A careful reading of the scriptural story reveals that gratitude is an essential virtue that defines the people of God. Gratitude is written all over the Psalms, for instance, as well as interwoven into the Apostle Paul’s letters. Although many of our churches celebrate the Eucharist on a weekly basis – a celebration of gratitude for the gift of Christ Jesus – our churches generally reflect the prevalent sense of entitlement in the broader Western culture. Entitlement, expecting a certain privilege whether we deserve it or not, is the opposite of gratitude, a deep appreciation for what we have received, whether we deserve it or not.
Many books have been written on cultivating gratitude as a personal virtue, including Ann Voskamp’s bestseller One Thousand Gifts, but much less has been written on what it looks like for a community to have gratitude at the very heart of its identity. Building upon the conviction that the economy of creation is defined by abundance and not scarcity (a conviction defended poignantly by Walter Brueggemann and others), my friend John Pattison and I argue in our book Slow Church that gratitude is essential to embodying a Kingdom economy, one that is rooted in abundance and not scarcity.
Practicing Gratitude Together
One of the primary ways that gratitude can be a formative practice for our church communities is through our recognition of the gifts that God has already provided in our congregations and our neighborhoods. When we turn to the task of seeking the flourishing of our churches and our neighborhoods, it is tempting for us to begin with the question: “What do we need?” This question, however, can consume us, obscuring the gifts and assets that God has provided. It is, I believe, a practice of gratitude to begin instead with the question: “What has God already provided?” As we grow in our knowledge of the gifts that God has given, we can begin to imagine how to use these gifts to promote the flourishing of our churches and neighborhoods.
The practice of gratefully recognizing the gifts that God has provided is often referred to as asset-mapping. In this post, I will briefly cover three key areas of assets available to our congregations: the human resources within our congregation, our church buildings or other buildings that we might own, and the land that we own. (If after reading this post, you want to know more about asset-mapping in congregational settings, I recommend Luther Snow’s book, The Power of Asset Mapping).
(#1) The Gifts and Skills of our Members
In many churches, we have little to no knowledge of those who are members of our congregation. It is a profound work of gratitude to get to know our members, and especially their gifts and skills – which may have little to do with the work that they do to sustain themselves. If we believe that the mission of God in the world is the reconciliation of all things, things on earth as well as things in heaven (see Col. 1: 20), then perhaps there might be room for a broad range of gifts and skills as we work to bear witness to God’s reconciliation – for the skills of the plumber, the graphic designer, the lawyer, the nurse, the entrepreneur, the painter, and many more. Beyond the important work of getting to know the skills of our members, our work as churches focuses on utilizing and orchestrating these gifts in a way that bears witness to the love and reconciliation of Christ Jesus.
One Church’s Story
Here at Englewood Christian Church on the Near Eastside of Indianapolis, there have been three primary ways in which we have leveraged the skills of our members as we seek to bear witness to the Gospel in our place.
1. First, we have started several businesses that draw upon the skills in our congregation. These businesses give us an opportunity to do common work together and they all focus on efforts that benefit either our neighborhood or other churches. These businesses include a community development corporation that provides affordable housing and works on economic development in our urban neighborhood, a daycare that provides top quality care at affordable prices, a bookstore that publishes The Englewood Review of Books, a bookkeeping business that handles non-profit and church accounts, and a landscaping operation. Not every church will be able to start a business, but doing so can be a way to augment the income of a church that is struggling financially, or a more missional approach to bi-vocational ministry. Churches have started many different kinds of businesses from coffee shops and art galleries to cleaning and construction businesses.
2. Less than a quarter of the adults in our congregation work in one of our church businesses, but there is a good number of others who work for organizations that we regularly partner with in seeking the flourishing of our neighborhood. Several members work for other community-development non-profits in our neighborhood. We also have a doctor who works at the local low-cost health clinic. Having members who work for these groups has facilitated our working partnerships with these groups.
3. The third way in which we have leveraged the skills of our members is simply through members who make their skills available for the work of the church. These include a landscaper who does work – sometimes for pay and sometimes not – on our church property and other properties that the church owns, as well as a wonderful group of retired people who show up at the church building on most days of the week to do whatever work needs to be done (from taking out the trash, to painting, to driving people on errands). The vast majority of adult members in our congregation contribute to the work of the church in one of the three ways that I have described here.
(#2) The Buildings and (#3) Land We Own
The skills of our members are not the only resource available to our churches. It is widely known that church buildings are often one of the most under-utilized spaces in a neighborhood. Having space in our church building can facilitate starting one or more businesses. It can also provide the opportunity to rent or share the space with other churches, non-profits, schools, businesses or neighborhood groups. Sharing our building can be complicated, but if we can work through the complications, the church building can be an even greater asset to both church and community.
The land we own as churches is another wonderful asset that God has given us. There has been a recent movement of churches starting gardens on their land. One church here in Indianapolis has a nature preserve on land they own. In Vancouver, BC, a city with one of the highest cost of housing in the world, I know a church that has ripped up a portion of their parking lot to build truly affordable housing for their neighborhood.
God has provided abundantly for the flourishing of our congregations, as well as for that of the whole creation. All too often in bemoaning what we don’t have, we are blinded to the riches that God has already provided. Let us learn to be a grateful people, beginning with a careful attentiveness to the many gifts with which God has already blessed us!
“Learn more at The Praxis Gathering!”
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