Incarnation and community development may seem an incongruous title. However, the debate about the degree to which development workers need to belong to the neighbourhood where they work has been around for several decades. Should they live there? Are they one of the people or a guide or mentor?
The theological term, incarnation may help us understand this debate. It implies total commitment and so certainly challenges my experience. I’ve found total commitment can lead to confusion between the roles of development workers and local activists.
Incarnation
Incarnation means literally “of the flesh”, “carne” being the root of words like “carnivore”.
Theologians use the word to describe the doctrine that Jesus was both God and human. The exact nature of this union of God and human was the subject of much debate during the early Christian centuries. The issue was apparently resolved at the Council of Chalcedon. I say apparently because it led to the first of the major divisions in the Christian church. (Follow the link to find out why it’s best not to get involved in this debate!)
I’m not going into this in detail because I want to focus on the impact of the doctrine on real life.
Whatever the detailed nature of God’s presence in flesh, it implies some basic things:
- God loves matter and is not separated from it
- The essential movement is of God into the world, not people going to heaven
- Being physically present is important
- Cultivating awareness of the world is important, this is usually called prayer in the Christian tradition.
Of these my view is physical presence is far and away the most important. Christian teaching has always been about the immediate presence of God, as one who walks alongside. Those who believe in or befriend God embody that presence.
Theresa’s Prayer
Many will know the prayer of St Theresa of Avila:
“Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours …”
What does this actually mean? There are debates between those who believe we must offer God our hearts and those who believe our minds are more important. The latter emphasise belief is important. The former emphasise love.
If what you believe is all important, you are likely to be fundamentalist in your theology. Your problem is the extent to which you are able to cope with challenges to your chosen belief. Ultimately can you cope with reality?
With the heart, the orientation is to a romantic view of faith. The problem here is love rarely begins with attraction. It begins with action and emotional love may follow.
What we learn from the doctrine of incarnation is feet are important, not hearts or minds. Wherever your feet are, there too are your head and heart. St Theresa says as much in the second part of her prayer:
“… yours are the eyes through which Christ compassion cares for the people of this world, yours are the feet through which Christ goes about doing good and yours are the hands through which Christ now brings a blessing.”
Note how Theresa makes incarnational life concrete (or flesh!) It isn’t head and heart but the practical bits of the body that count.
Community Development
There is a debate among community development workers about imbricated roles. Imbricated means overlapped, in the sense that tiles on a roof must overlap to be watertight. (I can’t find anything online that uses this term. Nested roles seem to be closest but has specific management connotations. “Skills in Neighbourhood Work” by Henderson and Thomas uses this term, at least it was in earlier editions!)
Is a development worker more effective if the worker lives in the community where they work? When I started as a development worker, I believed the answer was obviously yes and indeed it may be yes for many successful development workers.
It didn’t work for me. I discovered community development works as a walk alongside a community; it is not served by pretending to be part of it. People need to understand your role and some distance helps everyone understand it.
Being physically present is essential but also separation in some way helps. When you bring a valued external perspective into a neighbourhood, it doesn’t help to identify totally with the neighbourhood.
Your presence is important. How you practice being present depends on your skill and experience as a development worker. It would be interesting for workers to compare notes on how they walk alongside so that they are present in without becoming of the neighbourhood.
A really interesting question is: does this make community development online impossible? I’ll discuss this next time.
