A CALL FOR FAITH-BASED ABCD STORIES AND LESSONS LEARNED!!

Kim Hopes
Kim Hopes
@kim-hopes
7 years ago
3 posts

The ABCD Institute Faith Working Group is interested in capturing stories where faith communities or faith-based groups have mobilized their own resources and/or effectively leveraged resources to make something positive happen in community life.  We believe that faith communities are strong players in community life – we are looking for stories that reflect that fact.  We need your help.

A 2002 ABCD publication, Asset Based Strategies for Faith Communities (available for free via  download  on ABCD website) shared examples and some common aspects.  We want to  identify current, wider ranging stories for review and possible publication. We are looking for examples, and we will follow up on stories that hold potential because they reflect ABCD principles and values.  We are interested in faith stories from diverse faith traditions around the world.

If you have such a story, or if you have heard of a faith-focused story that we should follow up on, please let us know in a paragraph or two by telling us what happened, who did it and what were the results.  

Please send your stories or other information by December 31st to:  Kim Hopes (KHOPES@depaul.edu).  Please provide full contact information (name, phone, email, location).

For further information, contact Mary Nelson (drmarynelson@gmail.com (773) 551-3135.

Thanks so much!

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@dee-brooks
7 years ago
0 posts

Hi Kim,

This convo has been added to the FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/429625007423984/

Dee...

Kim Hopes
Kim Hopes
@kim-hopes
7 years ago
3 posts

Thanks Dee! Great idea. I will let Mary know

Mac Johnson
Mac Johnson
@mac-johnson
6 years ago
15 posts

Greg Boyle, founder and Executive Director of Homeboy Industries, entered the Jesuits and was ordained a priest in 1984. He was Pastor of Dolores Mission, a Catholic parish in public housing developments in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, from 1986 until 1992. This community context:  the poorest parish in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles; neighborhood having the highest concentration of gang activity in the whole city. Homeboy Industries traces its roots to “Jobs for a Future” (JFF), a program created by Boyle in 1988 at nearby Dolores Mission parish.

This continuing gang-intervention work focuses on developing compassionate gift-connecting conversations among peers. For this purpose, this online film reflects on sentencing reform and decriminalizing trauma. This is in order to invest in "extravagant tenderness" among people, to build trust-relationships for healing in community. Expensive mass-incarceration is not making us safer.

https://www.facebook.com/bravenewfilms/videos/223546301660734 

Healing Trauma:  Beyond Gangs and Prisons

Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ and Home Boy / Home Girl Industries

Greg's work also reflects the Igantian spirituality of the Society of Jesus (founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola) and its lay companion networks. This gift-oriented contemplative practice has spread to many faith communities, ecumenically.


updated by @mac-johnson: 11/28/18 11:28:37AM
Mac Johnson
Mac Johnson
@mac-johnson
5 years ago
15 posts

Abundant Community Conference Call, Tuesday, March 12, 2019, hosted by John McKnight and Peter Block. This periodic Abundant Community Zoom Conference call was with Jonathan Massimi, a Canadian priest with a long history of inventing imaginative ways to connect people, young and old, and breathe new life into their communities. For a recording of this call on Face Book see:  https://www.facebook.com/AbundantCommunity/videos/1026128160911319

Jonathan describes an ABCD initiative, the Share Fair, where he encouraged those in the community to de-clutter their homes and give things away. They asked people to bring their items to Grace Anglican Church and place them on the lawn. This event allowed us to clothe many migrant workers, furnish the apartment of an immigrant family, provide single mothers with items for their children, and send multiple items of clothing over seas.

See a related recorded conference call with Hebrew Scriptures scholar Walter Brueggemann, with whom Peter and John co-authored the book An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture.

Mac Johnson
Mac Johnson
@mac-johnson
5 years ago
15 posts

Abundant Community Conference Call with Pastor Mike Mather, Tuesday, June 18, 2019

(Face Book recorded Zoom Call)

Pastor Mike Mather of Broadway Methodist Church in Indianapolis, with Peter Block & John McKnight. John McKnight has said that he knows of few people who have implemented Asset-Based Community Development more courageously or completely than Mike Mather.

One reason may be that Mike starts with different questions from the ones you hear in other places. For example, he says, what if, at annual church conferences, we gave awards to congregations that, despite all that has happened around them—all the demographic shifts, the changing economic base—have stayed in the city? What if we asked those congregations to name three neighbors they wanted to celebrate for the gifts they give in the neighborhood?

Taking an approach like that changes everything.

"The issues our organizations and people face cannot be cured by technique," he says, "whether that technique is creating a new worship service, erecting a new building, storytelling, or establishing an economic and community development program." Mike knows that we already have the tools we need. We just have to reclaim them and not be afraid to use them. He says, "I try to remember those words that appear in Scripture so often: 'Fear not.'"

We will dive deeper into what Mike means when he says we already have the tools we need to re-imagine community and work with our neighbors to tap into the abundance around us. We will also explore ways that Mike's experience might apply to your own work. We'll finish up the call by asking you to share your questions and insights.  

See Face Book video-recording of this half-hour conversationhttps://www.facebook.com/AbundantCommunity/videos/585558838637439


"...The challenges are assets:  Try something.  Example (re church member / neighbor social separation; an encounter strategy) (Roving Listener DeAmon Harges) shows up “accidentally” with a neighbor, at a church committee meeting, and introduces the neighbor to the church members.  “Oh, I'm sorry... This is…  Could we go around and introduce ourselves?...”  After the third month of doing this accident, church members began to laugh… (at the desegregation). 


See also:  DeAmon Harges TedTalk "Making the Invisible Visible"  .”  The Roving Listener’s job:  “Find the gifts and talents for everybody in the life of the community, find a place for that gift and celebrate that gift in ways that build community, economy and mutual delight.”


Mac Johnson
Mac Johnson
@mac-johnson
5 years ago
15 posts

'Love is an exchange of gifts,' Saint Ignatius had said.  It was in these simple, practical, down-to-earth ways that people could show their love for each other.  If the love was not there in the beginning, but only the need, such gifts made love grow. - Author: Dorothy Day (See also attached graphic.)

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