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May 9 - May 10, 2020
“If what Joel said is true, why don’t we treat people like that?” I asked what she meant, and she continued, “When people come to the food pantry, we ask people how poor they are rather than how rich they are. Peter is saying all people have God’s Spirit poured into them.” I stopped. I didn’t know what to say. Shamed, I whispered, “You’re right.” We were actually working against our beliefs. We say in worship that “God’s Spirit flows down on everyone,” and then we act like it isn’t true. That woman’s question got me thinking about something called Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). John
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If we began looking for people’s gifts rather than people’s needs, then even better things than we thought possible might materialize.
As people’s desires to be seen and to celebrate one another’s gifts became increasingly clear to the church staff and lay leadership, we listened and watched what was happening. We paid attention to where the Holy Spirit was active, where the energy was in the conversations. We watched people’s body language. We asked follow-up questions. And then when we saw people acting, we asked if we could be a part of what they were doing.
Everyone I meet has something that gives their life meaning, even if they don’t think about it, or see it, in the moment. To find out what that something is doesn’t take very long. It’s as simple as changing the question, flipping the script, from asking “What’s wrong with you?” to “How can I be a part of this thing that you love, and how can you share it with others?”
We weren’t saying that there weren’t any needs. Those were very clear and present, and we didn’t have to turn over a rock to find them. We were simply calling attention to a different problem—a better problem to have: How do we nurture the gifts around us?
When charity becomes institutionalized, we forget that we can respond charitably to our neighbor. It’s easy for the pastor of a church or a citizen walking down the street to refer a problem to an organization, but that’s not always the best solution. When we take this route, we often give away our power to listen to and care for one another.
When people believe they’re powerless, efforts to help them often make matters worse. There’s a medical term for it: iatrogenesis, meaning “help that hurts.” Many social-service agencies and organizations and congregations make two significant mistakes. The first is not identifying the actual problem. The second is providing answers or remedies without talking with or involving those we intend to help.
We ask what they care about. We ask what they do when no one else is watching, when they’re doing something they don’t have to do. We ask what others say about them. What do the people who love them say they’re best at?
Hospitality is creating a welcome place at the table. And it’s recognizing that the other, the outsider, the visitor, is one’s sister or brother, one of the family.
responded, “If I told you I loved to go fishing, you wouldn’t say, ‘Boy, do I have a program for you!’ You’d say, ‘When are you going fishing again? Can I go along? What do you do with the fish you catch? Why haven’t you invited me over to eat some of the ones you’ve caught?’ ” Sam captured the true spirit of hospitality. True hospitality draws people together. It doesn’t refer people to someone or somewhere else.
Part of what I admired about this man and his work was his unflinching attention to what was working and what wasn’t. Over the years, Gordon had continued to think about his church’s presence in that neighborhood and what this particular place meant to them as people of faith and as practical helpers. When we talked with him afterwards, he reminded us to attend to the presence of Jesus in every person we met in our neighborhood.
how easy it was to build institutions that serve people—but also how easy it was to stop paying attention to the uniqueness and holiness of each life before us (the Jesus in each person’s life).
What Gordon’s words helped me see was that, too often, I would brainstorm a rough idea into a clear concept, and I would work to implement it—but I often missed the essence of the Spirit at work in the lives of my neighbors.
“Vision is the destroyer of essence.” In our context, “vision” is often used to name a really cool idea offered by someone outside the neighborhood. Frequently these ideas come from well-meaning staff people who work and serve in another low-income neighborhood. But the gifts of those young men so eager to teach what they knew in their own community were the “essence.” They had something to offer and wanted to do it because they cared, even though many of us who were helpers didn’t even consider that possibility. They wanted to be teachers. Why not? It was their essence.
“Who loves you, and what do they say about you and the gifts you have to offer this world?”
In looking for what was wrong, we were missing a lot of what was right, and this was making things worse. It’s difficult to get stronger when all you see are weaknesses.
We make progress when people—whether in an office, a classroom, or a bar; on a street corner or a stoop, or around a dining room table—exchange ideas, challenge one another, share experience and wisdom, ask questions, riff off each other’s answers, and suggest solutions.
When you can see abundance where no one expects it, then you begin to see it everywhere. Though it’s counter-intuitive, abundance is clearest in communities that are labeled poor and needy—in young people who are called “at-risk” or juvenile delinquents, in old people who are looked at as useless and worn out. Why? Because when all the materialism and pretense of the world are stripped away, what’s left is the true picture of a person, who that person is, and what gifts that person brings.
Every once in a while she reaches down and picks up a piece of paper. Here is the slow, steadfast work of building community on broken pavement. Crushed cans and shattered glass are part of her collection. She gathers up the broken and damaged and creates something beautiful. Kids play curb ball as she cleans the street. Young people walk by as she picks up trash. They notice but don’t say anything. They walk with the easy, unknowing confidence of the young. They see and don’t see. Their feet land heavy. Hers glide. They laugh and talk loud. She smiles and says little. Others—television
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What makes communities healthier, stronger, and better? Growing the gifts of people who care about their neighbors, who visit each other when they’re sick and offer healing, who throw good parties to celebrate life and joy, who are talented carpenters, cooks, gardeners, administrators, organizers, and artists.
We had shifted our planning from “Here’s what we’re going to do” to “Here’s how and what we’re going to learn.”
As people shared their stories, they were set free to reveal and act on what they cared most deeply about. They met each other where their lives intersected, and in those places of intersection, they found community and kinship. And a sense of identification and intimacy grew as people recognized each other as sisters and brothers in that gathering.
But it was the gathering itself that reminded people of the goodness present in a place where we too often see only needs and problems. It was a celebration of community that built stronger social networks within the neighborhood and built partnerships with institutions and agencies looking for what was wrong, not what was right. Ditching the strategic plan, we strategically listened to what was being said and what was waiting to be born. That’s how both individuals and communities get stronger and healthier.
Asking people not what they needed or what they lacked, but what they loved, cared about, and acted on in their lives sent us to the neighborhood looking to mine the treasures there.
If the people who are being served are the first people involved in the effort, then it has a good chance of being something that those being served really want (and then might use!).
Organizations and institutions need to remember that often they came into being because a few committed, gifted, passionate people came together around something they deeply cared about and created these formal groups. Encouraging those organizations to allow others to do the same can help them rediscover their roots and their passion.
At the center of neighbor love is curiosity—about the world and about other people.
When we’re in love with someone, we’re in a constant process of discovery and learning. Together we’re growing something powerful and life-changing. That happens regularly around a dinner table and hardly ever around a conference table.
In these gatherings we practice a great deal of intention. We don’t just serve a good meal. We create a chance to discover more about one another, a chance to deepen our love for one another.
At the center of neighbor love is curiosity—about the world and about other people. Around the church, we call this mutual delight. We also call it discovery. The novelist and theologian Sara Maitland says that we all need “jewel detectors,” and pastor and writer Donna Schaper calls us to be “detectives on the track of the holy.”
If, in gathering together, people intend to listen and to learn from one another—not about some issue, but about each other’s lives and gifts—then new doors will appear and open.
There is no replicable system to be imitated in community after community: no multiplying of no-poverty simulations, no circles-out-of-poverty programs we can buy online will change communities. Only attention to the wondrous children of God around us and the gifts they bring to the table will make a lasting difference.
When Wendell Berry was asked about what kind of economy is the best, he said the best economy is the kingdom of God. That isn’t a capitalist economy or a socialist economy. It’s an economy where attention is paid to every hair on our head, to the ways in which the flowers of the field are dressed, and to God’s abundance in the most surprising places.
It’s an economy of attention and intention—an economy, as in our neighborhood, where people who are discounted by the world are seen for the gifts they bring to bear.
