaves.
You have to invite them to gather, and there will be conflict, but I see great possibility in the Moral Monday movement. We've seen for many years that Rev. Barber has been leading the movement in Raleigh, North Carolina, and for the past three years we've been part of the Moral Monday movement in Albany, New York, advocating to Governor Cuomo for a moral budget that includes money for public schools.
So we are on the battlefield for justice and we will not be afraid, we will not give up, we will continue to hold our ground and to march on for love, justice and God. Continue reading the interview with Peter G. Heltzel »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: FOSTERING COMMUNITY
Faith & Leadership
If you are too busy, try fostering community
TECHNOLOGY
If you are too busy, try fostering community
One of the spaces that is increasingly worth your time -- to listen and to share -- is online. Social media enables ministers to build and sustain networks of relationships.
My friend is having trouble dealing with the challenges of leading a congregation, caring for a sick infant and responding to a host of invitations for random acts of ministry. She is being careful not to overcommit. The congregation is supportive in every way, but she is worried about missing an opportunity that would benefit the church.
Those who know me well will likely find it funny (or aggravating) that I, someone who fails to return email promptly because of over scheduling, am giving advice on time management. That is the point; we all have trouble keeping up.
In network theory, the hub and spokes method of networking is regarded as critical to getting connections started, but is a temporary state that is unsustainable. As long as my friend (and the rest of the good ministers I know) defines ministry as connecting to and meeting every need that is presented, the theory says she will soon run out of time, energy and patience. The hub and spokes will break down.
For generations, congregations have been masters at inviting folks beyond a relationship with the pastor to membership in community. Congregations have been organizing small groups for learning, support and work forever. No one expects the pastor to be the only caregiver in a congregation. We might expect the pastor to have a specific role in certain situations, but the pastor who tries to do it all will not last long.
As my friend explained her situation, she remarked that one of the main reasons she felt overwhelmed was that her sermons were increasingly read on the internet. Strangers were emailing and asking for help, service and more. We wondered together how she might invite them into the network of the congregation, rather than to relationship with her alone.
The rise of email has made many more people accessible to each other with lightning speed. But social media is different. It creates new spaces for connecting people to each other. These forms require some energy from a pastor, but like the spaces of old, others will carry the responsibility alongside.
Pastor Keith Anderson and scholar Elizabeth Drescher have published “Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible,”(link is external) where they feature more than 40 ministry leaders using different types of social media to foster community.
“Social media is the place where people are meeting, connecting, learning and getting news, and keeping track of their interests,” Anderson said in an interview with Faith & Leadership. “As somebody in ministry who wants to share the gospel, I need to be in that digital space just as much as I need to be in the church office or in my community. Also, it’s a place where young adults are gathering, a group that the church finds difficult to reach.”
As when entering other ministry settings, the first step is to listen.
Good pastors don’t enter the hospital room shouting about the topic for next Sunday’s sermon. Neither should we use Facebook as only a place for one-way communication. Social media is much more like meeting a crowd at the coffee shop rather than tacking an announcement on the bulletin board.
Anderson understands social media as a tool for nurturing relationships. Dedicating 20 to 30 minutes twice a day considering what to offer and how to respond to others through social media is a little different than figuring out who to visit in the hospital or organizing other aspects of ministry. Yet it can create the conditions that invite others to listen and respond to each other.
If my friend can invite folks into a space for conversation with her church, she will be able to respond with an offer of a relationship that is nurtured by much more than her own energy. Read more from Dave Odom »
Faith & Leadership
Practices that sustain Christian community
THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
Practices that sustain Christian community
Ethicist Christine Pohl names four practices for Christian institutions and congregations that want their corporate lives to reflect the very nature of God.
Post-election, we continue to learn about our fractured political communities. Christians are not immune to fractured community, but fortunately we have practices and activities that bind us. “How we live together,” writes Asbury Theological Seminary ethicist Christine Pohl, “is the most persuasive sermon we’ll ever get to preach.”
What does it take to sustain Christian community? Pohl says it takes four core practices: gratitude, promise-keeping, truthfulness and hospitality. All of these not only express human need, but are “at the heart of God’s character and activity.”
Her recent book, “Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us,” explores these practices and offers careful analysis, shares stories of real congregations wrestling with each practice in concrete ways, and names issues that complicate, strengthen or weaken our practices.
Expressing gratitude as a way of life means that we understand our lives as “redeemed by costly grace.” So as communities, “our primary response can only be gratitude,” despite the things that disappoint and frustrate us. Pohl reminds us that in the book of Psalms worshippers enter God’s presence with thanksgiving and praise.
Making and keeping promises lies at the heart of the larger Christian story. When we enter into a contract, we see ways in which our promise could be broken; when we “think covenantally about promises,” we connect with a deeper set of shared commitments that don’t have escape clauses. Theologian Sam Wells defines this difference in his sermon on promises and covenants(link is external). Despite covenantal promise-keeping, congregations also present complications for promise-keeping, especially during times of leadership transition.
Living and speaking truthfully is not just a job for the individual, but is the responsibility of the greater community. “The best testimony to the truth of the gospel,” Pohl writes, “is the quality of our life together.” The Good Works community has a ritual that helps staff at weekly meetings deal with interpersonal tensions. After the opening prayer, staffers ask “Are we clear?” This is a code for making sure no one is harboring a grudge that could block ministry to God’s kingdom. Truth telling opens the path to forgiveness.
Offering hospitality to strangers calls on all three of the above practices. Grace, fidelity and truth create communities safe enough for people to take risks, handle disagreements and minister to the world. “Such communities grow by making room for others, whether friends or strangers.” When we invite people into our lives, our homes or our churches, we have to reveal who we truly are.
What’s different about these practices from the ones we usually hear about is that we don’t practice them alone in our rooms as a seasonal discipline. Rather, Pohl frames them as vital activities for congregations and other Christian institutions who want their corporate lives to reflect the very nature of God.Read more from Gretchen Ziegenhals »
Knowing Your Community, Defining Your Mission
Knowing your community, defining your mission
Getting to know the community that your congregation will focus on is a critical step in defining your mission. To start, work on getting answers to several key questions: What are the primary issues in your community? How do the people in the community want the church to respond to those issues? And probably most important: do the people in your community actually want the ministry you are proposing? Your congregation will be most successful if you can answer yes to this question.
It is pretty easy to stay within the four walls of the church and make assumptions about the lives of the people in the broader community. It is more difficult to actually build relationships with community residents and grow in your understanding of their needs and desires.
There are tremendous advantages, however, to building your congregation’s ministries on what the community says it wants. If you take the time to build these relationships, your congregation will focus its efforts on meeting unmet needs rather than duplicating what other groups are already doing. You will also have a strong foundation for sustaining your programs; strong relationships with your community make it easier to recruit participants and volunteers and raise money.
Sunny Kang, pastor of Woodland United Methodist Church in Duluth and a partnership advocate for the Self Development of People Committee (PCUSA), describes a process that one of his churches used to get to know the community:
A church I was pastor of did research for six months before we opened our doors to the community. We talked to the kids at the high school next door to the church and asked them, “What is the problem in the community, what can we do to help, how can we serve you?” They were real reticent at first, but eventually they did tell us “there are a few things you could do.”
We ended up opening the church to kids during lunch because there were 450 students in two of the lunch periods and the school could only accommodate 200 of them. So 200 to 250 kids had to leave the school building every day for lunch, even in 20-below-zero weather in the winter. So we opened our building and served lunch. It started slowly at first, but grew so that we had 250 to 350 kids in the church building every day during the week. Too many churches say, “We think the people in the community need this,” and they impose their value system on the people. Community residents often end up saying to the church, “Who asked you to do this?” You need to keep asking—is there a market for what we say the community might need?
So how can you get to know the community? I am not necessarily defining community as a geographic area, though many congregations are focused on a neighborhood, town, or region. Your community might be a certain group of people—for example, people living with HIV/AIDS. Here are some strategies to help you connect with the people your congregation aims to serve.
Connect with key leaders of the community on a one-to-one basis and build relationships with them. They will be able to introduce you to others you need to know and will help educate you on the needs and desires of the community. Start by asking them to teach you about the community. Everyone likes to share what he or she knows. Key leaders could include:
- political leaders
- denominational staff
- pastors of other churches
- law enforcement officers
- staff at the neighborhood public school
- leaders of other congregations
- program specialists in the program area that is your focus (for example, youth development, family counseling, or chemical dependency treatment)
- Connect with the community through your church members. Members of your church may live in the area you aim to serve or work in professions that would provide needed contacts. For example, if your downtown church wants to provide an outreach to the business community through the congregation, business leaders in your church could help you accomplish your goal.
- Join community organizations or boards. If a group of people from the community is working on an issue you would like to address, consider joining the group. As you work side by side, you will hear community concerns articulated over and over again. You will also build new relationships with community leaders; for example, a crime task force for the neighborhood or town you hope to serve would be a great place to connect. Always ask: What can the church do to support the neighborhood?
- Attend community meetings. When community members get together for discussions or celebrations, make sure there is at least one member of your church in attendance. You may want to consider building a portable booth for community events to promote the visibility of the congregation.
- Walk around the community. There is no substitute for seeing the people of your community and their needs with your own eyes. If you are open to spontaneous conversations, you will learn a great deal from people you meet on the street. Find out where people “hang out” in your community—it could be the neighborhood park or the diner in your rural town. If your community is not geographically based, just plan on being in attendance whenever the people of your “community” get together. It might be a national conference on a particular topic or a denominational gathering.
- Gather the opinions of the community. If the people you want to serve have a positive impression of the church, they may be willing to participate in a survey or focus group. Invite some folks over for dinner at the church and ask them what they think. Brief door-to-door surveys might also do the trick. Try to find a volunteer who has the expertise to help you develop a survey. For instance, there may be someone in your congregation who has worked with focus groups. Also, your local neighborhood organization or United Way might be able to advise you on how to design a questionnaire. Questions for surveys or focus groups should focus around the questions: What do you see as the major issues for this community? How would you like to see this church respond to those issues? How can the church serve you?
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Adapted from Starting a Nonprofit at Your Church, copyright © 2002 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2008, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share Alban Weekly articles with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our reprint permission request form.
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FEATURED RESOURCES
Starting a Nonprofit at Your Church by Joy SkjegstadA large and growing number of congregations are setting up church-based nonprofit organizations in order to operate community development or educational programs.This book outlines the step-by-step procedures for setting up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization connected to a congregation using simple, easy-to-understand terminology and examples from churches that have already taken on this task.
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Winning Grants to Strengthen Your Ministry by Joy SkjegstadMinistry leaders possess the compassion, creativity, and knowledge about community needs that grant funders appreciate. Yet ministry groups are often less experienced than other types of nonprofit organizations in discerning which funding to seek, understanding how to build relationships with funders, and putting together proposals. This book offers a pathway to strengthening new and existing ministries. Joy Skjegstad, an experienced grant-proposal writer, shows how fundraising can be an integral part of ministry and provides detailed guidance on the practical aspects of seeking grants from foundation and corporate funders.
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Holy Places: Matching Sacred Space with Mission and Message by Nancy DeMott, Tim Shapiro, and Brent BillHoly Places is designed to be used by congregations who are involved in or are contemplating work on their facilities. The authors show how approaching the work with mission at the forefront is the key to having a final result that strengthens the congregation’s ministry. Intended for leaders in a congregation’s facility project—from expert builders to novices—this book will help you create a reflective approach to your work, enable you to learn from one another, and make space for discerning God’s direction for your congregation. Read more from Joy Skjegstad »
THE DUKE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY: CULTIVATE YOUR ABILITY TO LEAD CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
The Doctor of Ministry program at Duke Divinity School engages pastors and Christian leaders in rigorous and imaginative theological reflection as they continue to serve in their current ministerial roles. It serves to empower and refresh leaders as they guide the renewal of the church through cultural shifts. Applications for the 2017 cohort are due by March 15.
Learn more and apply »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Discovering the Other: Asset-Based Approaches for Building Community Together by Cameron HarderWhat is God's mission?
Simply put, says theologian and field educator Cameron Harder, God's mission is to form communities that reflect and embody the life of the Trinity.
Discovering the Other is an introduction to two tools that community builders have found helpful: appreciative inquiry and asset mapping. These tools help congregations see that all of life is saturated by the sacred and give them energy to begin living as if it were so. Instead of asking, 'What's wrong?' appreciative inquiry asks, 'What's right?' Asset mapping asks, 'What resources do you have personally that we could bring to our future together?' Out of these questions can arise a sense that every congregation is rich in history, people, and resources. Ideas emerge as people, inspired by the Spirit, listen and talk to each other. The leader's task is to facilitate, coalesce, and connect ideas, to catalyze and stimulate the development of vision. The creative connections lead to programs and projects that will enrich your congregation's mission. But most importantly, in the process they will engage you with others, with their stories, their hopes, their gifts - to build community.
This book looks for God, not only through the lens of such tools, but in the tools themselves. It is an effort to understand how processes like appreciative inquiry and asset mapping reflect the character and community-building style of the God whom Christians worship as Divine community.
Learn more and order the book »
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VISIT OUR WEBSITE
Alban at Duke Divinity School
1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 101
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
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