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Report on CSCO 2007 annual meeting
Roberts Wesleyan College, Rochester NY
We had another fine annual meeting, once again rich in fellowship,
reinforcement, and CO learning.
We are particularly grateful to Janet Furness (and her assistant,
Jane
Ames) for the planning and logistic and to Norm Wetterau and Nancy
Wetterau. Roberts Wesleyan provided excellent facilities for
us.
The minutes of the Annual Business Meeting probably will follow in a
later email, but I will provide an outline of some of the important
features. Nancy Wetterau chaired this meeting.
We decided to build on the 2006 annual meeting in conjunction with
SCUPE, and to some extent this year’s in conjunction with Roberts
Wesley’s Social Work Program and its Center for Christian Social
Ministries and with the local chapter of the National Association of
Christian Social Work. We will combine the encouragement
and planning
of the annual meeting and our mission by meeting in conjunction with
Evangelical networks related to social justice or urban
ministry by
meeting at the time of their conferences. Next year we will
return to
meeting at the same time as SCUPE. At the same time we
will
investigate other organizations whose annual meeting or conference
we
can coincide with. We welcome your suggestions. The time
and place of
the SCUPE meeting is not yet determined.
Soong-Chan Rah who is on the faculty of North Park and also a former
pastor in Cambridge MA who hosted CSCO training activities will
continue to represent CSCO on the SCUPE planning committee
The Leadership Team will again be Stephen Mott, Dick Righter, and
Wally
Tilleman, despite our efforts to get others to take this important
but
enjoyable responsibility.
Meeting at Roberts Wesleyan College and its Northeastern Seminary
gave
us an opportunity to draw on the wealth of Free Methodist resources.
Monday morning centered on a presentation by Dr. Douglas Cullum,
professor of historical and pastoral theology at the Seminary.
His
topic was “A Theology of Social Justice in the Wesleyan Holiness
Tradition.” The Wesleyan DNA includes a “seamless
integration of
evangelism, discipleship, and social action.” It is also
expressed in
a holistic vision of the church’s mission. One way in which
Wesley met
this was in his metaphor of healing. Wesley applied healing
not only
to physical and spiritual needs but also to our environment.
Long
before Karen Horney, Wesley also had a strong sense of
interrelatedness
of physical, emotional, and spiritual causes. Our response is
“healing
society through society.” As a people, Wesley wrote, we have
not only
inward, but also an outward conformity to God’s will,
“particularly in
justice, mercy, and truth, or universal love filling the heart and
governing the life.”
Dr. Cullum also described more briefly how this theology was
expressed
in the 19th century “originating commitments” of the founders of
the
holiness movements in US. This included an affirmation of the
fundamental equality of all people. The application was in
abolitionism, ministry to the poor, and evangelical feminism.
Our idea to discuss at this meeting the relationship of community
organizing and social work worked out remarkably well on Tuesday,
the
second day. We had a good number present with many local
people. The
discussion combined the thoughts and experience of CSCO, the local
faith based community organization, and Christian social workers.
Janet Furness, who led the planning and organization of the day, got
it
off on a very strong footing by her address, “Congregation Based
Organizing versus Social Work? Toward a Dynamic
Relationship.” Her
presentation was right on for the theme of the day. Janet
directs
Roberts Wesleyan’s social work masters program. We hope that
the MS of
her address will be on CSCODiscuss later or even better on our
website.
Janet said that social work needs to be in touch with congregational
based community organizing to see if social work is worthy.
Social
work has many genuine connections to community organizing when it is
best carried out. It then mediates to the social system the
common
goals that affect those least able to protect themselves in order to
enhance their well being. The social work professional
code of ethics
includes promoting justice on behalf of the client and enhancing
people’s ability to address their own need. Community
organizing is a
manifestation of the “strength based” theory of social work.
In this
approach, priority is given to institutions which enhance people’s
ability to vie for themselves. The contrast is the medical
model of
social work in which diagnosis is followed by treatment; if the
patient
doesn’t get well, they can be blamed as the victim. Strength
based
social work in contrast develops awareness of the environmental
conditions and seeks to improve or promote them. Every
group,
individual, and community has strengths, their own interpretative
angle, their own hopes and interests. Empowerment comes from
showing
each that they are capable of making their own choices and by
uncovering strengths. She quoted Henri Nouwen: We cannot
create the
soul of a community; we can only open up what is there.
Social work however is often limited by the sense that one must be
political. One is confronted by the problem of
sufficient time to
correct unsatisfactory relationships and being overwhelmed by so
much
to do. The private practice of social work has drawn workers
away.
In private practice there is better pay, the clients viewed as more
promising, and one is free from bureaucratic controls and the
cutbacks
in public budgets. Community development is an enabler;
community
organizing inquires about the systemic causes.
There were two responders to Janet’s address. The first was
Brian
Kane, Executive Director of Interfaith Action in Rochester. He
recalled a time when a city told its agencies not to work with the
IAF
community organization. Often social work programs in colleges
don’t
have substantial practical work in which the students will get to
know
organizing. Social workers and community organizers should
have a
dynamic relationship in which each looks at what it is getting back.
Digna Swingle, director of the social work field education at
Roberts,also responded by talking about where our passion is.
A change
toward community organizing by social work has a cost to the status
quo
of social work: one has to become involved in the client’s world.
One
gets to know, and relates to the clients’ churches and pastors and
block parties. She said that as social workers, we are too
comfortable
in what gives us professional validation. We look at the
individual,
at their “illnesses.” Relating to community organizing
sends us back
to the circumstances that cause the problems in the first place.
Digna
also spoke of the “ecological” approach to social work.
Attention is
given to the misfit of the client and the environment producing the
lack of health. Social work can cooperate with community
organizing in
addressing that.
A video that was shown made the telling statement: people make the
path; we are but the facilitators.
In a panel discussion, Wally Tilleman spoke of his experience in
Worcester MA where social workers did not think that they could do
anything because funding depends on the city and it controlled the
purse strings. Brian Kane asked whether an agency is willing
to give
time to its social workers in order to be in support of community
organizing. Tom Carr, Co-chair of the Interfaith
Inter-religious
Eco-Justice Network in West Hartford, CT, spoke of the situation
before
organizing where people thought that they were alone and helpless in
their environmental concern re power plants.
It would be beside the point to comment that the food that was
catered
was very good also!
–Stephen Mott=
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