ABOUT RESILIENT COMMUNITIES CENTER
We integrate spiritual formation with strengths-based learning to support human flourishing.
At the Resilient Communities Center, we work with circles of relationships experiencing a level of fragmentation, especially networks of people on the margins economically, socially, and spiritually or organizations for whom they work. Our team takes a relational approach to resilience building, recognizing that poverty takes many shapes and forms, including economic impoverishment and isolation.
PRINCIPLED BY DESIGN
Our values within mentoring, training, and partnering.
Ongoing Formation
We believe that ongoing formation is an invitation not only for communities but organizations and practitioners at every level and at every phase of program rollouts.
Local Solutions
We believe that local solutions do not begin at research or implementation but are at the heart of reclaiming agency and harmonious systems for change.
Inner Resiliency
We believe that inner resiliency is rooted in connection to a story of meaning and purpose in Jesus that transcends one context while remaining relevant and accessible for the present moment.
Embodied Living
We believe in the power of integrity, acknowledging strengths and weaknesses in human flourishing while embodying a path toward wholeness that is made possible as we honor the parts of ourselves and the components of our communities.
SHARED LEADING AND APPRECIATIVE LEARNING
Our team of facilitators and support staff believe in the values of mutuality and curiosity at every exchange of learning.
We strive for staff, programs, and partnerships that affirm the traits of leadership and stewardship in every relationship and embrace the child-like “why” at all levels of engagement.
We are members of Discipling for Development, a ministry of The Navigators. Since 1983, D4D has facilitated transforming spaces among communities in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and North America.
It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”
Ephesians 1:11-12
-- MSG
Relational Strategy
At every level of engagement, from learning to launching, our priority is repairing and enriching relationships.
Caring for the formation of individuals, teams, and communities is the path to relational health and resilience.
HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE
Resilient teams and communities are made up of humble learners who honor the complexity of life.
Each of the following terms provide a roadmap for what it looks like to heal and remake the many parts that make up you and your network of relationships.
Relationships
We believe relationships are life. There are networks of relationships that make up "us" as individuals, teams, and communities. Relational resilience begins with understanding how integral relationships are to health and wholeness.
Individual/Self
When we say an "individual" or "self," we are imagining a network of relationships, beginning with the interplay of yourself and your mind, your body, and your spirit. How you relate to each of these is inseparable from transformational development.
Team
When we say "team," we are thinking more broadly than just an organization. For us, "team" is your closest relationships, but that can vary from context to context. Your team might be your family, your floor buddies, your department, or your church staff.
Community
We see "community" more broadly than just a geographic area in proximity. It might be a group that has a shared affinity, language, ethnic heritage, or belief system. Community, especially in cities, might also include networks of smaller communities within a block or a few miles.
Leader
When we say "leader," we picture anyone who helps guide the direction of something and holds it together. To lead influences something, someone, or a collection of things in its growth and direction, like a trellis supports a vine or a tendon enables the movement for a limb.
Resilience
"Resilience" is the capability of a network of relationships to recover its intended shape [purpose] after deformation caused especially by compressive stress [poverty]. Resilient leaders influence relationships, themselves included, to recover purpose and grow as God leads.
