C. Christopher Smith - Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish

At the heart of the learning organization is a shift of mindfrom seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world.... A learning organization is a place where people are continually discovering how they create their reality. And how they can change it.

Peter Senge

M y alarm goes off. I roll out of bed, get dressed and go downstairs. I put the dog on her leash and head out the door for a morning walk. As we move slowly down the block, I begin to think about the ways in which our little urban neighborhood has changed in the twelve years that our family has lived here. Many houses, once abandoned, have been renovated and now have families living in them. The community garden at the end of the block has doubled in size and now includes a picnic shelter and a small nature play-space with trees, wildflowers and even a stream for kids to play in.

Behind the garden is the former Indianapolis Public School Number 3. Twelve years ago, it was in major disrepair with a leaky roof and was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. Today the barbed wire is gone, and the building has been restored and converted into thirty-two gorgeous, high-ceilinged units of mixed-income housing. The gymnasium attached to the school has also been restored, and in addition to a new basketball court and fitness equipment on the main floor, its roof has been converted into a deck hockey rink that now hosts games almost every night of the week.

At the end of my block I pause and look out across Washington Street, the historic Old National Road. I see the beginning of a new construction project, which will soon be a housing development for low-income seniors, and also the first residential complex in the state of Indiana with net positive energy use (meaning that the building will generate more solar and geothermal energy than it consumes). Twelve years ago this parcel of land was home to an abandoned commercial laundry facility that had leached chemicals into the soil for decades, creating a massive brownfield that had to be remediated, at a cost of well over a million dollars, before the present construction could begin.

I turn right and walk along Washington Street, passing the new Puerto Rican coffee shop that is only weeks away from opening and the tiny Mexican carry-out that has grown and thrived over the last three years since it opened. I see the murals, designed by my friend Brent, that not only add color to our neighborhood but also tell the story of the former amusement park that was built here over a century ago. I turn and walk past our church building, thinking about the ways that it has changed over the last decade: the addition of solar panels that provide 15 percent of the buildings energy, the installation of an elevator that makes the full building accessible, and the development of an expanded, state-of-the-art daycare facility.

Working with our neighbors, our church has been deeply involved in all of these changes to our neighborhood. For many people, this story is hard to fathom, a church that is so deeply committed toand engaged in so many ways inthe work of helping its neighborhood to flourish! Every couple of weeks or so representatives of another church or nonprofit come to visit us and to see what is going on in our neighborhood. Many of these groups want us to reveal a magic process or technique that will allow them to replicate these results back home. Although well-intentioned, these sorts of inquiries are complicated, and we rarely can answer them in a simple and straightforward way. Our aim, for instance, has never been to do all of these things. Rather our aim has been to immerse ourselves in the story of Gods reconciling work. The primary work for us is not the redevelopment of our neighborhood but learning to submit ourselves to Gods transforming work of renewing our minds and imaginations.

At a practical level, our church finds renewal in reading and having conversation with one another. Reading and discussing Scripture is primary as we seek to understand this story of Gods creation and how it gives shape to our life together on the Near Eastside of Indianapolis. With the conviction, however, that God is reconciling all things whether on earth or in heaven (Colossians 1:20), we also find ourselves reading broadly as we seek to interpret Scripture and to embody Christ in our particular time and place: theology, history, urban theory, ecology, agriculture, poetry, child development, economics, fiction and more. Our emphasis on the virtues of reading broadly has led us to launch first a bookstore and later the Englewood Review of Books, an online and print publication that promotes the practice of reading in churches and recommends a broad range of books for its Christian audience.

As we seek to live faithfully in our neighborhood, we have come to understand that our life together is composed of two essential and interwoven threads: learning and action. On one hand our life together is marked by discipleship: learning to follow more deeply in the way of Jesus and to bear witness more fully to Gods reconciliation of all things. On the other hand, we are engaged in a wide array of overlapping activities in our neighborhood: community development, economic development, early childhood education, gardening, alternative energy, caring for our neighbors (including ones that are often marginalized: the homeless, seniors, the mentally ill, etc.), publishing, extending hospitality, and many other types of work. Without learning, our action tends to be