Walk Humbly: How Faith Communities Can Help Build Stronger Towns
Broadway Commons in downtown Salem, Oregon. A project of Salem Alliance Church, Broadway Commons is home to Salem Free Clinics, a local restaurant, office space for businesses and nonprofits, and, in the author’s opinion, the best coffee in town. It’s just one part of the church’s larger efforts to revitalize one of the poorest and most diverse neighborhoods in Salem. Image source.
Between 2014 and 2019, I had the opportunity to visit more than 100 neighborhoods around the United States and Canada. Inspired by the Slow Food and other Slow movements, my book Slow Church (co-authored with my friend Chris Smith) explored how faith communities around North America are slowing down, rooting themselves more deeply in both the pace and place of their neighborhoods, and helping to weave a fabric of care in their communities. As I was invited to come speak about Slow Church, I got to walk the neighborhood with people of faith—clergy and laypeople alike—who took seriously the biblical directive to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7). I got to see the neighborhood through their eyes, ask questions, meet neighbors, and hear stories of transformation. Then, when I moved on to the next city, I would sometimes reach into my bag of stories to encourage people doing the good, slow, yet often tiring and unglamorous work of neighborhood revitalization.
As much as I valued those trips, when I came on staff at Strong Towns, I was eager to travel less. I was road-weary, and it had become harder to be away from my family. Still, what I’d seen in my travels—not to mention the thousands of people I met at conferences, churches, retreats and workshops, and colleges and universities—had convinced me of something: there is a quiet movement afoot. Churches everywhere are recovering their vital role in building flourishing communities; they are moving back into the neighborhood. I’m thinking of the pastor in Seattle who, in order to serve neighbors in danger of being displaced by gentrification, became a homegrown expert in zoning codes. Of the churches who are renovating abandoned and foreclosed homes on behalf of neighbors, and building affordable housing on their campus. Of the people I met who were creating community gardens, building Little Free Libraries, putting in bike lanes, helping neighbors start new businesses, and more. (Note: I’m a Christian—Christian Quaker, to be specific—and so far I can only speak from direct experience with Christian churches. Doubtless there is similar work happening among synagogues, mosques, and in other faith communities.)
Someone whose work paralleled my own—we even spoke at the same conferences, though we never met—is a name familiar to longtime Strong Towns readers. Sara Joy Proppe has written about a dozen articles for Strong Towns since 2014. She has a background in urban planning, placemaking, and real estate development. She is the founder of Proximity Project, an organization dedicated to educating and activating churches to be better stewards of the built environment. And she co-hosts The Embedded Church podcast, which shares stories of churches in walkable neighborhoods.
The desire path is the perhaps the single most elegant example of the kind of bottom-up feedback our cities should listen to when we're thinking about what to build next. Right now, your neighbors are literally voting with their feet. Listen to them. https://t.co/dnPhaOvml0
— Strong Towns (@StrongTowns) August 26, 2019
Earlier this week, Sara Joy published an article on how walking their neighborhood can help clergy be better pastors. She begins by talking about how desire paths reveal the nuance missed by planners who design from “above” rather than from the on-the-ground, lived experiences of people. “Good design shapes places around the tangible needs and desires of people,” she writes, “reflecting attention and adaptability to these details on the ground.”
In the same way, pastors should orient themselves within the narratives of their particular places:
We must physically enter into the stories on the ground and understand the lived nuances of our particular neighbors if we are to identify what constitutes goodness and health for the local community and work toward that end.
One of the best ways to do this, says Sara Joy, is by “engaging with a street view in our particular place”—i.e., by taking a walk.
Sara Joy lays out a simple yet powerful four-step process for using walks to better learn your neighborhood, humbly observe where people are struggling, and look for opportunities to help. This is my summary, but make sure to see how she fleshes them out:
Plot out a 1/2-mile radius around your home and/or church.
Commit to going on regular walks in that area.
Draw a map that captures the places and people you observe. Add to it and annotate it.
Ask questions about what you’re seeing.
Sara Joy Proppe. Image source.
Reading Sara Joy’s article reminded me of all those walks I was able to take in neighborhoods around the U.S. and Canada. And it reinforced my belief that faith communities have a unique and indispensable role in building stronger, more prosperous, and more resilient places.
Though Sara Joy’s article seems addressed specifically to pastors, I believe her message—and certainly her four practical steps—are good advice for anyone who wants to care for their community. In my Quaker tradition, everyone is called to be a minister; some may be asked to be professional ministers, but ultimately we’re all called to use whatever gifts we have to love one another and our places. Similarly, some of us may be professionals—professional planners and engineers, professional community builders, professional pastors, etc.—but ultimately we’re all called to help our neighborhoods flourish. The steps laid out in Sara Joy’s article are an excellent place to start.
A few of my favorite Strong Towns articles by Sara Joy Proppe:
This nonprofit is transforming pockets of St. Louis, MO, into delightful and welcoming parks—and at a low cost!