How Congregations Can Contribute
Being on a committee isn’t the only way congregations and other religious organizations can contribute to community-wide asset-building efforts. Other possibilities include:
- Adding public credibility and visibility, particularly in some communities and cultures in which religious institutions are highly trusted.
- Raising awareness of asset building among their members and constituencies.
- Mobilizing residents for community events (festivals, town meetings, etc.).
- Getting people engaged in asset building in their personal lives and neighborhoods.
- Offering congregation facilities for meetings and other asset-building efforts.
- Providing programming and events that build assets (for children, youth, families, etc.).
- Sharing expertise in working with children and youth.
Tips and Ideas
Try the following suggestions for involving the faith community in your asset-building coalition or initiative:
- Connect their involvement to their sense of purpose, mission, and goals.
- Include leaders from the religious community on the community-wide vision or planning team. How do you find the right people? By building relationships and networking. Think about prominent or influential clergy, youth workers, and other congregational leaders. Also think about religious leaders at the judicatory level or in other religious organizations in the community.
- Organize a subcommittee of religious leaders for your community-wide, multisector initiative. Develop ways to share energy, ideas, and information across sectors.
- Identify ways to address the needs, interests, priorities, and strengths of the congregations in the community. See the tips for involving congregations in asset building.
- Have religious leaders in the multisector initiative identify specific ways the religious community can contribute to the overall effort, based on their strengths. In one community, for example, the clergy took the lead in drafting a statement of shared community values related to asset building.
- Encourage and hold religious leaders accountable for “taking assets home” to their own congregation. Sometimes it may be easier to bring about change “out there” than it is within their own congregations!
