Cultivate

You, indeed, are what you eat. The food you eat provides the materials your body uses, from the organelles in your 30 trillion cells to the structures and systems those cells makeup and the fuel to run it all. Over 300 billion of those cells are replaced every day. Nearly all of your cells are replaced throughout your lifetime.

But you are also the air you breathe, the stress you carry, and the thoughts you nurture. These elements cultivate your body and its ability to fend off illness and disease, giving you more choices to live the desired quality of life.

The same cultivation determines a garden: the light it needs to power photosynthesis, the nutrients it is fed via the soil and water, the quality of the air, and the stressors it faces from weather, bugs, and blight.

You don’t just wake up one day and have the garden or the health you might dream about or the sudden absence of life realities you wish you didn’t have to contend with. What can be difficult for us to receive is that we tend to get what we cultivate from homes to nations.

It is interesting to ponder the words that describe cultivation and the images they create in your mind’s eye: plow, break up, prepare, grow, maintain, acquire, develop, win favor, and apply oneself to improving and developing. Cultivating something or someone is a multifaceted investment.

I sense hesitancy or stagnancy as I interact with people in my community and across the USA. There is even some hardened ground in some places. It’s different than I have experienced over the years (outside of COVID). For some, it might be fear-based, but for others, it’s more a sense of “we’ve tried everything, and nothing seems to work.” It’s like the feeling of having tried every diet or every kind of gardening there is and finding little to no success. We give in to what is.

Don’t give in, cultivate!

What good do you desire to grow in your community? Do you know if it needs to be planted or is already there at some level? You COULD create the talk of the town! Sometimes, that talk begins with a different vision than anyone has heard. Follow-through is critical if you don’t want that talk to sour or dry up. So, how do you cultivate that world?

The Vision to Cultivate
What do you long to grow? (To “long” is significantly more determined than “want.”) If you don’t have a vision, you don’t know what to cultivate for it to happen. An ancient king once said, “Without a vision, people cast off restraint.” The idea is that there is an absence of guidance, boundaries, or pathways without some level of envisioning. It is as if a person with no vision is choosing nothing, which is actually choosing something. “Nothing” never happens.

So, what do you see? What do you want to see come into being? Don’t think about how right now, only what. Know what you want to grow what you want.

The Relationships to Cultivate
This is where you pursue fellow sowers or planters in the same field of vision you are walking in. With whom do you want to grow? With whom do you need to grow? The aim here is not general friendship but fellow cultivators in your community.

You might not know who you need to know. If you have access to CharityTracker, invest time in the “Agencies” tab to help you brainstorm connections to explore. Make a list.

You might even go so far as to say that some relationships are necessary for the success of what you envision. In his book Vital Friends, Tom Rath describes such a person as someone “whom you can’t afford to live without.”[i] One of the questions he suggests is, “If this person were no longer a part of your life, would your achievement or engagement at work decrease?” To cultivate a more extensive community vision, adjust the question to “If this person were no longer a part of your life, would your achievement or engagement of your work decrease?”

There is an abundance of ways to create the space for cultivating relationships— coffee, meals, walks, emails, video calls, phone calls, brainstorming sessions, hotel lobbies at retreats and conferences, special meetings and events that gather broadly, “by chance” because you are out and not held up in an office all day. People are everywhere, and you never know what serendipitous moment may happen because you have made yourself available.

To accomplish your vision above, with whom in your community and beyond do you need to cultivate relationships? What weekly or monthly rhythm do you need to schedule to be where the people are?

The Resources to Cultivate
Let’s look at resource cultivation for community impact through the lens of gardening.

Soil – One of the first elements of soil to consider is its location. Is it in an area that is known to be bountiful or desert-like? Not being bountiful doesn’t mean you look for another location. We are in community development work. That means there is work to do with the soil. Realtors say it’s all “location, location, location.” Your vision determines the location of this soil. Where does your work need to take place?

To what extent does the soil need to be worked? Is it hard and rocky? Does it need plowing? Are there toxins to remove, and is new soil needed? Is it laden with briars? Is the soil nutrient-filled or lacking?

The state of the soil can cause you to walk away, not wanting to invest that level of time, blood, sweat, and tears. That’s where vision comes in. “Without a vision….”

Seed – The first seeds you plant are relationships. Consider the quality and sources of those people. Do they at least give you the sense that they fit your vision? Other seeds are about resource cultivation for the vision. Interestingly, the source of all you need is found in people.

The seeds you plant are based on the vision you are cultivating. What is often missed in community development work is the indigenous people and resources. People, organizations, churches, and agencies frequently descend on a neighborhood with their vision to plant and never consider the people who live there. What they desire and their role in it matter deeply. Don’t plow them over.

Air and Water—In addition to soil, air and water bring nutrients and moisture. Because of their flow, they are, in essence, delivery systems. Take note of the evidence of their streams of movement. This could even be the flow of people in the community. What are the well-trod pathways, and where do they lead?

Both air and water can also deliver toxins. What is the current “talk of the town” through conversations, social media, and TV? Poisonous? Inflammatory? What you grow can have an air and water-cleaning effect. What counter-messaging can you produce? How can you get that message out? Consider indigenous avenues. Who are the well-established and honored voices already there? By the way, how you say what you say can be toxic or refreshing, too. Complex things can be said in a tone that isn’t fire-starting.

Light – We need it to grow. We need it to see. Plants on land and in the water need light to produce oxygen for us, so we need it to breathe. Light provides security and the ability to see when it’s dark.

Some sources of light provide warmth when the atmosphere is cold. Certain people have that kind of warmth and light, don’t they? Is light what you bring? Don’t become the darkness that might surround you. Multiply the light, bringing others along, and bringing in the resources needed for the vision to take root.

When you sit and see what you long for in your community, what are all of the resources will it take? Don’t skimp on growing your vision. Think in phases.

Opponents of Cultivation
It is essential to note the battle with bugs and blight in gardening, as well as the deterioration and disease of our health. All of these images express why our community development work is so vital.[ii] But it’s not focusing on the battles with what comes against growth and health that wins the day.

The bigger vision will cultivate a growth and healthy environment. You always cultivate from the bigger vision. I have aeroponic gardens that I look at daily for evidence of “growth inhibitors,” and I respond to them. It is a rhythm but not a focus. Don’t let the opposition take you down the path of giving up.

Fostered by Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, creating tipping points has pushed leaders in all types of community sectors.[iii] The tipping point is the moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Here are some key elements that I have found necessary to T.I.P. the relationships and resources cultivated in your community in your desired direction.

Time - to Strategize and Invest
Cultivating rhythms of time investment cultivates an atmosphere of possibilities.[iv] Growth seasons in gardening means the production of different produce in different seasons due to atmospheric conditions. Strategic intent is vital to investing your time so the vision doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. If you constantly play “52 pickup,” you need some work on strategy. You might consider some help here if strategy isn’t your current strength.

However, a greenhouse can change the seasonal options because the conditions are controlled. Is there a greenhouse atmosphere that you can invest the time to build and sustain, allowing your vision to grow in a cultivated space? It could be as simple as a one-hour Zoom meeting every other week with people who want to grow what you do. But someone has to start.

Know that phases are essential and helpful. Instantaneous community development is not the way it happens. Phases are part of the strategic investment of time and must be planned. Who and what goes first? Invest the time to think through cultivating from choice of soil (location) to vision a reality. Do this alone, then move to a conversation with collaborators to help work through the details.

Initiative - to Step Out
Stop waiting for the right moment or for someone else to initiate. Interestingly, you can begin talking publicly about a vision, and resonance leads to connections. If the vision lives only in your heart and head and never leaves your mouth or moves your feet, it probably won’t happen.

Be the one to find another one and start cultivating. Step out believing enough in your vision to cultivate the relationships and resources for it to develop. Prepare the environment, plant or sow the seeds, and nurture what you initiate.

Persistence - to Keep Going
For what you invested time in to initiate to emerge, there must be a commitment based on a clear “Why am I doing this?,” “Why does this matter?,” “What does this accomplish?” As you cultivate, you will find more resources, more that needs to be done, and more people who resonate with you and join in. Be the one to sustain what you initiate or build a team that can and will.

Tougher skin also allows you to keep going. It can be challenging to endure the bugs and blights of naysayers and criticism. This is where the relationships you have cultivated become vital. Who else is seeing what you see? Run with them!

A vision that is never lost, overgrown by weeds, or eaten away by the tyranny of the urgent is becoming. Be okay with the process. Again, the process is usually challenging but accomplishes the vision if you are persistent.

Now, create the talk of the town!

Action Points

The normal pattern of these blogs has been to list action points at the end. For this blog, I have made the whole thing a journey of action points…like a coaching session. For a quick glance, note the questions in italics and the T.I.P. just above.

[i] Tom Rath, Vital Friends. New York, NY: Gallup Press, 2006.
[ii] https://www.charitytracker.com/en/blog/tag/community-development; https://collectivecommunityimpact.mn.co/share/Qs7XkqKoG-n3Crwt?utm_source=manual
[iii] Malcom Gladwell, The Tipping Point. Boston, MA: Little Brown, 2000.
[iv] https://www.charitytracker.com/en/blog/rhythms

Do you desire to strengthen your CharityTracker or OasisInsight network to new levels of collaboration and impact? Reach out to Chuck today to schedule your conversation: chuck@simonsolutions.com. 

Dr. Chuck Coward serves as Community Impact Specialist for Simon Solutions, Inc. Chuck has invested over 35 years in fostering human and community development from a variety of places and roles, including as a pastor, non-profit Executive Director, Director of Development, businessman, consultant, university professor, The Struggle Coach, and the founder of Entrusted Foundation. Serving to make people and communities stronger is his great passion. Chuck is the proud husband to Anita, dad to four, and granddaddy to eight.