Every Gift Matters!

I recently spoke to a group of folks at Florence United Methodist Church about Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and the significance of finding out what people love to do, what they are good at, and what they care about enough to take action. I asked everyone to share something they love to do and people quickly chimed in with wonderful things: baking, woodworking, off-roading, tree-planting…just to name a few. I could feel the energy in the room starting to rise, joy and abundance were increasing. It was a blast!

So here is my challenge to you, do 1 or more of the following:

1. Ask your neighbors what they love to do (really listen to their answers and ask follow-up questions). Celebrate the gifts your neighbors bring into the world.

2. Tell your neighbors the gifts you see in them that you are thankful for. Sometimes people don’t realize their gifts or they dismiss them as unimportant, but every gift matters!

3. Lead a group of people in the exercise I described above. Create a “gifts garden” with gifts listed. BONUS: look for ways to connect and share any gifts that are not being shared.

Dee Brooks: Let the Dog Go

This week Matt and Adam are joined by Dee Brooks, ABCD Asia Pacific Trainer and Facilitator for the Jeder Institute and ABCD Asia Pacific Network. She is a world-wide connector for Asset Based Community Development and we are thrilled to have her on the podcast!

Dee shares inspirational stories and ideas that will make you want to get up and go out to interact your neighbors- just get out and "let the the dog go." We are encouraged to turn what may be seen as a challenge into an opportunity for growth and development.

Listen on any podcast platform! Here are links to the most popular ones…

• iTunes: https://apple.co/2Tba3H1

• Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2VBrUDT

• Stitcher: https://bit.ly/2NC744g

• Google Play: https://bit.ly/2EoHTOE

Justin Hancock: The Julian Way

Welcome back to The Neighbor Next Door, friends! For today's episode, hosts Adam and Matt sit down on the virtual front porch with one of our dear friends, and co-founder of The Julian Way, Justin Hancock.

Among so much more, Justin is an extremely compassionate person, a passionate leader, a deep thinker, and a gifted speaker and writer. We are so incredibly honored that he was willing to do an episode with us! Justin and his wife, Lisa, founded The Julian Way, a ministry of community, advocacy, and empowerment for those with diverse embodiments. It's an incredible ministry with the goal of developing an empowered community of discipleship in which disability is not viewed as a hindrance or something to be overcome. We brought Justin on today because we think the work of The Julian Way has a powerful connection to asset-based community development, and we're just so excited to share this episode with you all!

As has been the case with some of our other episodes, this episode mentions spiritual and religious topics. Because The Julian Way is centered around concepts of intentional Christian community, Christian spirituality is referenced in this conversation. As always, we want to reiterate that we do not present these episodes to promote any one spirituality or religion, Christianity included, but instead because we think they are helpful and encouraging for all neighbors, regardless of their relationships to spirituality or religion.

In the episode, Justin begins by introducing The Julian Way before then sharing some of his own story. We then move into exploring the connection with asset-based community development and talking more about what Lisa and Justin's work looks like today. It's so fantastic!

You will definitely want to learn more about The Julian Way, and you can do so by visiting this website: http://thejulianway.org. As Justin mentions in the episode, this website is still in progress, so you will also want to check back in soon in order to learn even more!

As is mentioned in the episode, Justin also wrote a book that you should all read! It's called The Julian Way: A Theology of Fullness for All of God’s People, and you can buy it on Amazon by clicking here!

John McKnight (Part 2): Making the Vehicles Visible

Greetings friends! Welcome to Part 2 of this three-episode series in which hosts Adam and Matt sit down with the literal founder of asset-based community development, John McKnight.

Hopefully you had a chance to listen to the first episode in this series, which is titled "John McKnight (Part 1): Have You Been Out in the Garden?". If you have not, we would highly suggest going back and listening to that episode first, as this episode will pick up right where that one left off. 

If you have not yet read a little about John, here is a bit of description...

John began community organizing when he was in his early twenties, and since then, he has done everything from training Barack Obama in community organizing to developing an entirely new model of community development. This model that he developed is of course asset-based community development, or ABCD, and we, the Neighboring Movement, consider ourselves asset-based community developers. That being said, John has always been a hero of ours, and over the years, we have followed his work closely and been deeply inspired and influenced by his practices. He is incredibly kind, absolutely brilliant, and a gifted teacher who always tells the perfect story in order to illustrate a point. We are so very honored that John was willing to sit down on the front porch with us, and we are so excited to share these three episodes with you all!

In this second episode, John starts by detailing the last three of the five categories of assets that all communities possess and that he started describing in Part 1. Then, he details what the work of asset-based community developers looks like moving forward and how we as citizens gain power. Of course, all of this is interspersed with incredible stories, and we are so excited for you to hear them! As one final note, this episode is dedicated to all of our Canadian neighbours out there; we have been referring to this episode as the "Canada rocks!" episode, and you will soon see why. We hope you enjoy, and don't forget to tune in next Tuesday for Part 3 and the finale of this series!

If you would like to learn more about John and his work, please check out the following resources:

• His website - Here you can learn more about John and access his learnings, publications, videos, and blogs.

• His institute

• His blog

Welcome to Episode 16, the first international episode of The Neighbor Next Door!

Welcome to Episode 16, the first international episode of The Neighbor Next Door! For this episode, Jonathan Massimi, a supervisor of community centers in Kitchener, Ontario, joined hosts Adam and Matt on the front porch via Zoom.

Jonathan is an expert in Asset-Based Community Development, or ABCD, and has a ton of experience utilizing, and helping others utilize, an asset-based approach. In this episode, Jonathan explains how ABCD shapes his work supervising community centers, how real change occurs in communities through small connections that foster friendships, and how we must utilize what we have in the present in order to become architects of our own future.

We think this is a fascinating episode, and we are quite excited to share it with you all!

We are pumped to present Episode 14!

This week, we present the second part of our interview with Rev. Mike Mather, the person who inspired us to utilize an asset-based approach in our work. We split the incredible conversation into two episodes and encourage listening to the first episode before this second one.

In the last episode, Mike outlined both his shift and his church's shift from scarcity to abundance. In this episode, Mike first presents practices that can help us stay focused on abundance before detailing how individuals, organizations, and institutions must structure themselves differently in order to be built around abundance. Next, Mike describes how he sees this movement of abundance-focused work taking shape around the country. To finish, Mike re-frames the idea of Christian discipleship and details what discipleship looks like for both him and his church.

Like Mike's first episode, this second one also contains discussion of religious topics. We want to reiterate that we do not present these episodes to promote any one religion or being religious but instead because we think they are helpful and encouraging for all neighbors, religious and non-religious alike.

We also want to take a moment to promote Mike's book, Having Nothing, Possessing Everything: Finding Abundant Communities in Unexpected Places. It is an amazing read, and we recommend it to everyone! You can find more information about the book here.

Our neighbors are awesome!

On Saturday night Catherine and I got home from visiting family in Colorado. Within the first 24 hours we got four phone calls from our neighbors. One neighbor called to tell us she had collected our mail for us while we were gone. Another neighbor called to welcome us home and let  us know that he was the one who covered our vegetable garden with a tarp to protect it from frost. Adam, Ashley and Prescott called and invited us over for dinner since we had been driving all day and didn't want to cook. And finally, a forth neighbor called to let us know he was still visiting family out west and he would not be driving home with the roads as icy as they were. 

Maybe other people have neighbors who are this kind and thoughtful, but for us, this is different than anyplace we've lived before, because our neighbors are so awesome! 

Food Outreach in Reverse...

From Catherine…

In SoCe, we have the good fortune of being able to partner with other organizations, such as the SCNA (South Central Neighborhood Association), the SCIA (South Central Improvement Alliance), and Legacy Ministries. Legacy has a branch called Garden Works.  I have been working with Garden Works since January of this year to do food outreach in SoCe.

As I reflect on what food outreach has come to mean in SoCe, I am looking back on the goals that were on the food outreach job description: respond to the needs and desires of our neighbors and to implement programs for the ongoing food empowerment of SoCe.  We perceived the food concerns in our neighborhood to be the food desert (since our neighborhood grocery store closed in the summer of 2014), financial constraints, lack of transportation, and lack of culinary knowledge or exposure. We went door-to-door and asked for input from neighbors. They were not too concerned about the food desert, but seemed interested in getting together for some cooking events. We decided to host gatherings such as potlucks, make & take cooking nights, and spice tasting opportunities. These evenings were fun and we met new people and learned of some amazing cooks in the neighborhood. However, there seemed to be some missing element, something else we should be pursuing.

In recent months, since blending Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) with food outreach, I have learned that the outreach I am being led to cultivate is actually to facilitate ways for neighbors to reach out with their amazing culinary skills! This means finding ways for one neighbor to utilize her wonderful cookie-baking skills, for a high school student to share her love of baking cupcakes, or for my new friend one street over to be able to cater some SoCe Life events to share and showcase her delicious Cuban cooking. It also means sharing with her that my dream for her is to host Cuban cooking lessons. She was so excited to make my dream come true – we have the first cooking lesson date and menu set! ABCD strikes again! Food outreach in SoCe is about uncovering the culinary passions that are already here among my neighbors and helping them to share those passions.

The Gifts of Strangers Pt. 2

From Matt...

So, is this idea of welcoming and valuing the perspective and contributions of strangers (those who have been marginalized and labelled) a new radical concept? Not if you’ve grown up reading the Bible--ha! In the Old Testament story of Abraham and Sarah, we learn how Abraham welcomed unknown visitors and received an unexpected blessing. Here is the beginning of the story from Genesis 18:

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as [Abraham] sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. 3 He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 5 Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.”

At this point in the story, Abraham does not know who the three guests are, he is simply practicing ancient middle-Eastern hospitality. However, as the story unfolds, the three visitors turn out to be the Lord! And the Lord informs the elderly (and childless) Abraham and Sarah that in due season they will have a son. The news is so unbelievable that Sarah laughs! And of course, in due season, Abraham and Sarah do have a son, and they name him Isaac.

What does this have to do with SoCe Life and Asset-Based Community Development?

Let me answer that question with a few questions to ponder:

• Is it possible that God still speaks through strangers?
• Is it possible that the hope we need in our communities could be heard in the voices of the marginalized?

I believe the answer is yes!

Up next, one more illustration…