Building Economy Through Collaboration

(Note: This blog is the result of years of travel and study around the lowest income rural counties of the U.S.A. The intent of the study has been to find the factors in these low income communities that might be attacked by the local church and/or its denominational leadership.)

Karl Evans

(Rate your church and community in this factor.)
Community Reality = _____
Congregational Reality = _____
Congregational Mission = _____

"Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the god of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of those among you who are of his people – may their god be with them! – are now permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the god of Israel – he is the god who is in Jerusalem; and let all survivors, in whatever place they reside, be assisted by the people of their place with silver and gold, with goods and with animals, besides freewill offerings for the house of their god in Jerusalem."

Statement of Reality
During the sixth and fifth centuries before Christ, generations of Hebrews spent centuries of slavery. They languished in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys of what is modern day Iraq. The promised release and return to the promised land must have brought a terrible temptation to the survivors.

After the years in captivity, the people must have wanted to scramble. They probably felt compelled to run, not walk, back to the land few of them had seen. The ordinary temptation would seem to have been to ignore community and race across the desert to the Jordan River. It could have been something like the Oklahoma Land Grab or the gold rushes of the 19th century. It might have even approached the opening of a department store on Friday after Thanksgiving.

The repatriates apparently come back to the promised land in some orderly manner. Their order apparently protected their sense of community. Except for the relationships with the Samaritans, things were orderly. The returnees accused the Samaritans of collaborating with the Assyrians while their cousins were in slavery.

The people apparently returned in some decent order. They re-established their communities. They rebuild their systems of collaboration and control, their synagogues, their markets and their city walls. They rebuilt only by re-taking the land and facilities from those who had stayed.

Definition of Collaboration for Economic Development:
The community works together in reliable interdependence. The community functions as a bed of multiple groups and stakeholders for the community good. Interaction among groups or individuals is supportive and effective.

Chaos in community activity will destroy the best attempts at community revitalization and recovery. In five decades of community service I have seen many organizational disasters among well-meaning people.
Collaboration is a result of training, leadership and commitment. It is also a result of recognizing a common calling from a common leader, Jesus of Nazareth.

The United States is an interesting experience in human activity. Although we are many differing faiths, abilities, dreams and persuasions, we can and do work together. We are a people torn apart by civil war, yet able to recover to the support of civil rights. We have changed from a rural nation to an industrial nation, yet work hard to remain small town in spirit. Our society has chosen to defend personal freedoms. We have also become nervous when anyone uses their freedom to speak disparagingly of our system. In short, much of what keeps us together is our choice to be together. It is our common work for the good of all the world that makes us viable.

When disaster strikes, we collaborate. Military personnel, church and nonprofit volunteers, business leaders, utility workers and many others sweating together is common practice. Pastors shovel sand into bags held by company presidents. Moslems struggle to find and rescue Christian children caught in the aftermath of tornadoes. This collaboration is at the heart of the nature of the whole North American Continent. It is also at the heart of efforts to build national and international economies around the world.

Questions to help us understand our community:
/ Does our community support the collaborative efforts of all its groups and individuals?

/ Do we work together for the good of everyone?

/ As a congregation of Christ, do we invest our personal and corporate for the good of the community?

/ Are there groups which refuse to work with other groups in the community?

/ Are these isolationist groups recognized and targeted by other groups within the community?

/ Do our churches, schools and other social organizations understand collaboration within the community as an appropriate target for mission effort?

Examples of programs which may help build Collaboration in our community.
( In Shady Dale, Georgia, a group of us built the first community fire truck. As part of this work we established the fire department. Junior Champion, a Primitive Baptist who drove over one hundred miles each way to church on Sunday, was the leader. Junior’s family and employees helped. I was the pastor of the United Methodist Church. Most of the city council were Southern Baptist.

When the truck was finished, painted bright red and outfitted with lights and siren, we drove around the community. We gathered up volunteers for the fire department. The first man we picked up was a disabled elderly black man who lived in the town. From that point on, we had no distinction, black or white, male or female.

( In Yachats, Oregon, the Presbyterian Church (P.C.U.S.A.) has been the driving force behind a local medical clinic. Others involved were members of the local Southern Baptist Church and other churches in neighboring communities. Other volunteers have come from the regional hospital, the local ambulance crew, local businesses and several local artists and retired persons.

( In thousands of communities around the world congregations gather together to celebrate the great festivals of the faith. Holy Week, Easter Sunrise, Advent and Pentecost see groups coming together for worship.
( In 1998 I was serving a congregation in downtown Las Vegas. As Pentecost approached I was a participant in an internet discussion group for clergy and laity. I entered a Pentecost greeting from the congregation to all those who could receive it. I then suggested that those who wished should send along their own greetings. These could be in any form they wished.

Over the next several days I received something like two hundred greetings from many different faith groups and individuals. The greetings came from every continent, including Antarctica.
Others of the list followed their own path. Perhaps they ignored the messages. Perhaps they saved them. I do not know. This gathering of greetings turned out to be a treasure of ministry and understanding for our little congregation.

On Pentecost Sunday each attender of the small congregation received copies of several greetings. During the service I had each individual read to the congregation the greeting they held. The collaboration of the local congregation and folks on the other side of the earth was startling. It seems that instantly we had a sense of oneness with the whole church.

( At Winslow, Arizona, we held the 1995 Thanksgiving morning service of 1995 at the Roman Catholic Church. This sanctuary was in the lower income side of the town. It was my turn to speak that year. My theme was a simple one. I simply called for the community to be thankful together to God for our blessings.

As I began the message I spoke briefly of the realities of the town. With about 12,000 persons in the general community, we were in several distinct ethnic groups. Winslow had (and still has) white, black, Mexican-American, Tex-Mex, Mexican nationals, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Apache, German-American, Chinese-American, Russian-American, Irish-American, and a few groups that escape my memory now .

Then I noted that my own heritage is Welsh, Irish, Scotch, English, German, Paiute, and a few other groups. Then I made what seemed to me to be an obvious remark. "I just don’t know where I belong in Winslow."

It was the only time in thousands of sermons preached over a lifetime of ministry that the congregation has loudly applauded my efforts.
The rest of the message focused on building acceptance and collaboration among the many ethnic groups of the community.


What are your own brainstorm and creative thoughts toward increasing community collaboration?
1. What evidence have you found to support the rating you have given your own community for Collaboration?

2. What evidence have you found to support the rating you have given your congregation for building Collaboration?

3. What programs might work in your church and community?

4. What will be your work in this process?

5. How will you reveal these thoughts to your church and community?

Continuity in Community Economic Development

Factor #6. Continuity in Community

Karl Evans

(After you read this article, you may wish to score your own community and congregation on their work in the area of Continuity.)

Community Reality = _____

Congregational Reality = _____

Congregational Mission = _____

Isaiah 65:17-22
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind . . .
No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
For one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

Statement of Reality
The community structures that work stay in place long enough to be productive. Gee, how difficult can that be? But you might be surprised.

People want and need to see the results of their labors. If the community is changing groups, enough continuity must be in place to see that positive values and patterns live on. Clergy and lay leadership are left in place long enough to establish programs, see results and celebrate the community efforts.

The nation Israel has been a study in continuity (and lack of continuity!) for around three or four thousand years. When Abraham left the area we know as Iraq with his people, they left continuity behind. No one knows how long their ancestors had lived in that area. They settled in the area with established homes, institutions, businesses and culture. By leaving the area, they left all their community support behind. Poverty, social disruption, war, hunger and early death were likely.

However, Israel took with them the covenant Abraham had made with Yahweh. This was the basic continuity they needed to eventually build a new society. The whole of the Scriptures is the tension between continuity with the past and hopeful vision of the future. This struggle is lived out in the presence of the Lord. That presence especially as known in the Covenant. Was their continuity. Without that, however, all apparently would have been lost.

Mora County, New Mexico, has been a place of refuge and restart for hundreds of years. Family after family of Americans come into the area. They arrive from Alaska, Europe, Africa or eastern North America. They have often escaped disaster from places across the nation. Usually they eventually left Mora to take over some better piece of land away from Mora County. Then a new nation settled in Mora to replace them. The refugees always had little in the way of cooking ability, culture or hope. They built everything from scratch.

In Mora County the young nations had time to put things together for themselves. They seemed to understand they were just passing through, but needed to have a time to build a community. The North American refugees developed their own culture and government around Mora. They rebuilt their religion to deal with the new realities of life in this inhospitable area.

The toughest part of this scenario was that each group had to start over. Every group gave up everything to come in.

A sure sign of a community in trouble is the transient nature of professional service in the area. Clergy, school leadership, attorneys, bank officers and physicians stay only a short time before moving on. Sometimes, as usually in the case of clergy and school administrators, the community forces them to leave. For others, the decision is one’s own, often excused by a better opportunity elsewhere, etc.

A major failing of the church is the frequency of pastoral change. In the small congregation, the pastor may initiate many good programs. The pastor carries them out almost individually, then moves on. This leaves the congregation as weak as the day the pastor arrived. One can usually spot the weakest congregations in any area quickly. Count the number of its pastors over the past twenty years.

My wife and I have made a lifelong pattern of accepting the task of pastor leadership in troubled congregations. This has not been an easy pattern for service, but it has been educational.

One principle has become clear. If a congregation has problems holding on to pastoral leadership, the congregation is in trouble. The outer data is only the symptom of the reality of that congregation. Infighting within the congregation or the community may spell disaster for continuity. A self-important controlling group within the congregation may fight for control. A frequent turnover of pulpit committee leadership may be a symptom. Any problem, if carried throughout the congregation, can be destructive to the congregation, and thus to the life of the community. Anyway, frequent pastoral change is usually a prime symptom of internal trouble.

Questions for Evaluation:
√ Does our community have a core of professional leadership that has remained stable for many years?

√ Does the core change only with honest career moves or personal needs?

√ Do we have patterns of clergy leaving after a few months or a year or two?

√ Do we have difficulty bringing in and keeping physicians, nurses, dentists,
attorneys and school administrators and top teachers?

Examples:

☹ (Bad Example – the pastor left almost immediately) One congregation turned the ‘Pastor’s Study” over to the church secretary because she needed to use the room to work up the Sunday Worship Bulletin. They took the key to the room away from the pastor. The pulpit committee said he could work from home or from the church library. She needed the study for one hour per week because a computer was there. She needed to do the worship bulletin.

☺ In one congregation I visited in Kansas (I forget which one) I stumbled across a special service. The congregation invited the leadership of the community to come to the church for a special service. The point of the service was to thank God for the gift of these persons. All the sacred time was spent telling the god what these and others had done in the community. Of course, these leaders included many of that congregation.

What are your own brainstorm and creative thoughts to increase community continuity?

1. What evidence have you found to support the rating you have given your own community?


2. What evidence have you found to support the rating you have given your community?


3. What programs might work in your church and community?


4. What will be your work in this process?


5. How will you reveal these thoughts to your church and community?