Week of June 20
June 28, 2010The internship goes on. I am learning how to work an 8 hour job day by day while I am also learning about community development. Aside from committee meeting, random errands, and working with co-workers, the majority of my work is done at a computer and a phone. You can call it “planning” or “networking” but basically it feels like stationary office work.
I do actually enjoy it much of the time. The biggest downside is getting in a rut and feeling unproductive or just not being of much use. Because of that, today I made a to-do list that will hopefully keep on track all day. This may sound like a boring journal, but I think it is essential for me to learn to do the little stuff well, so that is worth mentioning.
I am still thinking a lot about how community development applies to my calling and the calling of any Christian. Yesterday I met with David Price from Englewood Christian Community Development Corporation. Their CDC is technically a separate legal entity from the church but in all reality, it is completely tied to the church. They formed the CDC because they wanted to provide housing and jobs for parishioners who needed them. The church is in the downtown area and many people have moved back to the church and live on the same street. It seems to be some sort of new monasticism I guess it would be called.
The idea of a CDC being run out of a church seems good, but I left the meeting with suspicious feelings. On just an observatory level, they did not seem to be running the organization well; actually, they admitted they had bad accounting and administrative functions. It is a relatively new CDC so that is part of it, and they did start the corporation based on skills they had but based on needs they wanted to meet.
The concept of meeting a need instead of using a skill is something that bothers me a little as well. I do not want to discount it too much because I think most of us do that, but it just didn’t seem to work as effectively. Finally, I am always concerned about a church straying from being centered on the teaching of scripture, and hopefully they still are. In all, I am not objected to the idea of a CDC, but I do not think it is the best solution for reaching out for many churches.
Yesterday I also met about the design plan for the day of service. It was interesting to learn more about landscaping, but essentially I am the organizer and not the expert. The project seems to be going well, but I am definitely figuring out things as I go. Finally, I hope I am able to be a light shining in this workplace as several of the workers are not Christians. That is the reason I picked a non-Christian CDC, and I hope that I can learn from them and that God can work through me to impact them.
