Introducing the Faith-Based Animator Network!
Our first group of FANimators, with facilitators Kristopher Swanson and Ian Campbell on the end. From L to R: Kristopher Swanson, Alex Michelle, Ray Altman, Miranda Shackelford, Steve Carter, Ian Campbell. Not pictured: Aaron Castelino.
This June, The Neighboring Movement finally made good on a goal we’ve had for years. We have long wanted to build on the success of our secular program, the Community Animator Network (CAN), to launch a similar program for people of faith who want to dive deep into neighboring on their own blocks and to be paid to do it. We first tried to launch the Faith-Based Animator Network (FAN) back in 2022, but amid a staff change and CAN itself making program changes, the cohort was never quite able to finish. As CAN evolved to incorporate John McKnight and Cormac Russell’sThe Connected Community: Discovering the Health, Wealth, and Power of Neighborhoods, released in the Fall of 2022, as the course “textbook,” our faith-based side saw new potential in putting the book into conversation with the Christian faith and our lived experiences in our neighborhoods.
As I (Ian) spent year one in my job learning the ropes of our program for congregations, GNE, we pushed FAN to the back burner. But the more I spent time with our secular Community Animators, the more I was eager to give the people of faith who are most passionate about neighboring a hands-on, high-accountability, high-grace laboratory to experiment in their neighborhoods. We set our sights on a window between GNE cohorts, in the summer of 2024 to run our first FAN cohort as a bit of an experiment of our own. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of animators to be part of this first effort. We currently have five Animators from Kansas, Texas, and North Carolina who bring an array of life experiences and faith backgrounds and who beautifully capture the “community of care “and “community of practice” we are trying to cultivate here. This cohort is ecumenical (representing many different Christian traditions and denominations); among our Animators and facilitation team, we have a Catholic, an Evangelical or two, a couple of United Methodists, a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and people who simply want to follow Jesus’ loving model of presence and attentive care in their own neighborhoods but are still healing from church hurt and don’t know what to call themselves. It is so moving how this little support group has been able to hold space for all of that. More than once, people have described this group as “healing” for their faith, their view of neighbors, and their assessment of their own capabilities, and I get the sense that we are walking away from each “mini-experiment” a little more optimistic about human nature.
The FAN cohort is 14 weeks long and is designed to “form Community Animators and connectors who are covenantally committed to their neighborhoods, including its people, ecology, and associations” by training them to discover God’s abundance through the gifts of their neighbors, connect neighbors together based on those gifts, and mobilize them towards the common good. Like CAN, its main components are The Connected Community textbook, learning conversations designed to draw out hidden gifts, the asset maps on which they creatively plot these gifts, and the 8 Front Door Challenge. This latest addition helps Animators build an attentive presence in their neighborhoods, meet their 8 closest neighbors and deepen relationships with them, find an ally on their block to help them plan and organize a block gathering, and finally, to host their gathering. Each week, Animators do “mini-experiments” that help them build their asset maps, work toward their gathering, or simply to increase trust where they live. Facilitators do this work at the same time as the Animators, and we spend time sharing our successes, failures, and learning moments with each other in our class sessions and our group chats. We encourage, teach, train, celebrate, and pray for each other so that each feels fully supported to animate their own places. All the while, we are putting all of these experiences and readings in conversation with the example of Jesus, Scripture, tradition, reason, and our discernment of the Holy Spirit, recharging our battery to do this work every week.
On Friday, July 26th, halfway into our cohort, we were finally able to gather in-person! The overwhelming takeaway was how good it was to be together. As the cohort has kicked off over zoom, we’ve become increasingly vulnerable with each other, and it was so good to spend time face-to-face and to celebrate where we’ve been and where we are going together. This has been a cohort full of people who see the immense potential in neighboring relationships and who have their eyes wide open to the “sacred moments” that come when we see the abundance that neighbors offer us, but who also know that this is difficult, counter-cultural work. Each Animator has welcomed risk and is willing to sit in the discomfort. As one Animator, Miranda, pointed out, “One of the most powerful things is knowing we are doing this together. We can cheer each other on, and know [the counter-cultural nature of this work] stinks, and we are still going to do it.”
After starting off with a prayer and a fun icebreaker question about time travel, we dove into two of our favorite games: Cormac Russell’s “We Can Game” and our own “Social Capital Jenga.” Both games are designed to lay out the immense power that everyday people have to shape a neighborhood, both good and bad. They are fun, have lots of instructional value, but more importantly for the purpose of this gathering, they got us laughing, connecting, and built a cohesion that we couldn’t have done in the same way through little boxes on zoom! While “We Can” is almost all optimistic, showing that there is almost no part of running a functioning community that a small group of neighbors can’t do together or through their extended personal networks, Social Capital Jenga spends a lot of time revealing how many of the most well-intentioned parts of our lives can actually hinder the trust and power of our blocks or buildings. For example, many of us don’t want to “trouble” a neighbor by asking them for help and instead we end up renting tools or hiring labor. Another well-intentioned way that we can weaken our neighborhoods is by signing up our kids for a full weekly itinerary of organized youth sports, taking away their time for spontaneous free play in the neighborhood.
There is so much WE CAN do, and that we love to do, together.
One Animator, Ray, bookended our 3 hour time together with flights from San Antonio to Dallas to Wichita and back (all in one day!). He was very moved by his first time playing Social Capital Jenga. To Ray, some of the game cards (based on real-life experiences) were stark reminders of the deep cultural pain points faced in neighborhoods. He responded, echoing the sense of camaraderie mentioned above: “I feel urgent about our work. It feels both heavy and I know this is what I need to be doing. I’m just really grateful to have a group to encourage me in the work. It does take a group. 99% of what we do makes things lighter. [This was] totally worth coming [to].” Another Animator, Steve, made the point that even as someone who doesn’t normally enjoy playing games, he “really saw the point behind everything that we did” at the gathering.
The last major focus of our night was sharing our experiences, hopes, dreams, and worries about the 12 learning conversations we ask Animators to have during the cohort. As in everything else that night, there was a lot of wrestling with the challenge, and, simultaneously, there was revelation about the importance of these conversations, and hope for what is to come. Steve and Ray expressed that they have been hesitant with some of the formality (or rather intentionality) of the work we are asking them to do because they are used to neighboring (effectively!) in a much more casual way. Despite this, they were both eager for the experiment! Ray brought up a recent intentional learning conversation he had with a neighbor that felt different than similar informal ones he had: “there was something about scheduling a time, there was something about the one-on-one attention, there was something about the interview style (which maybe I was a little uncomfortable with) which was actually a gift because it put attention on this person and their gifts and created an opportunity for the relationship to go deeper than any of the conversations I’ve ever had with this person.” We also acknowledged the differing levels of risk and advantage that some people have based on gender and other factors while not letting the discomfort of that hinder the challenge.
Miranda pointed out that she is already finding powerful connections through these conversations, including the memories of past traditions that have helped shape the neighborhood positively. Alex found her first learning conversation partner “so genuinely thrilled that there was somebody [having learning conversations] in the neighborhood.” She discovered that her neighbor desired to have the kids play together. Alex quickly organized a water play day on the street for a couple of families, and because another family expressed interest but couldn’t make it, they are now talking about a back-to-school gathering at the end of summer! This leads into another takeaway: that learning conversations often inspire new possibilities for learning conversations with other neighbors and makes the future ones feel much more achievable!
There was one more story that summed up a major lesson this cohort is teaching us. One participant described a neighbor they had been nervous to reach out to as no one seemed to know him. He apparently had given the impression that he was “unfriendly.” When the participant stepped out of their comfort zone to meet this neighbor, he said, “Thank you so much for introducing yourself. Sorry I didn’t think to do that sooner.” He revealed that he was so longing to connect, and turned out to be the nicest possible neighbor! The people that we imagine don’t want to connect, don’t want to socialize, or are unfriendly are often filled with gratitude when we take time to push past those preconceptions. They want to be seen and noticed but don’t know where to start. As John McKnight says, “they have gifts to share and are just waiting to be asked.”
Our Animators are gradually experiencing this reality on an ever-deepening level, week-after-week. They have witnessed that God has gifted ALL of their neighbors with so much uniqueness, so much beauty that is just barely hidden under the surface. They departed from the gathering with hope, empowered that they can be the ones asking neighbors to share those gifts, the catalysts for that latent potential in each person to play a part in re-raveling the neighborhood.
