Exploring Ecumenism

Neighbourhood Church 1: Presence

This short series about neighbourhood church will look in more depth at the role of churches in their neighbouthoods.  This builds upon several strands, (1) conversations as the basic ecumenical activity; (2) the development of an understanding of transformational reception as a basic characteristic of local ecumenism; and (3) the fourth chapter of Linthicum's Building a People of Power.

The latter proposes a basic four plus one approach to active church in a neighbourhood.  I will not refer to Linthicum very much as my purpose is to explore the role of churches together in exercising reception from the place they find their mission to be in.

The point is that churches are often the community organisations with the longest standing commitment to their neighbourhoods.  Churches can be present for decades or even centuries.  This Presence is important where the people who use church buildings see their calling not to their faith but the people they live amongst.  This can be expressed in a variety of ways:

1. I have already touched on an important aspect of Presence a few days ago when I posted about unstructured meeting places.
2. The ability to enter into conversations with ease and without embarrassment, grows naturally out of traditional ecumenical conversations.  The goal of any conversation is not to convert but to find a new place together, which neither side has inhabited before.  A conversation with someone who does not believe may help the believer see the weaknesses in their own faith, to understand and know God more intimately.  Hopefully this will be a discovery for all those who take part.  The Methodist publication Time to Talk of God seeks to help church members enter into conversations short of evangelism.  But even good evangelism is in essence conversation rather than proselytising.  I'll explore this in more detail in a few posts time.
3. Being a place of quiet, of inspiration of sanctuary.  Many neighbourhoods lack somewhere people can go for inspiration.  Churches are often full of art that no longer speaks to modern people or look like community centres and offer nothing beyond another meeting space.  The design of our meeting spaces needs to be done sensitively, as a response to the neighbourhood and not a criticism of it.  Father Jamieson's book Finding Sanctuary shows how many people are seeking sanctuary and raises the question in my mind, why are churches so bad at providing it?

Local people are seeking signs from our churches of a commitment to them and their lives.  Churches should never be havens for the chosen few but open to and committed to the places they find themselves in.  Churches alone cannot provide all that is needed; to fully address the complexities of a neighbourhood requires commitment from many traditions.

Why Churches must Engage with their Neighbourhoods

My posts over the last few days add up to an analysis of what I see as fundamentally wrong with community development in England.  To summarise:

1. There is a tendency for community projects to be dominated by unaccountable people, community organisations in general have problems with accountability;
2. The roles of volunteers and activists are confused, so that workers in communities tend to look on local activists as volunteers for their organisations' agendas;
3. At the same time the role of development work and activist are also confused, which means that activism is sometimes presented as development work;
4. These confusions are bolstered by the use of large-scale funding to divide communities and erode social capital;
5. this leads to even the basic needs for social capital such as unstructured meeting spaces to be overlooked.

Why should churches take an interest in community development or organising?  It is still the case that churches are the organisations with long-term commitment to our neighbourhoods.  They often have premises that can be made available as meeting spaces and they can also meet the spiritual needs of local people.

From an ecumenical perspective development work or organising is an opportunity for churches together to engage with the issues that effect the people around them.  It is an arena for effective and accessible mission for any church member.

A Methodist Church publication a few years ago Time to Talk of God encouraged church members to learn how to enter into conversations about God.  But almost any conversation can open new horizons for those who take part.  This is a practical way for churches to participate in the action of God in the world, to break away from the internal dialogues and engage with new ideas in the world outside the church.

Over the next few days I will pick up some themes from Linthicum's book Building a People of Power; these themes address the basic things churches must do together in their neighbourhoods.  They all open up the possibility of conversations that will broaden and deepen the churches' mission and their ecumenical commitment.

Two Types of Forum

The development of social capital in our neighbourhoods may seem to be a daunting undertaking.  I will in future posts look at why churches together should be addressing this issue and how they might go about it.  Today, I want to identify one last problem in our neighbourhoods and how many churches are already addressing it.

The basic need in any neighbourhood is for social spaces.  Places where people can meet informally.  Meeting rooms are often in short supply too but here I mean unstructured spaces.  These are of two types. 

One is often called the Forum.  Here local people will meet perhaps only a few times a year to debate matters of common concern.  My local Forum has been meeting 4 times a year for eleven years or so and rarely has attendance fallen below 60 people.  Usually these meetings have an agenda and some sort of structured process, more or less participative.  The meetings also involve a meal which is an opportunity for people to mix who might have few opportunities to do so otherwise. 

The word Forum goes back to the Roman Empire.  The Forum was a public gathering place.  The Forum was where news would be posted, it was a marketplace, the location of the courts and the baths.  It was the natural place to gather to share news and plan activities.  My local Forum does this only four times a year, surely a Forum would be more accurately be a place that is open every day?

Indeed it would.  And this is what so many neighbourhoods lack, a natural gathering place where people can meet and share news.  It is a place with perhaps tea and coffee (but not dependent on peoples' purchases to keep going), where information can be shared perhaps through notice boards or stalls, maybe some meeting rooms attached and also the availability of toilets.  Not so different from the Roman Forum.  Perhaps this is the vision behind community centres except that many do not offer this type of unstructured space.

When we look at many neighbourhoods today there are no such meeting places.  New housing estates often have no facilities whatsoever, where such a space might be opened up.  Ideally they need to situated at a local centre or on a main thoroughfare into the centre. 

Many churches occupy this type of place and some already offer a meeting point, at least for part of the week.  There are of course many issues.  The temptation to biase information sharing in certain directions may be a problem for some.  In a muilti-cultural area it might be difficult to encourage all to share in a space where there will be suspicions of an agenda for proselytising.  And yet, would it be right for churches to open such centres with no spiritual dimension?  I shall return to this question in a later post.

It is easy to identify problems.  The point is that organising depends on social capital and a meeting point or Forum is an essential first step.  Churches Together in a neighbourhood should be able to meet this need by identifying the most appropriate available premises and then resourcing it with time and finance.  They might do this in partnership with others and the premises might not be church premises.  The point they must agree about is why they are doing it. 

How Grants Erode Social Capital

About a month ago I posted an account of the early closure of the New Deal programme in my local area.  This post described some of the problems associated with this type of grant making and today I want to explore some of the problems in more detail.

Simply throwing money at disadvantaged communities is not necessarily the panacea governments expect.  The need to be seen to be doing something overshadows the need to do something worthwhile.  Overall, if you throw £52 million at a neighbourhood, it would be an exercise in monumental incompetence if it were all wasted.  Of course it hasn't been wasted, many sectors of the neghbourhood have benefited from competently run projects.

What the money has been unable to do is to support the sense of a neighbourhood pulling together; grant aid tends to be divisive.  Where there is money there will always be struggles for unilateral control.  Most of the conflict within communities are over control of resources. 

Most community leaders in Britain tend to be leaders of sections of neighbourhoods.  Very few aspire to be accountable leaders across the neighbourhood as a whole.  Or if they do have these aspirations, they lack the skills to achieve it.

Time and again I have seen collusion between unaccountable community leaders and council officers to bring large grants into an area to fund projects with no local mandate and often duplicating work that is already going on in the same neighbourhood.  Most of the time this is quite innocent, no rules are broken and everyone thinks they are acting in the 'interests of the community'. 

The damage is done to what is sometimes called social capital.  When attention is paid solely to funds and not to relationships, then social capital is eroded.  Large scale funding tends to support the exercise of large scale unilateral power.  The building of relationships, will tend to lead to the exercise of accountable power on a shared mutual or reciprocal basis.  This is when funding can be most effective on a community scale.

Social capital is divided into two main types, bonding and bridging (see chapter 3 of Journeying Out by Ann Morisy).  Bonding social capital is within groups and bridging between groups.  So, multi-cultural communities will often show strong bonding social capital and weaker bridging social capital.  Large scale unilateral unaccountable grant-making will drive wedges between groups in a neighbourhood as they compete for funds but can also erode bonding social capital as communities compete once funds are perceived as under the control of one unaccountable faction.

Organised neighbourhoods can be a focus for investment into neighbourhoods beyond the capacity of government funding.  They do this by building relationships with those who are in a position to effect real change.  Sadly, many neighbourhoods are so poorly organised they are unable to visualise what the possibilities might be.  There is a spiritual dimension to this but the churches seem to share the lack of motivation to explore what might be possible.  In my next post, I will describe one simple thing some churches are doing which can help with the growth of social capital.

Why Activism is not the same as Development Work

One of the frustrations I have found in recent years is the inability of some people who should know better to distinguish between community development work and local activism.

The activist is a campaigner who will work with others for improvements to their neighbourhood. 

The role and skill set of the development worker are quite different.  I have seen successful activists appointed to a community development role make a poor showing - indeed it is a mistake I made in my early days as a community development worker.  The activist who enters another neighbourhood as a community development worker and behaves as an activist is grotesque.  What right has anyone to enter other people's neighbourhoods and continue their own agenda on the behalf of complete strangers?  But even in their own neighbourhood this role confusion is chaotic.

The development worker's role is to help others to improve their performance as activists.  This means that development work requires a degree of objective distance.  The activist is focused on the success of their campaign.  The development worker is focused on the effectiveness of the activist.

The activist in community development worker's clothes takes over the role of local activists and makes it their personal campaign.  Such activists invariably over-identify with their adopted community organisation and take on the role of immortal.

This behaviour is far too common in British communities.  Why does it happen?  As community development emerged in the 1970s, it did so with great ideals.  Development workers paid lip service to empowerment of communities and did so by down-grading their own professionalism.  In consequence there has never been any career structure for development workers.  The skilled workers eventually move to other roles; they do not stay in development work. 

This means there are few role models and very little mentoring.  It feels like development work starts all over again every 5 years or so.  The overall lack of career development; of a corpus of sound development work meant that community development was an easy target for council cuts.  Today many organisations put workers in the community but few understand the basics, nothing is learned and passed on.  Our communities are littered with the remnants of projects finished before their time and increasingly frustrated activists starved of the stimulation development workers should bring with them.

The churches?  Much the same as everyone else.  Lay work is devalued and has no career structure.  Similar roles to community development such as mission or evangelism workers are similarly devalued.  Academics and pastoral workers are afforded more value.  It is long past the time for change.  I suspect for Britain it is too late and neighbourhood work is dead in the water.

The Difference between Volunteers and Activists

There is profound confusion in our neighbourhoods and churches about volunteering.  Community activities and most churchwork is not voluntary work. 

There is nothing wrong with voluntary work.  It is extremely useful for the charities and recipients of the hours of voluntary time people contribute.  It is also a classic example of self interest, volunteers benefit from voluntary work.  They benefit in many ways; a good example is the work of Impasse.

All of this is true of neighbourhood and church work.  But the difference is this ...  Voluntary work is like paid employment, without the pay.  It is in effect working for someone else.  Volunteers can pick and choose and so the work can sometimes be more fulfilling than paid work but in principle it is working for others.

Neighbourhood work is self-help.  It is like self-employment.  When I participate in my local community organisations (or local church) I am working for myself; it is more accurately work for the mutual benefit of my neighbours or fellow church members.  This means I don't simply work for an organisation, I'm a part of it and have an interest in its future.  Usually we call people who work in self-help organisations activists rather than volunteers.

Both volunteers and activists add to the social capital in their communities.  We need to keep hold of the distinction though if we want to understand what is going wrong in our communities and churches.

Immortality

One interesting characteristic of Citizens' Organising is its understanding of leadership.  In particular, the observation that good leaders are aware of their own mortality.

In June 1997, I spent a month touring the country visiting community economic development projects.  One in Moss Side was particularly impressive.  It was the only project I visited twice and I was shown around by a recently retired Anglican priest who had spent I think it was over 15 years immersed in the regeneration of that community.

One year later I was writing a paper about the visits and needed some more information about Moss Side, and phoned my contact.  A woman answered and told me my contact had had a serious stroke.  He could no longer communicate.  He had made preparations for the time he would no longer be there.  He had mentored the woman and left her as his stand-in.  She knew who I was and was able to answer my questions.

To put it bluntly leaders die.  A leader who is not mindful of this is invariably a bad leader.  I have seen this many time in community groups and churches, where a leader is effectively immortal.  They begin to personally identify with the organisation and lose the sense of where they end and the organisation begins.  It is a type of possession.

I would go so far as to say that immortality is not a Christian concept.  It comes from Greek Gods.  The Christian God is not immortal but eternal as are those who know the power of Jesus, his power in weakness.  It is our mortality that makes us human and helpful to others.  It is closely linked with the idea of humility.

On Churches, Management and Community Development

Some years before I discovered Citizens' Organising, I attended a seminar about American Community Development Corporations (CDCs).  This must have been in the late 1980s, before Community Development Trusts (CDTs) became well known in this country.

The CDCs were designed to focus on the finance of local regeneration through building up local assets, in contrast to organising's emphasis on relationships between people.  However, there was a strong relationship component which illustrates some of the cultural differences between Britain and the US.

I remember the speakers' assertion that whilst those in attendance at the seminar in Britain were community development professionals, in the States it would be the community activists and representatives of the funding foundations.  The paid community workers were more likely to be back at the CDC doing the admin!

The activists in the States took responsibility and did not hand it over to professionals.  Also their primary relationships were with the private sector, not local government.  In Britain paid professionals, provided usually by local government or the churches, are instrumental in raising funds by building relationships with statutory agencies. 

In the States, private companies set up charitable foundations which relate directly to local activists.

Two conjectures:

1. I am sure that US local activists learned their skills through the churches, through organising or similar activities.  This is why so many community development approaches show evidence of gospel values.  Once again we see the possibility of the Christian faith influencing change well beyond the formal reach of the churches.
2. The mixing of local activists and the private sector has resulted in a degree of mutual exchange of methods so many management approaches these days also reflect community development values.

I don't have a lot of evidence for these conjectures - maybe somebody has and will point me in the direction of it - but what I have experienced of radical theology, community development and management theory suggests the linkages are real.

This in no way denies the contribution of traditions other than Christianity but it is to suggest these linkages are significant and real.

Participative Methods 4: Citizens' Organising

This approach was first developed by Saul Alinski during the 1970s.  He worked amongst the poorest communities in urban United States and developed forthright methods of increasing the confidence of people trodden down by poverty.  He wrote two books Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals.

After his death in the late seventies, his work was taken up by the Industrial Areas Foundation.  During the nineties IAF attempted to introduce organising to this country.  Although their may still be a few organisations around I believe the attempt has run into the sand.

I took their leaders training in 1992.  Whilst I had difficulty with the whole package they were promoting, much of what I learned has been helpful in my community development practice.  It is not a method that is written down anywhere.  This is a deliberate policy as it is supposed to be passed from practitioner to practitioner.  A good introduction to the principles is Robert Linthicum's Building a People of Power.

Here are a few of the basics:

1. Organising starts with the churches (and perhaps today any place of worship).  Why?  Because churches are there for the long haul.  In disadvantaged communities they can be the only institutions which maintain a presence. 
2. Organising is based upon an analysis of power.  The Statutory and Private Sectors (and to a lesser extent the professional voluntary sector) access power through organised money.  Communities cannot do this, as they have no money.  They access power through organised people.
3. Citizens' organisations are funded solely through the giving of their member organisations.  The reason for this is that accepting grant aid means they become beholden to the donor organisations.  They must unambiguously represent the interests of their members.
4. This is power tempered by love.  Power collectively exercised is used in a disciplined way so that no-one is marginalised.
5. The people involved are motivated by anger and self-interest.  Anger energises the leaders; ensures that things get done.  Self-interest is the deeper motivation that arises out of realising that I benefit when I work for the benefit of others.
6. Leaders are trained and developed but never occupy any position in the organisation for more than one year.
7. They work by ensuring that people with power, eg local politicians, business people, church leaders, etc are accountable to their own aims.  Citizens' Organisations have no permanent friends or enemies, the aim is always to develop relationships.

I think the problem in Britain was that it is culturally very different from the States.  We have a lot to learn but have not yet developed an approach to organising that suits our own culture.  The churches led with organising in the States and could in Britain lead in developing our own brand.  It is in fact an effective way of encouraging real sharing between churches and ecumenists could do worse than study this method.  I will explore the weaknesses of community development in England further in future posts.

Types of Investment 1: Gifts and Grants

Over the last few weeks my neighbourhood has been undergoing a traumatic experience.  Nearly 8 years ago, we were selected to receive £52 million over 10 years of government money under a programme known as New Deal for Communities.  I joined the Board about a year ago and gradually a story has been unraveling.  At some point during the lifetime of the programme, the Board were told that most New Deals around the country would underspend and so if it spent more than it should in the middle of the programme, more money would be available later.  Somehow in these later years no-one (neither the Board nor the council (the accountable body) nor the government office) noticed the planned expenditure equaled more than £52m.  The government during this time of recession decided to claw back the underspend. Of course there was nothing in writing.

A few weeks ago the Board reluctantly agreed to terminate the programme early and so about 120 people have been made redundant a year earlier than they expected.  I tell this sorry story not to apportion blame but to highlight some of the issues around this sort of grant related culture.

Money invested in a neighbourhood will always do some good.  Of course it will.  The problem is that all grant aid is time limited and finding alternative funding for established projects is difficult.  The reality in my neighbourhood is that some valued work will disappear.  But let us not forget, the problem has simply been brought forward a year, had the programme run its course, many of the same projects would have terminated.

Usually grant aid is tied to outputs, very often the objectives of the funding body will determine the activities of the applicant organisation.  This way voluntary hours are recruited into government programmes; achieving outputs replaces the original purpose the applicant organisation. 

These two problems, dependency and mission creep, are both consequences of a culture that is driven by grant aid.  An additional problem with programmes such as New Deal is that they are saying to neighbourhood organisations, 'here's a sum of money, you work out what to do with it'.  This approach does not encourage quality, it increases dependency and drives community groups in directions they would not normally go.

For Christians giving is seen as a good thing and hospitality as a virtue.  I think Christians are mistaken to see hospitality as gift, when we do that our giving becomes something that encourages dependency.  Conservatives would agree with me so far but, as I will show over the next few days, the idea of the gift is the wrong model.  The generosity underlying Christian mission should not be seen as simply a gift.

Yesterday, I suggested my list of types of investment paralleled Kahane's list of types of dialogue.  Gifts and grants parallel his first type, downloading.  Either the giver doesn't care and walks away or the giver is purchasing outputs.  At best it is a one way relationship and although much good work can be done it rarely has lasting significance.  Just as in downloading conversations nothing new is learned.  The neighbourhood soon forgets the project and simply moves to the next source of funding, responding according to their new funding body's whim.