The Community Craft Collaborative

A unique hands-on, peer learning experience that nurtures faith-inspired imagination alongside faith-informed action.

 

“Seek the Shalom of the city where I have sent you…” - Jeremiah 29:7

We believe congregational leaders, lay and ordained, require new mindsets, competencies, and tools to faithfully adapt their ministries to a religious landscape that is shifting rapidly. Community Craft leverages lived theology, practical insight, and local wisdom to help participants research, discern, and ideate how they could grow the thriving of their community.

Discover Community Craft

Watch how Christians come together to solve community problems sustainably. Learn more about the collaborative journey congregational leaders embark on through the Community Craft Collaborative.

 
 

Community Craft Invites Congregations to:

→ Evaluate the strengths and challenges of your unique congregational context.

→ Understand how different aspects of social life influence each other – in expected and unexpected ways.

→ Identify responses and strategic partners to address local challenges.

→ Build innovative coalitions that strengthen the social fabric and foster the common good.

The Learning Journey:

Know Your Community

Participants learn and use a variety of tools to better understand and map their context throughout a lifetime of ministry.

Want to see a sneak peak into the Community Craft Collaborative curriculum?

Watch this video for a glimpse of content you’ll have on the learning journey!

Discern Your Role

Participants compare the assets and needs of a community with their own, helping them to see possibilities where others see problems.

Craft your Response

Participants draw from the teaching sessions and exercises to craft a pitch project where participants use the fruit of their ideation to move towards an implementable concept that could bless their community.

Each congregation will participate in an in-person, 1.5-day training followed by 6 weekly, 90-minute, virtual sessions where they will learn and use tools from design thinking, asset-based community development, and more to do research, discern, and ideate how they could grow the thriving of their community. The learning journey will commence with a time of in-person pitch presentations, celebration, and optional virtual coaching sessions.

  • God has reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That answers the “why”. Community Craft Collaborative gives us the framework to answer ‘how’. Community Craft Collaborative is an excellent tool to use to ask questions about “who is the community we are called to serve? And how do we actually engage with our community to understand their needs while bringing healing and restoration.”

    Mary, Chapel Hill Bible Church

  • I just love this project. I can see the act of Koinania working in Christian fellowship with the Lord and experiencing Christian fellowship with one another. I would recommend the Community Craft Collaborative, not just for churches, but as a powerful paradigm for anyone in an institutional context that needs to solve a problem.

    Deborah, Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church

  • Community Craft was a course that prioritized thoughtful engagement with the literature, imaginative problem solving for complex issues, and practical tools and skills to begin to address those issues. This course was creatively playful within a set structure, which encouraged students to engage thoughtfully within their communities. Community Craft is an excellent example of practical theological engagement within an academic setting – how do we, as students, bring shalom into our communities? How do we, as agents of reconciliation, bring ingenuity, collaboration, and best practice to promote the thriving of our cities? Community Craft provides the toolkit to begin to think through these pressing questions.

    Allie Hargrove, Thriving Communities Fellow

  • Students, alumni, pastors, and lay leaders often comment to me how much they long for practical tools that are deeply theologically grounded and which they can begin to deploy immediately. The kickoff event reminded me that Community Craft does exactly that, and even better, it does it in the context of building a cohort - a community - with a shared vision. If our churches are going to contribute in meaningful ways to the thriving of our communities, we’re going to have to learn to do it together, celebrating all the unique gifts each of us bring. We rejoice in this Pentecost-shaped imagination such that the young will see visions, and the old will dream dreams.

    Katherine Smith, Duke Divinity School Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives

  • The great gift the Community Craft Collaborative (CCC) offers to the Church is the opportunity to develop the mindsets, skillsets, toolsets, and soulsets (theological imagination) to address the pressing problems in our communities. More specifically, the chief benefit of the CCC is how it invites the church to listen. Rather than pridefully calculating technocratic “solutions” to problems, the CCC calls the church into deeper relationships of mutuality and love with the community. It is only through building relationships and making friends with our neighbors that we can hear the important localized conceptions of the good which are invaluable to being faithful disciples of Christ.

    T.J. Bryant, DDS MDiv ‘23, Agent of Shalom Fellow

Congregational Commitment

Thanks to the generosity of our funding partner, selected congregations are eligible to receive a stipend and the opportunity to apply for grant funding upon meeting the following requirements:

  • Completion of pre and post survey

  • Attendance and participation in the 1.5 day in-person training

  • Attendance and participation in 6 weekly virtual sessions

  • Completion of weekly assignments

  • Successful delivery of a concept pitch

 FAQs

 

  • All live sessions will take place at 7pm EST via Zoom.

  • Yes, all live sessions are recorded. However, we encourage participants to attend as many as they can as in person presence adds a richness to the cohort and overall experience.

  • Thanks to our generous sponsor, this learning journey is free. Additionally, congregations who meet program requirements will be eligible to receive mini-grants.

  • We recommend that each team consist of 4-6 people to accommodate for any member absences or schedule conflicts.

  • With permission from the program director, congregations may combine to form one learning team of 4-6 individuals. Both congregations will be eligible for the stipend as long as the program requirements are met by each.

  • While we require pastors to give permission for congregational participation, we do not require them to participate on a learning team.

  • The course duration is 6 weeks (+ 3 days). We suggest setting aside 1.5-2 hours a week for course content and course work.

  • Yes, we have created a private community space for participants of the Community Craft Collaborative. There you can find recordings, resources, and more!

Questions?

Get in touch.