The Abundant Community, John McKnight and Peter Block (2010)

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The Abundant Community is a key work in fundamentally understanding what community building is, why it is necessary, and what tools there are for making it a reality. It is practical, inspiring, and well founded on decades of experience. Many community builders consider it a core expression of what their work is about. At the same time, its focus is limited primarily to neighborhoods. This means that community builders who work in social systems such as education, entrepreneurship, business, or any other functional system have some difficulties applying this material to their work. We believe that this shouldn’t be a barrier to gaining the valuable insight the authors have to offer. To that end we want to highlight two core messages of the book that we’re convinced can be applied to all community building work, and hopefully inspire you to read the whole book to find further ways to adapt it to other kinds of communities. Here are those two core points.Read More

turning to one another, Meg Wheatley

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“I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again. Simple, honest, human conversation. Not meditation, negotiation, problem-solving, debate, or public meetings. Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard, and we each listen well.”

It’s clear that being a community builder is not easy. We need support, we need ideas, and we need limitless stocks of energy and time! In all that busyness, though, it’s easy to lose time to read and reflect, and yet doing so can be so helpful, so rejuvenating for our “everyday” work. The flip-side of that equation is that there are lots of books to read and few of them make it to the “must-read” short list. My hope with these book recommendations is to take the time to separate the wheat from the chaff and inspire you to pick up a book or two that just might help your work.

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