Praxis

Life has been a bit strange since being back in Kenya. For whatever reason work is just now starting to pick up, and we're struggling with how to think about the sustainability and feasibility of our projects, especially in light of the fact that we're in the second year of our two year contract. With our old projects, we're trying to figure out how to improve the way we work with our Anglican Church partners and the community groups, while also recognizing that these groups should be running themselves more than us running them this year.

On Friday, we had a meeting with Horace Tipton (PF Director), Gitari (our field staff partner), and three other CCS staff members who are specifically engaged on our sunflower projects in Meru and Embu. As I believe we've explained, this project has caused us tremendous problems, most of which hinge on the fact that we have been trying to empower farmers to process their seeds for oil using oil press machines that CCS and PF purchased for the two demonstration stations in the area. These machines were supposed to be up and running last July; they are now at the CCS stations, but neither are functioning, and farmers are approaching their third season without having processed anything. This delay has been caused by all sorts of internal and external factors, but regardless, we've come to a stand still.

This meeting in some ways was the result of the way I have grown to think about community devlopment over the last 6 years of study and work in the field: we began with our convictions, our principles, with theory. You can't get anywhere without a foundation. In our discussion on Friday, we talked about a theoretical foundation of people as image bearers of God, as stewards of His creation; of organizations that value professionalism, accountability, and transparency between the organization and the community; and empowered communities and community owned projects as both the means and the ends. But we then moved to discussing how we can practically stand on that foundation while pursuing our more tangible goals of economic development, etc.

The difficulty in community development work, and really in all kingdom efforts, is that it is so darn easy to quote the principles and pursue your goals and 'never the two shall meet.' Everybody and anybody can and is talking about "empowerment," "sustainability," "participation." Or, to use a different set of buzz words, how about "mercy ministry," or "word and deed ministry?" As we discussed with our partners on Friday, we realized that in several significant ways, we had quoted the principles in our proposals and trainings, and then ran the actual program in ways that bulldozed those same principals. As one of our partner staff said, "You know, we have participation and community ownership up there as principals. But in this project, we went to the groups and told them what they should do. That's a top down approach, and it doesn't fit with our stated principals."

This sums up a great deal of the learning that Bec and I feel that we have gathered at Advance in Memphis and with Planting Faith in Kenya. When the principals shape the program, both the community and the organization experience the kingdom in powerful ways. When the principals exist alongside the program, and separate from it, whether intentionally or unitentionally, you are building with your right hand and tearing down with your left. When a pastor teaches about Jesus washing His disciples feet, and then acts like a dictator, he undermines the ground he claims to stand on. When a community development worker tells a community group that they are all made in God's image and given the skills and abilities necessary to improve their lives, and then implements a program that makes the community dependent on the organization, or that leaves all the hard work and decision making to the white folk, or rich folk, or church folk, or whoever, we are lying with our lives. When "mercy ministry" means creating as many hoops as possible for the poor in our midst to have to jump through, we're establishing a ministry model that's the exact opposite of the mercy we claim we're sharing. Words must mean something.

As the founder of the Mondragon worker cooperative movement said so beautifully, "we have learned that theory is necessary but not sufficient." We have to live what we say we believe.

By the end of our meeting on Friday, we came up with concrete objectives that centered on achieving our goals by following our principals. On Monday, we again met with the pilot project group. As we've repeatedly said, planning for this pilot centered around trying to design a model that flowed out of our convictions and principles. Our task for Monday's meeting was to design a survey together with the "marketing team" to be used in the market survey. The marketing team (8 people) will be visiting 4 markets over the next three weeks to attempt to gather information about the demand fluctuations, profitability, quality demands, etc., of the 4 crops they picked at the end of last year to help them decide on what crop to produce and sell together. We emphasized that the survey would only require them to do something they do regularly (go to market, talk with traders, etc.), but this time in a systematic way. We asked them to discuss and decide what they needed to know to make a good decision, and then asked them to formulate questions that would give them that information. They decided when to do the survey, where to do the survey, and how many traders to talk to. Along the way we gave some advice, and talked a bit about the best way to engage with the traders and to record the information.

When we left yesterday, we promised to take the material the farmers had given us and put it into a printable form. On our way home, I couldn't help feel really great about the day. At every step, we have given decision making power to the farmers, we have encouraged them to consider their own resources, and to plan for new ways to use those resources to improve their lives. The principles are shaping the project. We still don't know if it will work, of course. But it certainly feels like we're on the right track.

Jane Vella, author of Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach, defines praxis as action followed by reflection. Both of these two meetings involved this reflection on previous actions as preparation for future actions. And I think that this is a pretty good way for the community of faith to pursue God’s kingdom; we cannot be hearers of the Word only, constantly pondering and preparing but never engaging. But when we take a step of faith, God’s Word calls us to reflect on that action, to consider what we learned, where we succeeded, where we failed, how we can do better in the future. This is, I think, what it means to live Biblical lives, to constantly let our convictions, the experiences of others, and the Holy Spirit shape us and call us to reflection on what we’ve done and what we will do in the future.

Community work is difficult. We often feel like we're going forward into the dark. But I'm confident that Jesus is walking with us as we try to engage with our coworkers and our farmers groups in this process of action followed by reflection on that action, that the Holy Spirit will guide us in our efforts to be constantly learning and growing and moving toward His kingdom vision for our lives and our work.

Please pray for our farmers, particularly those who will be doing the survey this next week, and for Beth who will be with them in the market!

Peace,

Michael

P.S.- The birds are Crowned Cranes. They're some of my favorites, and are rarely seen in groups larger than 2. But on this particular day we saw a whole flock!