Covenant News

Conference to Explore 'Assets-Based' Community Development

FARGO, ND (August 16, 2002) - The Town and Country Commission and the Northwest Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church are co-sponsoring a training conference, "Church Mission and Community Care: Releasing God's Gifts to the Church," at Knollbrook Covenant Church October 25-26.

Carol Ann McGibbon, co-director of the Master of Arts in Community Development program and the Urban Institute for North Park University in Chicago, will be a keynote speaker for the event. She will be joined by Luther Snow, a community developer and author of The Organization of Hope: A Workbook for Rural Asset-Based Community Development. Jon Kramka, director of mission development for the Northwest Conference, will also lead a workshop during the weekend.

There will be both an adult and youth track for the training sessions, said Gary Goreham, a member of Knollbrook Covenant who serves as a consultant to the commission. Registration is limited to 100 people. Primary consideration is being given to rural pastors, along with lay leaders, youth workers and young people throughout the Northwest Conference.

What excites McGibbon about the fall event is her belief that community development is biblically based. She cites the Old Testament book of Nehemiah as a case in point, noting how a prophet turned into a sociologist to help rebuild the walls of a city. "I think the empowerment of individuals and communities has to be spiritual," said McGibbon. "Otherwise, it's going to be redundant. If people aren't transformed spiritually, the problems will occur over and over again."

But McGibbon and Luther will do more than act as cheerleaders for community development. They will discuss sociological models to help people engage in community development in their respective regions. McGibbon will explain a more recent mode of thinking that has proved effective - the "assets-based" perspective.

In the past, sociologists often used a "needs-based" ministry perspective to focus on what communities needed and connected them with resources from outside of the community. With an assets-based view, the goal is to try to find the resources that already exist in a given community, said Goreham, a professor of rural sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at North Dakota State University in Fargo.

"It's an empowering, affirming approach," said Goreham of the assets-based approach. "We're looking at the capacities already existent in the community. One of the techniques we look at is called assets mapping - looking at all of the strengths of a community. And you look at the relationships between individuals and the associations in the community. You try to build social capital."

McGibbon's biblical analogy for the assets-based model of community development is I Corinthians 12, which affirms the many parts of the body and how they contribute to the overall body function. Asset-based ministry in the church, she added, can be as simple as sitting down with a person (whether it be a high school student, senior, disabled) and asking them what they like to do and then finding a way for them to do it in a church setting.

"Maybe we've had men or women who have gone through loss and could be grief counselors," said McGibbon, citing one example. "You first use the gifts to the maximum, those who are in the community."

Along with the training conference, .the event will include a banquet and 'sizzler' on the evening of October 26 with regional songwriter and musician Chuck Suchy providing the entertainment. Mark Hovestol, pastor at the Bemidji Covenant Church in Bemidji, Minnesota, and chair of the conference's Town and Country Committee, will lead a special worship service at Knollbrook on October 27.

For more information about the training weekend, call Goreham at 701-231-7637. Information on assets-based community development can be found by reading Building Communities From the Inside Out by John Kretzmann and John McKnight, professors at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Web site Information also can be obtained by visiting www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd.

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