Reflective-Generative Practice A Framework for Congregation-Based Social Services

Despite emerging interest in congregations as social service providers in communities across the U.S., recent studies have offered troubling critiques of congregation-based social services, namely that they exhibit limited participation from community members and consist largely of short-term programs. In response to these critiques, this paper will suggest Paul R. Dokecki’s framework for reflective-generative practice as particularly applicable to congregation-based services. Following important ethical considerations for professional practice and congregation-based services, this paper discusses features of reflectivegenerative practice related to increased community participation and temporal-spatial generativity in congregation-based services. Introduction [1] In the wake of President Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, there has been an emerging interest in the role of congregations as social services providers in their communities. More specifically, there has been interest in and speculation about the possibility that congregations might replace, or at the very least supplement, secular community social service providers. Much of this speculation, and much of the political rhetoric surrounding faith-based community initiatives, rests on assumptions about 1 Chaves (2004) rightly points out that many different religions, in the American religious landscape, take on the “congregation” model of organization and practice. Thus, the term “congregation” can be used to refer to Christian communities, as well as Jewish communities, Muslim communities, etc. Reflective-Generative Practice Journal of Religion & Society 2 14 (2012) the quantity and quality of the social services provided by congregations – namely, that congregations are intensely involved in social services provision and offer a more “holistic” brand of social services (Chaves 2004). Previous research in this area has thus sought to identify the types of services provided by congregations (Saxon-Harrold, Wiener, McCormack, and Weber, 2000; Chaves and Tsitsos, 2001; Cnaan, Sinha, and McGrew, 2004; Unruh, 2004), the types of congregations more likely to provide these different services (Brown; Stewart-Thomas; Tsitsos), and the actual effectiveness of these services (Chaves 2004; Cnaan and Boddie; Wuthnow, 2004). [2] Despite popular rhetoric about the effectiveness of congregation-based social services, several prominent studies have presented evidence that the actual social service activities of congregations are quite limited in scope and effectiveness. Chaves (2004) found, for example, that the bulk of social services provided by American congregations are carried out by a limited number of volunteers, focus on a defined set of tasks that address only immediate needs, and rarely involve anything more than short-term, fleeting contact between congregation members and service recipients. Similarly, Wuthnow (2004) finds that, while many congregations are indeed involved in at least some degree of social services provision, the services provided by congregations are more restricted than commonly assumed. He further concludes that congregations function more as gateways to participation in other social service organizations than as the actual grounds for social services. While there are limitations and exceptions to these findings – Chaves (2007) admittedly overlooks more informal services offered by many congregations, and these findings do not invalidate the community-engaged, long-term focused social services provision clearly exemplified by many congregations across the U.S. – they invite further reflection on how congregations might reevaluate their role within their surrounding communities and on how they might go about providing valuable and much-needed social services to these communities. [3] My aim in this paper is to put forth such a reflection, and to explore several ways in which congregation-based social services might be refocused in response to Chaves’ and Wuthnow’s (2004) critiques. More specifically, this discussion is grounded in Paul R. Dokecki’s ethical and methodological considerations for the caring professions in The TragiComic Professional. My central thesis is that Dokecki’s framework for reflective-generative practice should be considered as a framework for community-engaged, long-term congregation-based social services provision, particularly as this framework directly addresses the above-noted tendencies in congregation-based social services to create social distance between congregation members and service recipients and to offer only short-term or immediate services. I argue that reflective practices invite increased participation from and partnership with service recipients, and that generative practices compliment these partnerships by moving services from a short-term focus to a more developmental, longerterm focus. It is important to note that the effectiveness of this particular framework at the congregational level is not yet empirically established, and that it is not the intent of this paper to assume such effectiveness. Rather, this paper represents a preliminary discussion of a set of promising avenues for services provision. It is my hope that this discussion will lead to further exploration into congregation-based social services and a more diversified conversation thereof. Reflective-Generative Practice Journal of Religion & Society 3 14 (2012) Values and Exclusions [4] Lest my discussion herein unintentionally invalidates the various important community engagement and service provision efforts of congregations across the U.S., it is critical to note at the outset that congregations should not be disparaged for offering short-term, immediate-need services and/or services that entail limited community member contact and engagement. Indeed, the provision of short-term services – food pantries, clothing provision, medical transportation – are vitally important to the individuals who receive those services, as well as to the religious foundations out of which those services are offered (many Christian readers and service-providers will recall injunctions in scriptural passages such as Matthew 25, to cite one example, and the community outreach implications thereof). Furthermore, the recommendations for congregation-based social services put forth in this paper will be more appropriate for certain congregational settings than for others. The inclination and ability to carry out various types of social services will vary from congregation to congregation. Studies have shown, for example, that congregational engagement in community services has been mediated by such factors as the size of the congregation’s membership, congregation operating budget, staffing and physical space requirements, and theological commitments (Cnaan, Sinha, and McGrew; Wuthnow, 2004). Therefore, this discussion proceeds in recognition that there is no single “best type” of service a congregation may provide, that value judgments are best left to those who directly seek out and utilize those services, and that the type and degree of congregational services vary considerably and may be dictated by factors beyond the immediate control of a congregation. Still, the complexities and variations of congregational activity do not close off consideration and discussion of promising pathways to effective services provision, particularly in response to more troubling critiques of congregation-based services. [5] My discussion in this paper, and the reflective-generative framework put forth by Dokecki, are rooted in the discipline of community psychology, which suggests specific values and modes of community examination and engagement. Most relevant for the present discussion, community psychologists generally value participatory community research and action in which community members, the direct recipients of community intervention, have a voice in the shaping and implementation of that intervention (Israel, Schulz, Parker, and Becker; Christens and Perkins). This value clearly undergirds my slant toward reflexivity and my insistence that congregations, in providing services to their surrounding communities, involve community members in the shaping and provision of those services. Furthermore, community psychologists traditionally adopt a social-ecological approach to research and intervention, an approach that seeks to locate individual and community issues within a complex web of social processes and structures ranging from individual-level processes to larger institutional structures (Bronfenbrenner; Lounsbury and Mitchell; Schensul and Trickett). This approach guides much of my understanding of generativity and the suggestion that congregations develop a more systemic, spatial-temporal awareness in services provision. These values, while not without their own detractors and viable alternatives, should orient the reader to some of the assumptions directing my discussion. [6] Several substantive limitations to the present discussion should be briefly noted. First, this paper represents a cursory exploration and application of Dokecki’s reflective-generative Reflective-Generative Practice Journal of Religion & Society 4 14 (2012) framework; it is not within the scope of this paper to give a full exposition of his application of this framework. For the sake of expediency, I focus on the elements in Dokecki’s work that are of immediate interest, namely his compelling argument for the complementarity of reflexivity and generativity in the caring professions. Second, the reader may observe that transposing values and practices focused at the individual level to the organizational/ congregational level leaves unexamined a number of fundamental differences between individual behavior and organizational behavior, such that what is effective practice at the level of the individual may not necessarily be effective practice at the level of the organization. Despite this legitimate concern, I contend that congregations and other organizations often exhibit many of the same qualities and behaviors as the human individual, and that such a comparison may not be as difficult as some would suggest. Schensul and Trickett, for example, liken community organizations to human individuals, as they possess “financial and social resources, mission, interrelationships, community role, community capital” and are able to “gain and manipulate power” (247). Consistent with this line of reasoning, it is my aim to suggest Dokecki’s reflective-generative framework is equally relevant for congregations and individuals. It is my hope that the sources and examples provided herein will confirm that relevancy. The Tragi-Comic Professional and the Comic Congregation [7] Beginning necessarily with the ethical roots of practice suggested by Dokecki, both professional practice and congregation-based social services are embedded in and must contend with an imperfect human world. Dokecki, building on Farley’s concept of the tragic, argued that professional practice takes place within a practice setting driven simultaneously by both tragic and comic human conditions. In this setting, the professional manifests the tragic when they are animated primarily by external goods (e.g., money, professional advancement, personal gratification) at the expense of the internal goods of professional practice (e.g., caring for the other). The comic outlook, however, can balance and seek to overcome the tragic dimensions of human life by transcending immediate situations of suffering and despair and in hoping in a world better than the present one. It allows us to look past human depravity and self-centeredness and see in the other “persons worthy of love, respect, and care” (41). In other words, it places on humanity the ethical demands of mutual responsibility and compassion. Client-professional transactions, Dokecki concludes, are thus situated in a context in which the professional, while acknowledging and wrestling with the tragic elements and tendencies of human existence, moves with the client through hope and transcendence toward mutual love and care. [8] In similar fashion, Hopewell, in his seminal study on congregational life, put forth several narrative models through which congregations interpret their collective lives and practically function in the world. One such narrative model, the comic (or gnostic) model, closely mirrors Dokecki’s tragi-comic worldview. The comic congregation, in tragic fashion, begins by acknowledging the brokenness and suffering in the world. The cancer patient faced with inevitable death, to use Hopewell’s example, experiences the tragic mortality of human existence. However, the trajectory of the comic congregational narrative moves toward a “happy ending” (58) and envisions the eventual fate of the world and humanity in terms of unity and harmony. “Its (the comic narrative) direction is opposite to the disintegrative Reflective-Generative Practice Journal of Religion & Society 5 14 (2012) course of tragedy; it moves from problem to solution” (58). Additionally, far from being merely a state of belief in eventual universal harmony, the comic narrative has implications for the ways in which congregations and their members function in the present and in the midst of disunity and suffering. The comic congregation and its members are impelled through hope and faith to work toward harmony in the here and now, to make the world more equitable by ameliorating poverty, social inequality, and injustice. [9] Dokecki’s tragi-comic professional and Hopewell’s comic congregation worldviews provide similar ethical groundings for professional and congregational practices of care. Of considerable importance to congregations specifically, the tragi-comic and comic worldviews find consistency with a number of influential theological and ethical thinkers within the Christian tradition. Theological-ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr, in putting forth several Christmodeled frameworks for Christian ethical orientation to broader civilization, presents the image of Christ as transformer of culture. The transformative Christian – consonant not only with Christian scripture (e.g. the Gospel of John), but also with such Christian thinkers as Augustine, Calvin, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards – acknowledges the brokenness of humanity and the existence of human sin (both individual and social) in culture. Yet they also maintain hope in the innate God-created goodness of humans and the world, as well as the potential for transforming in the here and now the evil, self-seeking culture and cultural institutions of humanity (I argue that Niebuhr’s “culture” to include all central aspects of human community life – the social, political, and economic). These Christians seek to bring about the “kingdom of God” in the present, rather than being oriented merely to the past or future. The transformative Christian, therefore, seeks change in present day governments and political and economic systems, and “calls for positive, confessional, God-oriented practice in church and community” (229). [10] Though much more could be said about Niebuhr’s conceptions of sin and universalism, for the purposes of this paper I simply draw a clear connection between the ethical roots of professional practice and of congregation-based social services – particularly as they are related to Dokecki’s reflective-generative framework – and to ground them both in the broader Christian tradition that gives shape to much of the congregational activity discussed herein. The tragi-comic professional and the comic congregation certainly differ in significant ways. Dokecki focuses more on the tragi-comic as manifested in the practitioner’s balancing of the internal and external goods in professional practice, whereas Hopewell never explicitly identifies the tragic with the service-oriented activities of the congregation. However, these discussions emphasize the importance of moving from tragedy toward transcendence and hope in a better world. This “better world” is not a utopian vision for some distant future, but rather a world that can be realized in the here and now through practices of compassion and care. Moving forward from these common ethical foundations, reflective-generative practice, as conceived by Dokecki, will now be discussed as a framework useful for congregations as they seek to find effective ways of living out their calling to compassion and care in their communities. Reflective-Generative Practice [11] As noted above, the particular activities and social settings of practitioners and congregations can have notable areas of dissimilarity. Still, I suggest that the congregation is Reflective-Generative Practice Journal of Religion & Society 6 14 (2012) a natural analog to the practitioner. The practitioner, according to Dokecki, “is a professional person who engages in a practice to do good . . . to promote human development and community” (14). The congregation engaged in social services provision – which may include such services as food pantries, clothing closets, soup kitchens, educational tutoring, and programs for drug and violence rehabilitation (Cnaan, Sinha, and McGrew) – fits well within this broad conceptualization of professional practice. It is therefore helpful to consider the ways in which the ethical role Dokecki’s practitioner directly applies to the ethical role of the congregation. For Dokecki, this role entails two tasks: “(1) to subordinate egoistic concerns in favor of enhancing the client’s human development and (2) to contribute to the development of community” (23). These tasks are related to practices of reflexivity and generativity, respectively, and will now be discussed at both the professional and congregational levels.