This morning, fourteen members of the Fresno Pacific University community attended the “Region of Abundant Communities” gathering at New Harvest Church in Clovis. This group included six seminary students from my “MIN 752: Into the Neighborhood” class, four undergraduate students from Dr. Quentin Kinnison’s “MIN-360: The Church in an Urban World”, and several members of the faculty, staff, and administration. 

Together with roughly 800 other attendees from throughout an 8-county region, we were fortunate to hear from the celebrated authors John McKnight and Peter Block. McKnight is co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, and is author of several significant works on community development. Perhaps most notable among these is Building Communities from the Inside Out (1993). Block is widely known as a consultant and author. His 2008 book, Community: The Structure of Belonging, reflects his commitment to community building.

Today’s presentation was based largely upon the book which these two significant thinkers recently co-authored, Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods (2010).

John McKnight began by offering an insightful critique of the consumer mentality of our society and how it holds us back from experiencing community and from becoming active contributors within the community. He identified “citizens” as persons “who makes a democracy work.” Citizens lie at the center of abundant community because of what they have: a “treasure chest” of gifts, skills, passion, and knowledge.  These treasures provide the raw material from which community is made and the vision of democracy is fulfilled. “And that is where abundance is,” stated McKnight.

McKnight highlighted three keys to abundant communities:

1. Capacities: Abundant communities are built on the “full” half of the glass, not the empty half. What makes communities stronger is the mobilization of the gifts and strengths, passion, and knowledge of the community.
2. Hospitality: Abundant communities make welcoming space others, which enables us to receive their gifts. As a result, the community experiences greater empowerment.
3. Associations: A person’s gifts are best given in relationship with other people. The way we magnify the community’s power is to find a way to put people’s gifts together. Associations enable us to mobilize the gifts and strengths of the community.

McKnight noted that we tend too easily to recognize our deficiencies, the “empty” half of the glass. The problem with experiencing the world of abundance is that many of us have trouble seeing it, he suggested.  McKnight also advocated for the need to move beyond a culture of competition, one which by definition appoints winners and losers, to one of cooperation. Competition runs counter to the premise of the world of abundance. He also called for us to move from institutions, which are impersonal and is created to do things in a way where everyone is replaceable, to communal connections as the basis for addressing the challenges that exist within our communities.

Peter Block insisted that the vision of abundant community constitutes an alternative way of thinking, “a picture of an alternative future.” In making this point, he provided a fascinating exposition of the Exodus narrative as an example of an “ancient patriarchal way.”  Like the people of Israel, he said, we need to move from a world of scarcity to one of abundance, from patriarchy to community. Block suggested that this is a matter of shifting the narrative of what we choose to talk about. Maintaining this focus just tends to make the problem stronger, he insisted, by reinforcing our deficiency mindset. We need to learn to cultivate a different discourse focused upon the “half full” portion of the glass.

This was a wonderful and beneficial event. There was a good spirit in the air. I enjoyed opportunities to interact with dozens of other community leaders from the Fresno area. These are people who are bound together by our commitment to our community, by our desire to play an active role in strengthening our community, and by a shared awareness that we must find ways to build upon the rich assets that are present within our community. I love these people and am grateful to be on this journey together with them.

Several dozen of us will continue this conversation this Friday, November 18^th at the No Name Fellowship’s luncheon at the Hinton Center in Southwest Fresno. This gathering will be devoted to exploring the ongoing implications of the things we heard from McKnight and Block for community development here in our city. Those of us who have been planning this No Name gathering hope that this will help to catalyze ongoing conversation and cooperation that blesses our community.

Today’s event was the dream of Keith Bergthold, now with the City of Fresno. His Relational Culture Institute played the lead role in planning and convening this gathering. I am grateful for Keith’s vision and leadership in bringing together an event of this magnitude and significance. Keith will be sharing with us during Friday’s No Name gathering. In addition, we will hear from a panel of local community leaders, who will share their reflections from the Abundant Communities gathering. I will share more about this event in a few days.

I look forward to seeing greater abundance nurtured within our community, one in which the narrative of deficiency and lack is so prevalent. I look forward to seeing Fresno Pacific University continue to play a strategic role as it offers its gifts for the benefit of this community.

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