What is Community Development & What Will I Learn in a Program by that Name?

The Institute for GOD has a very interesting take on Community Development because, being connected to a third world development agency, missions work is a part of every student’s experience. Approaching communities of need cannot be haphazard or sloppy - you only get one chance when people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake.

What is Community Development?

Community Development is defined by the United Nations as “a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.” (This somewhat vague definition has been expanded in several ways and legit.ng provides several alternative definitions you could go read if you so desired.)

The common things you will find in them, however, include:

1. Aims -  like promoting general, cultural, and economic welfare, championing social justice, and
2. Actors - such as activists, NGOs, and agencies who help communities participate in the strengthening of their infrastructures.

While there are several ways to talk about the concept, those elements are always present to some degree in any definition. Community development, then,  is about the sustainable, holistic improvement of the processes and systems that affect people’s lives, which includes the education and empowerment of the beneficiaries so that they can carry on projects and initiatives themselves.

At The Institute for GOD, the topic of Community Development is approached via the Scriptures, not apart from it. God was the greatest community organizer of them all, meeting the needs of a huge community in the wilderness.

Community Development in the Bible

The above concepts are good, especially  because they can be found in Scripture. Community Development is a core theme of the Torah from Exodus through Deuteronomy, even if not explicitly referenced by name. In the Exodus narrative, we see the initiative of God to form a people that adhere to a system of law (most fully communicated in Dueteronomy) that encompasses the holistic experience of the Israelites. The regulations in the Torah include:

• Economic policies (Deuteronomy 24),

• Health policies (Leviticus 13),

• Educational systems in the priesthood (Leviticus 9) 

• Judicial systems with the judges (Numbers 11)

Together they promote general, cultural, and economic welfare, help the Israelites focus on social justice, and elevates persons in their community into roles that contribute to the ongoing sustainability of the functioning of God’s people. God’s involvement with the people in this way even extends into the systems they are supposed to set up when they enter the land of Canaan and informed how they structured themselves in Exile, and this should serve as a model for us. The Torah itself testifies to that fact in texts like Deuteronomy 4:6-8: 

6 You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” 7 For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? 8 And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? 

The community that develops should stand as a beacon to others, and it’s something that God has his hand in. This is the reason that Community Development is the title of one of the Bachelor programs here at the Institute for GOD. Considering the above you may be wondering what you would learn in such a program. Read on to get a picture of how we can prepare you to engage in this valuable process.

What Will I learn in the Community Development program at the Institute?

Community Development at the Institute begins with a class appropriately titled “Intro to Community Development.” This course lays the foundation for the majority of the content you’ll experience in the overall program but focuses primarily on the relationship between occupation (what you do) and vocation (what we do - as is revealed in God’s Word).

Students are introduced to seven different categories of occupational focus that we have identified fall within the scope of both the definition of Community Development as well as the vocation God has called us to. These include: Theology, Organizational Management, Economics, Sociology, Public Health, Education, and Ecology. Under one of those categories, students identify a sub-category, then a specialty, then a job title. We call this combo the “occupational stack.” If you were interested in education, for example, you could have the below stack:

Broad Category: Education
Sub-Category: Secondary Education
Specialty: Social Studies
Title: Teacher

This exercise is helpful in several ways. First, it gives a student a path in their education that helps them prioritize things that will contribute to their development along those lines. Second, it narrows a person’s focus down which allows them to grow into a competent professional in that field. Third, it makes a student see the biblical truth that development must be something we engage in TOGETHER. No individual can engage in Community Development alone. 

This course also introduces students to the necessity to implement appropriate criteria in evaluating other cultures by giving them a biblical rubric to determine if specific practices in a culture are good, bad, or neutral. Such considerations are part of the framework students learn that helps them spend between 20 and 40 weeks abroad during their undergraduate years at the Institute. The Community Development program builds on this first class, and students take their occupational stack with them as they move through it.

Students on an Institute for GOD immersion trip to The Philippines, 2018.

Continuing in the program, students learn concepts for ensuring success in project implementation from teachers who have executed and monitored projects both domestically and on the mission field. Examples of such concepts include the need to achieve early and recognizable success, the difference between project and program areas, how to achieve enthusiasm in working with people of other cultures, what criteria to consider when implementing technology in developing world settings, how to gather data to inform decision making through surveys, and many more.

Overall, the curriculum we implement at the Institute walks students down a road of understanding so that when they take trips with us they can competently engage in work on the mission field. Near the end of the program students develop their own project or program alongside professors in classes and then carry it out on one of their latter mission trips with the monitoring and help of seasoned trip facilitators (who might be the same professor they worked with to develop it)!

At the Institute we don’t just teach you concepts about Community Development. We take you on a journey so that you learn who you are in the scope of such a large endeavor, your role on a team of people, and the concepts you need to know to successfully implement a project, then we walk beside you as you implement the things that you learn so that when you do it apart from us you know what you’re doing. It’s the model we see in Jesus’ brand of education and we apply it in all of our programs. And because we find community development to be sourced in the word of God, you’ll still learn from 60 of the 66 books of the Bible in this one, as it will help you to focus on those who should be the beneficiaries of community development - the vulnerable.