Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block is a book that continues to resonate.

A group in Muskegon is beginning their thinking around the book using a process of “gut, what, so what, now what.” This model of reflection encourages personal connection and reaction (gut), understanding (what), analysis, evaluation, and connection to other ideas (so what), and synthesis and action (now what).

In a quiet Zeeland neighborhood, Second Reformed Church has adopted “Speaking of Faith” as their annual theme. On various Sunday mornings, people are gathering around tables with butcher block paper and crayons to consider one question at a time. Over the year, they will ponder possibility, ownership, dissent, gifts, and commitment with these compelling questions:

•  What crossroads are you facing at this time?
•  What stories have power in your life?
• What doubts and reservations do you have? What have you said yes to that you no longer mean?
• What gift do you hold in exile?
• What promise are you willing to make that constitutes a major shift?

Of course, such questions apply to all elements of our lives: personal, spiritual, physical, and vocational. They apply to all the groups we are part of: families, neighborhoods, organizations, church communities, and workplaces.

Questions are more powerful than answers. Collective change occurs when diverse groups engage one another and know that others are doing the same. Please join us on Thursday, October 21 at 7:30 a.m. We will meet at Good Samaritan Ministries, 513 E. 8th Street. Coffee will be provided.

August 6, 2010

The Peter Block discussion group met yesterday to ponder how to discover and benefit from the abundant intellectual capital and talent in our community. Skip introduced our conversation by reminding us of all the managers, engineers, doctors, writers, architects, and more who are retiring to the Holland area because of its quality of life and affordability. Park Township and Freedom Village were named as two microcosms of talent.

Linda and Judy shared their thinking about how neighborhoods that may appear to be pockets of poverty can be pockets of possibility, once people identify and share their interests, gifts, and passions.

At Herman Miller, where the story of the millwright who was a poet (see http://vimeo.com/10266121) has shaped corporate culture, Kris and her colleagues are trying to discover the talents of people that lie outside of their job descriptions. Should we be more like Google, whose employees may use up to 20% of their time to pursue what they love in order to benefit the organization?

We tend to live and work in silos, often mindlessly. How do we break out of these and discover and the gifts around us and then leverage them to enrich our community? Perhaps these things may help us to move forward:

•  invest in deep conversations and deep relationships

•  be intentional about connecting outside of our silos and customary networks

• capitalize on our existing networks to get people connected around an issue

•  listen for the interests of others and connect them to people in our network (create triads)

• the small group is the unit of transformation – connect with a few people and just get started

Skip committed to getting started. He will talk to a few people from Park Township about the pocket of possibility at Pine Creek School. Linda and others will gather a variety of asset mapping tools to share for our next conversation.

Please join us to share your thoughts on this topic on Thursday, September 16 at 7:30 a.m. at Good Samaritan Ministries, 513 E. 8th Street.

A few books we suggested:

•  Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip Heath, et. al., especially around the idea of finding the bright spot.

•  When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor. . .and Ourselves by Brian Fikkert, Steve Corbett, and John Perkins. Check out Good Sam’s event around this book at http://www.goodsamministries.com/Web/events.asp

On July 1, the group discussing Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging met to consider how to create community in a pub, in particular a Belgian-style pub called Brewery Vivant, which one of our members, Kris, will be opening in October on Cherry Street in Grand Rapids. Kris led the conversation with questions and lots of sticky notes and markers for us to share our ideas.


A few of our thoughts:

•  develop historic background about the property
•  host political dialogue
•  host and/or provide food for local block parties and attend them
•  provide stimulus for patrons to have conversations around, e.g. quotes on paper table covers or coasters
•  provide space for community groups, writers, creative space, etc
•  once demolition is done (i.e. before construction begins), bring through accessibility experts

Next time we meet, Thursday, August 5 at 7:30 a.m., John Schmidt will host us at Second Reformed Church, 225 East Central Avenue in Zeeland. We will consider how to inventory local talent – sometimes called asset mapping – in order to link people with talents and skills with others who could benefit. The idea is to leverage these gifts in a way that builds community. Consistent with our previous discussions around Peter Block’s thinking, asset mapping is about gifts, not deficits; possibilities, not problems; ownership and responsibility, not blame; citizens, not leaders. Please join us as we contemplate the abundance around us.

Brewery Vivant

Designed Learning is excited to announce Peter Block’s and co-author John McKnight’s new book, The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. Join them as they remind us to ignore the voices that generate dependency and look to the abundant possibilities that lie within your very own neighborhood.

Co-creation is key to a satisfying life, which becomes possible when we join our neighbors to create a community that nurtures our family and makes us useful citizens. So the question is – are you ready to live the good life?

Take advantage of our special discounted price and pre-order your copy with a guaranteed delivery of June 14. Please click the following link and order your copy today.

http://www.designedlearning.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=12

Our small group - our unit of transformation - met again this morning, joined by a few new members. One of our participants shared a couple paragraphs from a longer essay (see below) about the way a front porch can transform a neighborhood. This led to more conversation about neighborhoods as essential to creating community, along with the importance of developing walkable neighborhood centers, such as stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. We also talked about how a front porch is a metaphor for hospitality and discussed how we can practice hospitality in our workplaces, faith communities, and other gathering places.
Please join us for the next conversation on Thursday, July 1, 7:30 a.m. at deBoer’s Bakery, 360 Douglas Avenue.


By Kent A. Ellett



My neighbor, five houses down on the other side of the street, died a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know his name. The next neighbor down, a guy married to a lady named, Betty, now mows his yard. Another neighbor, whose name now escapes me, told me the news.

Don’t make excuses for me for not knowing my neighbors. I know the man’s anonymity was in some ways his own choice. I know I can’t know all 6,000 households in Speedway, and that I’m one of the more outgoing people on my block. The problem is that that ain’t saying much.

Yet, I want to share with you a flash of insight that gives me hope in the midst of my failures as a neighbor. The reason I even got the news of the neighbor’s passing was that my other nameless neighbor stopped by while I was building a front porch. This is no secluded back deck where you have private or family parties; it’s a front porch that faces the world as it goes by. It’s a place where you don’t do anything in particular and everyone, without thinking about it, knows that it’s no interruption to say, “Hello.” And so when I’m on the porch they do.

My wife and I have complained for six years that my neighborhood is not friendly, but now I’ve decided that this is because we had not built a front porch. Michael, a veteran, walks his dog and cares for his sister-in-law. He took some wood that was in my now disastrous yard. Tony decided that I needed his big ladder. Mr. Zetsil, an ex-clergyman -- I think probably an Episcopalian, or perhaps a Navy chaplain, because he cusses with the practiced eloquence of a High Church sailor. Actually, his swearing is an attempt to connect with me…He wants to see if we are mad about the same things. Yolanda comes by daily with her dogs. I dislike them about as much as she cherishes them because they don’t yip at my dogs at her house, pee on her bushes, or poop in her yard. But I don’t mind that much because she gets my house design and likes it. And her husband, Herman, has had cancer for a couple years. Looks like he’s going to make it.

More than a half dozen others have commented on my porch. Brother Ron and Bill stopped by this week and sipped cold drinks with me under its shade. I noticed the drivers by noticing us. Frankly I’m amazed at the power of the porch. It’s insignificant compared to the rest of my building project, but it is what gets most of the interest.

The Peter Block discussion group met on Friday, April 23 for what could have been a final conversation. However, as we talked together, we discovered that it made sense not only to continue meeting, but also to invite others into the conversation.
First, we identified the crossroads of possibility that that the book has engendered in each of us. This conversation led us to naming each others’ gifts. Curiously, even though we had only met three times, the gifts people identified in others were spot on. This speaks to the power of relationships that can emerge quickly in a group that is intentional about community.

Finally, we asked, what’s next? Shall we develop new groups with others? Shall we invite Peter Block to come to our area for a conversation? Someone proposed that we continue talking with each other, but also invite interested others to join us. People around the circle agreed. Using Block’s language, there are two purposes to our continuing conversation – accountability and possibility: accountability to each other for our commitment to apply concepts from this seminal, whether in education, the faith community, business, or social services; and possibility for creative ways to make the ideas live.

Reader, you are invited, too. Please join us for the next conversation on Friday, May 21 at 7:30 a.m. at the Holland GVSU campus. I know it’s early, but Melissa Peraino, our host, will provide coffee. We hope to see you there.

Ruth Stegeman

A small group including leaders from education, business, nonprofit, government, and the faith community continued their conversation last Friday around major concepts in the Peter Block’s book, Community: The Structure of Belonging. We discussed possibility vs. problem thinking, gifts vs. deficits, how to change a community from the inside out, whether a vision and plan are necessary or limiting, how to apply inverted thinking, what might happen if we gave up labeling, and more.


When we meet in April, we will talk about:

+ Chapter 15 – The End of Unnecessary Suffering. This chapter is full of examples of how to implement Block’s thinking with youth, public safety, economic development, human services, and health care.

+ Ideas for how each of us might apply elements of this book to our work and to our efforts to build community.

+ Our commitment for furthering the conversation – with each other and/or with new groups.

+ Whether we would like to bring Peter Block to our area, and what we might hope to achieve by doing so.