A Theological Reflection On Asset-Based Community Development
by Revd Al Barrett - February 2021
We publish the introduction and conclusion of pamphlet that a Al Barrett wrote in 2013, as this reflection on the theology that underpins an asset-based approach to local communities remains as relevant as ever.
Asset-based community development, or ABCD, is an approach to community development that uses the skills and capacities of local residents, the power of local associations, and the support of local institutions, to build stronger, more sustainable communities for the future.
Introduction
Asset-based community development (or ABCD) is founded on the idea that change will only happen if we identify and mobilise the gifts and capacities of local people and the social, physical and economic resources of a local place. It is an approach that seeks to build strong, sustainable communities from the ‘inside out’, through forging and nurturing relationships of care and creativity.
Although not an explicitly Christian methodology, ABCD’s core values and methods resonate deeply with Christian theology and practice. This paper explores those resonances and the ways in which ABCD can be a vital, life-giving tool for local churches as they join in the mission of God in their local contexts – engaging and supporting their communities, tackling poverty and injustice, and helping to grow resilient and inclusive neighbourhoods where all are able to participate and flourish.
Discovering the language and principles of ABCD has, quite genuinely, been a conversion experience for me – a conversion, however, to something I think I already knew and was, to a certain extent at least, already practising. In exploring three of ABCD’s core values, and sharing a little of my Birmingham church congregation’s journey, I want to highlight why I believe ABCD is both necessary – helping us to resist some of the currently dominant, social pressures – and deeply Christian – encouraging us to embrace a reality at the very heart of our faith
Conclusion
The story of the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus with expensive oil in Simon’s house in Bethany (Mark 14: 3 - 9) highlights some of the core elements of an ABCD-shaped vocation:
To learn to be a guest at other people’s parties as much as, if not more than, a host of our own.
To creatively receive the gifts and initiatives of others – even when they seem awkward or uncomfortable – in the cause of the gospel, as much as, if not more than, focusing on our own actions.
To challenge the limited and distorted imaginations of those caught up in those ‘idolatries’ of our society that so often exclude and destroy people and communities.
To enable the telling of stories of ‘good news’, of giftedness and possibility, of reciprocity and abundance, in our neighbourhoods. And to make sure that more and more of our neighbours, and not just us, are telling them.
I have written this paper in the expectation and hope that you and your church will recognise much of what it contains and are already practising it within your own neighbourhoods. The core values of an ABCD approach to community development resonate deeply with a Christian faith that celebrates the gifts of our Creator God, the humble, challenging presence of our Incarnate God, and the deep listening and connection-making of our Go-between God. The aim of ABCD is nothing less than a desire to ‘seek the shalom [peace, wellbeing, flourishing] of the city’ (Jeremiah 29:7). It’s a call to relationship, to interdependence, and to community, which is what Christians understand to be at the very heart of God as Trinity.
On the one hand, ABCD simply offers us a helpful, practical framework for translating what we believe with our hearts and heads into meaningful presence and activity in our local contexts. On the other, it is also a ‘call to conversion’ from some of the temptations and tendencies into which we, the Church, can find ourselves slipping. It is a call to give up much of the power, control and status with which we are often all-too-comfortable, in favour of the empowerment and flourishing of our neighbours, and our neighbourhoods.
In Hodge Hill, where our church congregation suddenly found itself without its much-loved, much-used building, we have found the ABCD approach (even before we had learnt to call it that) to be a liberating, energising new phase in our life and mission. It has helped to release gifts and passions within the congregation, as well as in the wider neighbourhood, and has enabled us to do things together that we could never have imagined to be possible while using the funding-intensive, ‘church-based community project’ model. At times this approach has demanded much patience and perseverance, often the ‘fruits’ of it have been small. However, like Jesus’ ‘mustard seed’, there is a sense that it is helping us to put down deep roots - connecting with the bedrock of our faith and establishing a kind of sustainability that is not dominated by anxiety. It is growing slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, into something with life, space and fruitfulness beyond what we could ever have imagined.
Al Barrett is the parish priest in Hodge Hill, a multicultural suburban and outer estate parish on the eastern edge of Birmingham. Since 2010, he has been involved especially with his neighbours on the Firs and Bromford estate, growing community in the neighbourhood. His experience there shaped a PhD and his developing role engaging with the wider church (and also non-church networks and organisations) around practical, political and theological questions of mission, community-building, power and justice. He recently published a book - Being Interrupted; reimagining the church's mission from the outside, in - co-authored with Ruth Harley, and he contributes regularly to theological journals and periodicals.