Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a way of looking at and engaging with the community and neighborhoods around us. In contrast to identifying all of the problems or the things “wrong with” the neighborhood, a person looking at a neighborhood and its people from an asset-based perspective will instead seek the giftedness and abundance in the neighborhood instead of scarcity or lack. 

The engagement with people will be from a position of learning, relationship-building, listening and connecting, not a position of judgment or rescuing. If action is to be taken, it will be in response to the identified interests of the neighbors, as opposed to the creation of a solution to something that has not been identified. 

Here is a basic example: we might see a seemingly empty or abandoned property that is  unkept, and our tendency might be to go pick up trash or grab a mower with no plan or action of how the situation might change.

An alternative could be to begin asking questions like: who owns the property? What is their intention for it? What do the neighbors on either side of the unkept property think/feel about it? Do they have any dreams or visions for the space? How might we be a catalyst for change in that space? What is needed to there, not just for it to look differently today, but for it to be seen as an asset and a gift in the community?

Asset-based community development matters because we care deeply about the neighborhood in which we all live worship. 

The practice of “community development” can be engaged in from a variety of perspectives. At South Meridian, it means that we want the church to be a catalyst for healing and renewal in Avondale. It also means we want to be good neighbors, which we see as a two-way relationship; we have much to learn and gain from being in relationship with the neighbors of Avondale, just as we have much to offer.