The land of waffle: where you feel like you are doing something useful but you are just not sure for whom or why it happens to be useful.

I am continuing to reflect on what it means to accept the burden of responsibility for a specific community.

Over the last couple of reflections I have unpacked two of the core understandings that I see as foundational for anyone who wants to take on a whole of community ministry: firstly that everything you do comes from Christ, and secondly its not what you do but who you are that is important.

The next thing that is essential for someone who wants to take on ministry to a community is engagement with that community.

I am bouncing off my reading of Nehemiah because he was the only recorded example of someone taking on a specific community development project in the way he did, and someone who had the courage to tell the story in some detail. I am also bouncing off my mistakes and learning from the last 20 years.

The next step is a basic one, but one that often goes missing: Defining the community

I realise that often I have not been effective in community outreach because I was attacking the problem from the wrong end. I had a program or idea or building and I wanted to put that program, idea or building to use. That is effectively starting with an answer before you have even defined the question.

The question is defined by defining and then engaging with the community.

The book of Nehemiah starts with a specific and defined community:

Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. (Nehemiah 1:2)

The first critical question is what is the community you are wanting to engage with?

As I mention in my new book 6 Radical Decisions an Anglican Rector knew the patch of ground they were responsible for. They could tell you where the boundaries start and finish, and at their ordination, they accept the burden of responsibility (called the “cure of souls”) for not just the Anglicans, but for everyone in that community. We need more people willing to accept a burden like that, but in order to do it you need to actually name the patch that is yours. This question should be able to be answered with a map and numbers.

It made such a difference in my ministry when I actually did this kind of work, all of a sudden I was engaging with the reality of the number of homeless young people or the number of unemployed people in my patch rather than just the abstraction of those problems.

Peter Drucker said:

“You can only manage what you can measure.”

While when you are setting out to engage with a whole community you are not really trying to manage it, if you don’t have a way to define what is, and what is not that community you will be living in the land of waffle, where you feel like you are doing something useful but you are just not sure for whom or why it happens to be useful.

Nehemiah knew exactly what community he was concerned about, which meant that he was then in a place to face the answer to his question.

Too often we start with great intentions and run wonderful programs but they make no difference because we haven’t stopped to name who they are targeted at.