In this episode of Do Justice, Jodi Koeman of World Renew joins us to talk about churches engaging in asset-based development. We explore how listening, relationship-building, and justice can help congregations and neighborhoods thrive together. From revitalizing gardens to building trust around bonfires, discover how God’s shalom comes alive when we collaborate with our communities.
The following is a transcript of Season 9 Episode 4 of the Do Justice podcast. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen and subscribe on your favourite listening app.
"God's Shalom. What does it look like? How does it feel? Would we know it if we found it? Through World Renew's community flourishing cohort, Church of Refugia asked these questions and then went out to seek the thriving of their community. A year later and we've discovered that our neighbors are hurting but hopeful. How do they make ends meet? How do they put good, healthy food on the table? Can they trust their neighbor? Is God who he says he is and can the church be trusted? To answer these questions we've created a food justice initiative where we empower our neighbors to revitalize community gardens, grow and cook their own healthy meals, and together seek God's shalom. As a home missionary, it's so invigorating to watch my church come alive and to see them engage with our community. There's nothing like watching two people who don't share a language laugh together as they eat a radish they just pulled out of the ground. Thank you, World Renew. Together we truly do get to taste and see that God is good."
Chris: Well, hello friends, and welcome to Do Justice. My name is Chris Orme and we're continuing our conversation as we talk about the communities of practice within the Christian Reformed Church. Today we're focusing on community flourishing and our guest today is my colleague and friend Jodi Koeman, welcome Jodi.
Jodi: Thank you! Thanks for having me.
Chris: I'm going to brag on you a bit. I'm going to do the bio brag, now, if that's okay. So, Jodi has an extensive background in community development, non-profit consulting, and social services. Jodi's worked in leadership roles at various organizations and, as I mentioned, now serves with World Renew. And with a focus on building authentic community relationships and engaging with churches and communities, Jodi has a strong track record of empowering others to make a positive impact. Amen and welcome again! I'm excited to get into this conversation. Let's start from the top: community flourishing. What was the core question that this cohort was looking at?
Jodi: Yeah, I think what we were looking at is: what role do churches, congregations play in the flourishing of their community? The ones that they're placed in, and they're placed there for a reason, so how do we help them participate in making that neighborhood or that community where their church is a place to thrive? And not just for certain people, but for everybody.
Chris: Introduce us to the cohort because to me those are the types of questions that every church should be asking. That every believer should be asking. But tell us a little more about, what were the in and outs of the cohort? What were the conversations centered around?
Jodi: There were two rounds of this cohort. One was a pilot year. There were about six congregations represented. The next year there were about eight, and there were about five from the US and three from Canada. They really represented a big cross-section of congregations—rural, urban, small, large, plants, established churches. And what Rachel and I really wanted to help them do is to work through the process of: what is asset-based community development? And then how to look at their congregation and their church and see what were the gifts there? What were the gifts of both the community and the congregation? Where was that connection? And as they went through the principles and practices of asset-based community development, to really learn about and love and listen to their congregation and their communities in order to work with the community in sort of that thriving. So it wasn't, "Hey, we got a great idea. Let's serve you." It was, "Let's step back. Let's reassess. Let's learn a new way of listening and learning about our community in order to work alongside them in that flourishing, not doing for them but doing with them."
Chris: You mentioned Rachel. Who's Rachel?
Jodi: Rachel from DMC—Diaconal Ministries of Canada. She's a colleague in this work and so it was fun to work alongside of her.
Chris: You know, in some of the other conversations that we've been having with folks who've given leadership to these cohorts is there's a story or there's an experience that happened in the midst of participating in this cohort that sticks with folks, you know, so what's one of those stories that stuck with you that you haven't been able to put down?
Jodi: I'm just going to go back a minute and tell you a little bit what I mean by when I say "asset-based," because that will help you sort of understand the principles that they're looking at and then how the story sort of played out. So, when we say "asset-based," I'm looking at it in the lens of A.B.C.D.E. I keep it kind of simple for congregations—just use the alphabet. And so it's asset-based, building relationships, community drive, development-focused, exercising justice. And so working with congregations how they already are and then how they can do those things more fully. So, the story, I would say, is of Pullman CRC in Chicago, the south side of Chicago. They were going through a visioning process prior to starting this cohort and so they sort of jumped in and said, "Maybe this cohort will bring things together for us." This is a really diverse, multicultural, multi-ethnic congregation in the south side of Chicago, so an urban environment. And they have tried to really reflect their community ever since they started. So they really got into this, the whole process! And so when we talk about asset-based discovery of their community and congregation, they put together this team of people and they did a gifts explosion Sunday where they worked with every person of their congregation, all ages, and they spent the whole service trying to identify the gifts of one another in their congregation and then the same thing for their community. Another time, when they were going to work on talking and listening to the community they said, "Well, we can't just out by ourselves. We're going to actually train people from the community to go out with us in the process." So everything was team-building and really getting into this process. By the end, what they decided to do was build a community flourishing team to continue the work that they had learned about together in this process. So, it was just an example of, like, they stuck with it! They really wanted to see their congregation try these processes and principles and put them into action.
Chris: I feel like I know the answer, I want to drill deeper into that because I also want to talk about food security and how that focus in this work has given direction and shape to how these cohorts play out, but when a church aligns itself with the asset-based community development model or the A.B.C.D.E. model, what happens? What happens to the vitality of the church? Because in some of our work at World Renew we operate in that model and we know that every human being is created in God's image and therefore endowed with the dignity and the beauty therein. But what happens with this model in the life of the church?
Jodi: Wow. So much. But I think what they learn is how to love one another in a deeper way. How to really listen to each other. But I think the biggest thing is they start seeing the gifts of one another. And when they start identifying and seeing the gifts of one another it makes it so much easier to see that in the communities that they're a part of, so that it's not always just seeing all the things that we have to fix or change or do, but really how can we see what God is already doing in us and in our communities and just jump on board onto that?
Chris: I mentioned food security. Can you tell us a little bit about what the cohort did on that area of focus?
Jodi: This particular cohort wasn't focused on food insecurity in particular but so many congregations have food ministries, whether that's a pantry or a meal or something. And so a lot of the discussion ends up being around that particular ministry. So we could target that ministry and talk a little bit about practically putting the asset-based principles of practices into place into that ministry and come up with some innovative ideas. One of the churches, Church of the Refugia in Visalia, California, they really weren't—that was the thing that their church was built on: gardening, community meal, farmers market. And so all of their work was sort of surrounded with that and what grew out of that was sort of a next iteration cohort with some churches that I am doing. So, food security is just that easily identifiable ministry in a church that you can really do some shifting and changing in simple ways that can help you move it more toward justice and community development.
Chris: I'm also wondering, you know, are there some churches who participated in this or some members of the cohort who participated who might have been more at the beginning of their justice journey as a community? What did it look like to get something started in some of these communities out of the cohort?
Jodi: People were definitely on all different pages and starting points and sometimes that would be challenging because they would feel like, "We're not ready for this." We would have to always keep reminding everyone, "We're learning from each other. It's okay to be on whatever page you're on." I think for them it was seeing the possibilities of what could shift in their ministry, and for others it was establishing a commitment to working for justice. So I think they balanced each other nicely and spurred both congregations on, whatever range of justice or development side you were on. It led to some really great conversations.
Chris: Let's turn to the cohort itself. A key part of learning in cohorts is that you're not alone on the journey and that's something that can be especially helpful in a justice setting. It can be hard work. From your experience leading this cohort, what value or impact could you or have you observed of people joining together?
Jodi: Well, I definitely—in the congregations one of the basic things we talked a lot about was: you need a team to do this work. You can't do it alone. It can't be the pastor of the church that is steering this or the only person steering this, so you do need to learn how to put together a real wide variety, diverse team of people in order to work together. And then another part of that is that your church can't go it alone. So, who do you connect with in your community, both partners of other churches and community members? So I think that was probably the thing we hammered on a lot, is that team aspect and learning from one another. I think some of the stuff that came out, for example, Church of Refugia in Visalia, about how to identify that, "Okay, we're going to partner with the local farmers' market and develop some relationships there." So I think a lot of relational building happened in different places.
Chris: Was there anything that surprised you out of that? Like, what did you walk away from this going, "Oh, woah, I did not see that coming!" Or, "I wasn't expecting that." In a positive light!
Jodi: I mean, the thing that surprised us out of the cohort was that we actually needed to move more slowly [laughs] and give people a lot more time to process and practice what they were learning each week. So I think that was one. I think a neat thing we learned is in—from the congregation at Fort Wingate, New Mexico. They taught us to just think pretty simply. So their way of connecting with their community and their asset-based community development work started with a fire. And it was a fire—not a fire like, on fire, but a bonfire! That they could get together and the way they could connect with the community was, "Hey, we're providing the marshmallows and graham crackers, you provide everything to go in it." And it seems so simple and not that transformative, but that was the thing that brought the community together and started spurring them on to bigger ideas of, "Hey we really need to use this space better for a food pantry," or, "Hey, we need to use this space because so many people are looking for jobs." So, I think that was interesting to be like, "Oh, okay, we've got to—we can simplify this even to the most basic things, as a bonfire." And it really built community! And that is really the whole starting point of everything.
"My name is Debra Chee. I'm the pastor at the Christian Reformed Church in Fort Wingate, New Mexico. We are really beginners in this process of thinking about the assets that we have in our community and what our place is there. We have brainstormed and even done a few small experiments with activities and through this we have made connections with our community. They know us now. They see me at the post office, they know who I am and I'm learning who they are. We had a community meeting when our trailer park was under new management and we offered our church as a place for them to come and just process what was going on and what was happening and to ask questions. And we learned a lot about what the people were thinking was a problem in their community and amazingly it was dogs! The stray dogs that were allowed just to roam the community and harass people, especially children. And so in that way we thought, "Well, what could we do to help this situation?" And it wasn't until someone in the community and also in our church said, "Wow, we could do—let's just start small." And so she went and asked the manager if gates could be put up around the playground. There was a nice fence around the playground but the gates were missing. She was thinking that she would be able to build those gates and the manager said, "No, I think we've got those gates somewhere around here." So she was amazed, she thought, "Oh, well, that was easy." But then we thought maybe we could invite the children in the community to make signs to put up on the gates that said, "Please keep the gate closed." So these are things that we've been doing. So far, it's a process and I think one thing that we need to keep in mind as a church is that there is a reason for connecting with our community just beyond being visible. The reason is that people are lonely and we often don't think of that. We often are lonely ourselves and so how can we fill this void? One way is just to be a presence with people. Of course the question is always, "Well, how do we be that presence?" And I think it's just jumping in with something small and getting our feet wet and getting to know people.
Chris: So Jodi, there's someone listening to this who wants to get started. They want to get started in their community, they've got a group of people, they've got a cause that they're passionate about, feeling called. They're reading to get going but the time that we're in [laughs], the zeitgeist of the season is, "There's not enough. It's too hard. It's too much." There's a negativity that can be insurmountable. What do you say to the person who says, "Okay, I want to overcome that negativity. I want to put the positive out there in our actions as a community." What do you say to that person?
Jodi: Well, I think part of the challenge is that we're doers. I think particularly Reformed faith, Christian Reformed, whatever, we've grown up in that place. We want to do things. And so I think the first thing is actually to take a step back and be a learner and to be curious. I think that is the key, to be curious about people and about the community that your church is placed in. You might not live in that community, but instead of assuming about that community I think you need to be curious about it because it changes you [laughs] before it changes the community. And so hearing the experiences of other people and—it just challenges us and it challenges our ideas and I'd encourage us, I think, to keep going and keep learning from others and then that will then spur on relationship. Once you have relationships, you will be able to work together for something that's way bigger than about you or your church, but it's about what God really wants for that community. So I'd say take a step back and learn.
Chris: That is, yeah, that's everything, I think. That really—there's something beautiful in the Gospels that this great reversal, right? We want to go big, Jesus goes small. We want greatness, Jesus says, "Serve." We want to be first and Jesus says, "Nope! Last." And I think we want to go fast, and you're saying, "Slow down!" I think that tracks. I think that tracks really well. Jodi, before we go, a final word on the cohorts, on the community of practice?
Jodi: We really enjoyed them. And I guess I'm speaking for Rachel and I in that we want our role to be as guides. We do not have all the answers! But we can help you through a process of discovery and of learning and of listening. So, I would say whether we do another cohort experience, which I hope we do, or whether we just help coach congregations through this, we still believe that the church, the local church, is a relevant way that God is moving in the community. So, if we can walk alongside churches and help in that process, it's a privilege for us.
Chris: So, today our guest has been Jodi Koeman. Jodi gave leadership to the community flourishing community of practice. If you want to learn more about that check the links in the show notes. Jodi, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jodi: Hey, you are welcome. Thanks for this opportunity!
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