Mobilizing Your Community Assets


Virginia Ward - October 16, 2013

Imagine the Holy Spirit hovering like a cloud over your community. With His all-seeing eyes, He can clearly see the needs of the people who live there. At the same time, He has also placed the resources in the community to meet those needs - if those who are stewards of those resources will work together to meet the needs.

This networking axiom is true everywhere: in urban, rural, or suburban communities. From her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, nationally-respected urban youth leader Virginia Ward shares how her urban church has used transferable principles to discern their community's needs and then unite to channel resources for their context.

While written from one church's experience, imagine the impact if all the ministries involved in a ministry network engaged in this mapping process — then came together to share their conclusions and decide what they could do together!

-Editors Note 

I am a youth leader in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the important aspects of our ministry, being in the city, is to look around us and determine what resources we have to work with. We like to call it "Mapping Community Assets." It's a principle we've learned over the years that keeps our church engaged with the community.

Who are the Stakeholders?

First, we try to recognize who the key stakeholders are in the community, such as:

  • What are the schools?
  • Who's our neighborhood police officer(s)?
  • Who are the area politicians?
  • Who's on the local school board or committee?

We create a list of who is there, what they do, and what impact they have in the community. Then we start building relationships with each of them, so that they know about the church, who the pastor is, who the youth leader is, and some of the services that we have to offer. Once we realize what they are doing, we do our best to not to duplicate with what they are doing, but rather to fill in some of the gaps and to be able to offer a spiritual alternative to youth and the families in our community.

Walking the Community

In fact, we're challenging other churches in our area to engage in a community asset mapping project, where they are walking their neighborhood. They are actually getting outside the four walls of their church, seeing what's next door, and what's around the corner! They're talking to neighbors, seeing what's happening with the young people in their community, and discussing what they feel the church could better serve the community or what what else they could be doing.

Community asset mapping will teach you a lot about the neighborhood you're in. It will teach you a lot about the families that are nearby, and even help you to pray more effectively for your community.

Understand that this is a process — it's not an overnight thing — it will take time. But if you take the time and do it properly, this tool will be very useful to you in your ministry.

Mobilizing Your Community

Community mapping may give you a whole new perspective and vision for where you live. If you would like a Network coach from NNYM to help you with applying this material in your network, please go to Coaching.

 

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