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BUILDING RELATIONAL POWER
IN YOUR COMMUNITY
A VIDEO COURSE
FROM THE SERIES,
“BUILDING A PEOPLE OF POWER”
ROBERT C. LINTHICUM
CROWN MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO., USA
Building Relational Power In Your Community: Workbook
© 2005 Robert C. Linthicum
All rights reserved. Except for briefquotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or be placed in any information storage or retrieval system within the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or any European country in any manner without prior written permission from the holder of the copyright, except as indicated in the next paragraph.
Material from this workbook may be reproduced by photocopying for classroom or church school use only without prior permission.
Queries regarding rights and permissions should be addressed to:
Robert C. Linthicum
Partners in Urban Transformation
1236 Fairway Circle
Upland, CA. 91784-1784 USA
909-982-3676
Fax: 909-982-3676
e-mail:
website:
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NY: The Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, 1989) unless otherwise noted, and are used by permission.
Published by
Crown Ministries International
A ministry of Youth With A Mission
PO Box 26479
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80936 USA
1-800-433-4685
719-591-2767
Fax: 719-380-0936
e-mail:
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction to the Course, “Building Relational Power In Your Community” 4
Using the Course in a Congregation, Community Organization or Group or
Personal Learning Situation 10
The Workbook:
- “Listening, Affirming, Challenging, Thinking Through:
Framework for Building Relationships 14
Paper: “Ones to Ones: A Way of Life and Ministry”16
2.“Jesus on Building Relationships for Change”22
Paper: “The Individual Meeting – A One to One”24
Paper: “The Step-by-Step Process of Organizing”28
3.“Building an Organization Around Powerful Relationships:35
Paper: “Negotiations in the Context of Building A People’s Organization”40
4.“Bringing it Home: Organizing for Power”45
Bibliography47
Additional Resources48
Introduction to the Video Course,
“Building Relational Power In Your Community”
Welcome to the video course, “Building Relational Power in Your Community”. In this four session course, Dr. Linthicum is joined by Marilyn Stranske (Christians Supporting Community Organizing) and Mike Miller (ORGANIZED Training Center) to teach concrete strategies the church can use to impact and change its community. What is most surprising is that all of these very practical strategies are foundational biblical strategies! Learn and do them – and turn your community upside down.
This four-session course is one of a set of six video courses available in either DVD or VHS video. The other five courses are:
- “The World As God Intended (and As It Actually Is”(5 sessions)
- “What Did Jesus Really Come To Do?”(4 sessions)
- “Building A Church of Power” (6 sessions)
- “Using Power to Turn Your City Upside Down”(3 sessions)
- “How to Develop Powerful Leaders and Build Values”(5 sessions)
The six courses comprise together a full curriculum on how the church can effectively impact and influence the world. That curriculum is titled “Building A People of Power”, and is available as a single 27-session course, as well as in this six-course format. Whether you are purchasing all of the six sets or are using the full curriculum, the content is the same. Of course, the six-set format was created in order to enable you to “pick-and-choose” the particular portions of the larger video course that you would like to use. But if you purchase the entire six-sets, you will have the same complete curriculum you would have if you had purchased the single course.
So what is the purpose of the full six-set video course? Let’s take a look at that.
What is this course about?
“Building A People of Power” is designed to enable Christians to successfully work for significant change in the world and to do so upon a sound and thorough biblical foundation. Thus, by using the principles, strategies and methodologies of “Building A People of Power”, you will be able to change the world around you and do so in a way consist with biblical truth.
We accomplish this by teaching you and/or your students or parishioners to discover:
- a biblical analysis of how one’s city or country’s economic, political and values-setting systems use their power either to empower or to exploit their poor and middle class;
- the biblical dream of the “Shalom Community” (or “Kingdom of God”) that should inform all that the church and Christians should be about;
- the unique work and witness of Jesus of Nazareth as he both proclaimed and sought to carry out God’s kingdom in the world as it really is, and as he sought to build a people to carry on that work after he had returned to the Father;
- biblical principles of how God’s people can successfully work both for public justice and for personal transformation;
- biblical models demonstrating how God’s people can bring about dramatic transformation of their city’s or country’s systems and structures, as well as its people;
- practical strategies and methodologies of community and broad-based organizing, leadership development and the building of a nation’s values.
Of course, none of the six sets deals with all of these course intentions. You can look at the titles of each of the six courses, and you can see which of the six emphases it addresses. For example, the first course, “The World As God Intended (and As It Really Is”, deals with the first two intentions. This course, “Building Relational Power In Your Community” obviously deals with both the fourth and sixth intentions.
If you order the full 27-session video course, “Building A People of Power”, all of the above intentions are covered in their entirety.
What resources do we receive for this course?
To help you and/or your students or parishioners to enter into this time of learning, there are a number of resources this course places at your fingertips. The primary resource, of course, is this video course itself. It is available in either DVD or VHS videotape. Each class session is about one hour in length. These sessions are not staged presentations. Instead, they were actual classes taught at the School of Strategic Mission, Youth With A Mission in Colorado Springs, CO in the USA. In essence, you and your students are joining in that class – but from a distance.
Along with the DVD or videotapes is this workbook. The workbook is designed to guide you and/or your students through this course, walking you through each step that is to be taken. The workbook also contains a listing of a wide spectrum of resources available to you and to your students to enhance further learning and/or direct involvement in community organizations, and increasing your capacity to teach others.
Finally, there is a textbook for this course, as well. It is Building A People of Power: Praxis for the 21st Century Church (Federal Way, WA: World Vision Press, 2005), and was written by the lead teacher of this course. As well, there are other optional books and readings that are listed that one can study, if so inclined.
Who is teaching this course?
Dr. Robert C. Linthicum, who teaches this course, is a respected biblical theologian, a person directly involved in “hands-on” community organizing in Los Angeles, a former pastor and a retired executive of a major mission agency. He is president of Partners in Urban Transformation and professor emeritus of urban ministry and community organizing at Eastern University, Philadelphia, PA.
Dr. Linthicum has been involved in urban ministry since 1957 in the United States, Africa, Asia and Latin America. He pastored churches in Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit from 1959 through 1985, as well as working through those churches to create four community organizations, a housing corporation and an economic development corporation. In 1985, he and his wife moved to Los Angeles where he directed the Office of Urban Advance (OUA) for World Vision International through 1995. Under his leadership, the OUA brought 28 urban slum community organizations into existence, created 52 businesses, built over 6,000 homes and strengthened hundreds of churches in 21 cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Eastern University from 1988 to his retirement in 2003. Dr. Linthicum left World Vision in 1995 in order to assume the helm of Partners in Urban Transformation.
Partners in Urban Transformation (PIUT) equips the urban church for engagement in public life. Over 17,000 pastors and mission leaders from over 90 cities in 21 countries have participated in urban ministry courses and workshops taught by Dr. Linthicum through PIUT and World Vision. Dr. Linthicum has been involved in “hands-on” congregation based community organizing since 1966, and is currently a leader in the metropolitan-wide broad-based organizing effort of the Industrial Areas Foundation in Los Angeles, known as ONE-LA. From 1995 through 1999, Dr. Linthicum also directed the Hollywood-Wilshire Cluster of Presbyterian Churches in Los Angeles, which combines the mission outreach and organizing efforts of six churches and mission agencies in a neighborhood of 420,000.
Dr. Linthicum is an ordained minister of The Presbyterian Church (USA) and the author of thirteen books, including the text for this course. He is married to his college sweetheart, Marlene, and they are the parents of two adult children and are grandparents to four. His present passion is to help form a new generation of city-committed church leaders who will “pick up the reins” from his generation and build a church that can glorify Christ by working for the transformation of the people and the political, economic, social and values-creating systems of the 21st century. “The church is the last, great hope of humanity,” he states, “if we are able to envision and act out new ways of being Church that significantly engages the issues, structures and people of the world with the power of Christ. But to do so, we must stop doing church work – and learn to do the work of the Church!”
Mrs. Marilyn Stranske is currently an organizer in the PICO network, concentrating upon church participation in the MOPS organization of Denver, CO. She is the former national organizer for Christians Supporting Community Organizing (CSCO), a ministry centered on making organizing thinkable for the local church. Marilyn lives in an urban neighborhood in Denver with her husband and their two adult children. Marilyn became involved in congregation-based community organizing after years of life and ministry in urban settings, active in both local congregations and in para-church ministries. Prior to her work in CSCO, she co-founded and co-directed Hope Communities, a faith-based affordable housing initiative in Denver. She has served on the Housing Trust Council for the City of Denver, in several juvenile justice programs, and as a staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ.
Mike Miller is an internationally recognized trainer in community organizing and has forty-five years experience as an organizer. He is executive director of the San Francisco-based ORGANIZE Training Center and editor-at-large of the renown journal, Social Policy. From 1962 through 1966, Mike was on the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; in 1967-8, he directed an organizing project for Saul Alinsky, and in 1972 he started OTC. He has taught organizing and urban politics at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and Notre Dame. He is a prolific writer in community organizing, having published in numerous academic, religious and political journals.
How did this course come about?
When Dr. Linthicum went to work for World Vision in 1985, one of his primary responsibilities was to lead seminars and workshops in order to equip pastors and their churches to more effectively work for the transformation of their cities. When he met with key pastors to plan events, he would ask them what they wanted to study together. He soon discovered that American pastors answered that question quite differently than did pastors from Asia, Africa and Latin America. American pastors wanted to hone their skills in urban ministry. They would say, “How can we increase Sunday worship attendance?” or “How can we raise more money?” or “How can we have a greater impact on our neighborhood?” In other words, they wanted to be taught “tricks” that would improve their performance or would grow a church.
Pastors from Asia, Africa and Latin America wanted something profoundly different. They wanted to do biblical study and theological reflection together. They wanted less to know “how” than they wanted to know “why” to do ministry. They wanted theological grounding for ministries of evangelism, social service, advocacy, and working for substantive change in their city.
Thankfully, this division between American pastors and pastors of the Two-thirds World is less pronounced today. There is a keen interest on the part of American pastors to do biblical and theological reflection. And there is more interest today in Two-thirds World countries upon developing more effective skills of ministry. But that was not true twenty years ago.
Since he began urban ministry in 1955, Linthicum had committed himself to a discipline of daily biblical study and reflection on urban ministry, urban social analysis and a biblical theology of power. But this he had done for his personal spiritual edification. Now, as he worked with pastors throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, he was being called upon to make that private reflection public, and to begin taking pastors through a similar process of working with scripture.
Slowly, over the years, several short-term courses emerged on biblical foundations for understanding the world as God intended it to be and as it actually is, the mission of Jesus, the work of the church to engage public life, and biblical principles for working for the systemic transformation of cities. Because Linthicum had been involved in congregation-based community organizing since 1967, he naturally integrated his biblical reflection with his organizing work. Over the next eight years, more than 9,000 Two-thirds World pastors participated in these courses – but during this time, he was never asked to conduct such learning events in the United States.
Then, in 1988, he was asked to begin teaching this material as academic courses at Eastern University (then “College”) to graduate students who were committed to doing urban ministry outside the USA. At first, the classes experienced low enrollment, but they steadily increased over the years as the Eastern program expanded and as the demand for urban biblical reflection increased. Finally, by the time Linthicum’s books, City of God; City of Satan and Empowering the Poor were published in 1991 and 1992 respectively, theological reflection on urban ministry became more commonplace in the USA.
The original course, upon which these six video courses are based, was developed in 1999 for Youth With A Mission in order to prepare their mission workers for ministry in strategic urban areas outside the USA. That course was then videotaped in 2000 to be used by YWAM in its School of Strategic Missions throughout the world, and was subsequently picked up by World Vision for the development and training of their urban staff around the world. Eastern University adapted it for use as an individualized distance-learning course for their School for International Leadership and Development. Then over the years, it was used by a number of other academic institutions and a few denominations for training purposes.
Finally, in 2004, the decision was made by the three producers of the original course (Procla-Media Productions, Christians Supporting Community Organizing and Partners in Urban Transformation) to make the course both available to and easily useable by churches, community organizations, small groups and individuals. It was therefore converted into the present six courses, which made it more accessible to the general Christian public.
How Can I Make Good Use of this Video Course?
You have likely gotten this video course for one of two purposes. Either you intend to use it for your own personal learning. Or you have obtained it in order to use it with others.
If you have gotten this course for your own learning, we have good news for you. This course was designed to be used individually. That is, it was created so that you could take this course by yourself. For such use, this workbook is the key to each session. Be sure to follow all of its instructions; it will be your guide through the course.
Or you have gotten this course to teach others. This course was designed with this purpose in mind, as well. It was created to be taught in small groups in which the group views the video and then together does the assignment in the workbook. The workbook is planned in such a way that It is possible to conduct the class either as a single small group (5-14 people) or as a large class (such as an adult Sunday school class of 15-100 people), viewing the video as a single group but then breaking into a number of small groups to work as independent groups with the workbook.