Community Development and the Rule of Gratitude

FCF's Community Relations Team is continuing to think through some challenging but vital questions about the relationship between church and local community. As I've noted in a previous blog, we're reading slowly through the CRC publication Communities First. This month we focused on a couple of questions related to our readiness for committed, deep involvement in our community. Communities First suggests that providing temporary relief for community problems just about never leads to life-changing or community-changing relationships. We raised the question of whether our mercy ministries, while valuable and important, may in fact be to some degree a cop-out - a way of being "involved" in the community without really being involved in other people's lives (with all the cost of time, energy and personal commitment that implies). Another aspect of this is that true relationship is two-sided - perhaps we have not yet learned that both parties to a relationship will be changed, will grow, and will be blessed if the relationship is truly meaningful.

We weren't just asking these questions for everyone else, but first of all for us as individuals and as a team. This isn't comfortable. I for one know that it is more comfortable for me to keep the community at arm's length, to contribute some money or some time, but not to build relationships. If that's true for me, then likely it is true for many others too. One possible insight came from an article in a popular women's magazine, describing a study of children and their approach to gratitude. In the study, some were made to daily talk or write about the things for which they could be grateful that day. Some did it monthly, and others not at all. The children in the first set started to behave noticeably differently, with glowing and astonished reports coming home from teachers. So it is with adults. In the end our attitude to our neighbor will be driven by our attitude to God. If we live lives of gratitude then we will live generously. But this in turn, if the study's experience is anything to go by, means we must daily "count our blessings". Trite though this old saw is, like so many cliches it has profound truth behind it. Perhaps we're not quite getting it.

We're on a journey as a church, and we've seen God bless us extraordinarily in so many ways. We've grown in many areas, and are still growing. Perhaps part of our growth should be adoption of a "rule of gratitude" - a conscious and deliberate effort to ensure that each of us is constantly thankful for our blessings - counting them one by one. Perhaps this is another step toward being ready to build relationships with our neighbors, to bless and be blessed, and to be a part of the transformation for good of our local community.