“Let justice roll on like a river”
Jo Sadgrove is a Trustee of LCI, and an academic researcher in the Centre for Religion and Public Life at the University of Leeds and Research and Learning Advisor at the Anglican mission agency, USPG.
As a trustee of LCI and a researcher and activist engaged in work on reparative justice for chattel slavery and racism, the commitment and dedication of Christian leaders, communities, scholars and activists across Leeds make it an exciting place to live.
At LCI, discerning how best to use our unique privileges to support this active Christian movement for social justice and theological reflection has been a critical part of the work that we as an organisation have been undertaking for the past two years, resulting in an exciting new strategy and approach. This approach draws on our long history of education for social reform and justice; is inspired by liberation theologies with a ‘bias from the bottom’ that centre the everyday experiences of ordinary people; and aims to deepen our understanding of and relationships with churches across the city.
In recent years, LCI has worked hard to build solidarities and bridges with and for people in Leeds. We have learned a lot through this work and are deeply grateful for those who have led, participated and shared themselves and the stories of their communities through it. What this new strategy will offer is a more systematic focus on listening to churches and communities in Leeds and reflecting with them on who they are and what they are seeing and experiencing.
As Christians and churches seeking to serve communities, we can, all too frequently, lack the fluency to understand the idioms and languages that communities draw on to communicate their strengths. Too often we find ourselves focussed on our own (culturally and institutionally inflected) ways of thinking about what ‘success’ might look like, rather than reflecting on what we could be learning about success by drawing close and engaging in a deep listening to and appreciation of communities on their own terms and through their own stories
I was once sent to evaluate a community health programme in Malawi and Lesotho which had failed to deliver the shifts in health metrics anticipated by the donor as indicating ‘success’ – reductions in HIV incidence, reductions in malaria rates, increased use of hospital facilities. Asking the communities and the hospitals that served them what had changed as a result of the programme, I was told about the benefits to local community collaboration nurtured by the convening of the programme. Communities were now working together in both contexts - to remove vegetation and standing water to deter mosquitos; to protect against livestock theft; for income generating schemes for improved nutrition and food security; to offer social opportunities for those who were isolated, particularly as a result of HIV. These are success ‘stories’ for health outcomes. But the donor was asking the wrong questions, looking at the wrong indicators, and struggling to hear the communities involved on their own terms.
This is just one example from my day job at USPG, a global Anglican mission agency, where we, like so many other church organisations, have offered ‘top down’ models for ‘community development’ that have not sat easily or constructively with local churches and communities in a range of global contexts. We have had to learn the hard ways - through damaged relationships and ‘failed’ programmes - how to listen to and learn from our partner churches so that we can draw on their strengths and knowledges to inspire ourselves and others around the world.
Similar cautions have echoed for me as I have participated in discussions about LCI’s strategic direction. Whilst our pattern has been one of offering resources, projects and events for groups, do they always meet the needs of those to whom they are being offered? Do we spend enough time listening and trying better to understand the everyday strengths and struggles of churches and communities in Leeds? Whilst we may have been generous donors, are there gracious recipients? Can we remain open to learning from those whom we seek to serve, so that church voices drive our work to support them in being ‘increasingly confident and courageous in their ministry and mission, contributing to a just and compassionate city’?
In addressing this challenge, guided by the principals and precepts of liberation theologies, LCI is in the process of appointing two Urban Churches Theologians, each to journey with a number of churches in Leeds to discern how best we can accompany, understand and theologically resource the city’s churches. There will be challenges as we work out how these roles and relationships will work in practice – ensuring that we prioritise the human and relational aspects of this work alongside organisational concerns; working at intentionally listening without our own agenda getting in the way; developing methods by which to catalyse and support theological reflection with communities without being extractive. These are complex challenges and we will continue to build good networks in which to reflect, share, learn and be challenged.
One of our biggest opportunities in reimagining LCI’s relationship within the Christian landscape of Leeds is the chance to shift some of the assumptions which have limited our thinking about who we are and whom we are serving. As a trustee, I have always been rather troubled by references to communities in ‘poverty’ in Leeds within the parlance of Christian charities.
From an organisational perspective, recognising the communities we seek to serve as blessed with positive assets rather than as ‘poor’ and ‘deprived’ (even as they might be structurally and economically marginalised) demands a reimagining of people and places, and challenges LCI to examine its own preconceptions. Asking communities ‘what do you have’ rather than ‘what do you lack’ does not negate the inequalities or challenges that people face, nor the ways that systems have oppressed certain groups, nor the imperative to fight structural injustice. But it lays a different foundation for engagement and conversation in which those present are engaged in capitalising on what they can do.
Thinking about those whom we serve as agents requires too that we see ourselves and LCI as beneficiaries of the wisdom and gifts of those to whom we are ministering, breaking the unhelpful captive binary of ‘donor-recipient’ and working towards iterative exchanges, learning and relationships.
This reminds me of a story that I learned through partners in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines (ECP) whose work pushed churches and communities from being ‘receivers’ to being ‘givers’. This approach recognised that constant charity can unintentionally create dependency and weaken local initiatives. The ‘Receivers to Givers’ programme moved communities from a traditional grants-giving arrangement towards a cycle of sharing and empowerment in which all involved in income generating projects were giving to others as well as receiving grants and resources from the scheme. The ECP illuminated the life-giving nature of this approach as follows:
There is an old parable about two seas in Israel, one fresh and one very salty. Both are fed by the waters of the Jordan river. One, the Sea of Galilee is full of fish and surrounded by farmland. The second, the Dead Sea, is ten times saltier than the ocean and in its waters only bacteria and fungi can survive. The Sea of Galilee is vibrant and alive, while the Dead Sea, at the lowest altitude on Planet Earth, is not. The Sea of Galilee has an outlet; it flows outward back into the Jordan River, while the Dead Sea can only receive and cannot release its waters anywhere. Those who give, like the Sea of Galilee, flourish. By giving to others, we keep ourselves flowing and growing. So why should we deprive that ability in those whom we feel need our help?
In this spirit, it is my hope that, through its new approach, LCI is able to reimagine itself as a node with unique gifts and privileges in a wider network of churches and communities in Leeds, all of which are able to listen, reflect, learn, give and receive from each other for the flourishing of all, and for a more connected, compassionate city.