Olympia and Community

August 10, 2009

Church and Community Consultation

This past Saturday, I had the honor and opportunity to work with members of the leadership time at Olympia Christian Reformed Church (Olympia, WA).

We worked through several conceptual frameworks that provided a basis for the church to consider how to better serve individuals and their community overall.

We first considered where current outreach ministries fit into the "Developmental Grid"...give a fish, teach to fish, rent the pond, own the pond...continuum.

Next we worked through Robert Linthicum's "In,To, With" framework, which asks to the church evaluate the nature and focus of the congregation's community involvement.


Both exercises stimulated much conversation, created many questions, poised a number of healthy options as "next steps" for OCRC.

We ended with 5 work "take aways"...these leaders agreed to follow up on.

All in all, a wonderful group of folk, who really do care about people and their community!

Oh yeah...they were confronted with the dreaded "helium stick" as well. They did get it to the floor eventually, but at first it almost floated into outerspace!

ABCD Training

July 27, 2009

ABCD Training

I had a splendid time Saturday down in the Cascade Neighborhood in South Lake Union, Seattle. We did the first of two days of training in Asset Based Community Development (ABCD). In attendence were representatives from the Cascade Peoples Center, Cascade Neighborhood Council, Upward Bound (City of Seattle), AmeriCorps supervisiors and members from sites in South Lake Union (DUST Church) and Aurora (Awake Church).

We covered three central ABCD principles and practices:

• The Gifts or Assets of Individuals
• Discovering What People Care About
• How to Mobilize Groups

We will follow-up this training in about 30-days with:

• Distinquishing between People and Programs
• Describe How to Lead by Stepping Back
• All People are to be Included in Community Building

It was wonderful to hear the passion and vision all in attendance had for their respective communities. I look for many good things to come from their work, using ABCD!