🔊 Part 1: The Listening Guide

Why We Listen

Listening is often the first act of organising. Before we act for a community, we take time to listen with it.

• We do not arrive as experts with ready-made answers, but as neighbours curious about the place, the people, and what God may already be doing among them.
• Listening helps us notice both the gifts already present and the things that matter deeply to people.
• There is something profoundly Methodist about this: We discover who we are and what we’re called to do through relationships with one another.

💡 So, before planning the project, organising the event, or launching the new initiative—begin by listening.

🧘 Preparing Yourself

Before you go, take time to prepare:

✔ Pray before you go. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your ears, enlarge your imagination, and help you notice your own assumptions.
✔ Leave your agenda behind. Come with questions, not solutions. Avoid steering conversations toward the answers you hope to hear.
✔ Notice power dynamics. Who is easy to reach? Who tends to be listened to? Who is missing?
✔ Go in twos where possible. As Jesus sent the disciples out together (Mark 6:7), working in pairs offers support, safety, and reflection opportunities.

📌 Remember: You won’t hear everything in one conversation. Listening is not a one-off exercise—it’s the beginning of a relationship.

🗣️ Six Listening Questions

You don’t need to ask every question or follow this order. Let the conversation flow naturally.

1. What do you love about this place? (Listen for stories of belonging, gratitude, and pride.)

2. When things go well here, what helps make that happen? (Uncover existing strengths, relationships, and local wisdom.)

3. What breaks your heart about this place? (Sometimes what grieves people most reveals what they value most deeply.)

4. If you could change one thing, what would it be? (A simple way to identify concerns and possibilities.)

5. What gifts or skills do you have that you’d be willing to share? (Listen for skills, knowledge, experience, time, relationships, and passions.)

6. Who else do you think I should be listening to? (Helps the circle grow and introduces you to voices you might otherwise miss.)

👂 How to Listen Well

A few simple reminders:

• Ask, then wait. Silence can feel uncomfortable, but it gives people space to think. Don’t rush to fill it.
• Listen for the story behind the answer. The most important thing may not be the first thing someone says.
• Reflect back what you hear. Try: “So, what I think I’m hearing is…” This gives the person a chance to correct or add to your understanding.
• Use people’s own words. A person’s language can carry meaning and energy that’s easily lost in summaries.
• Follow the energy. Notice what lights people up, what gives them hope, what frustrates them, and what they return to more than once.
• Respect confidences. Do not share personal stories or attribute comments without permission.

📌 Remember: You’re not conducting an interview or collecting data for its own sake. You’re beginning a relationship.

📝 After Each Conversation

Take a few minutes to reflect while the conversation is fresh. Ideally, within 24 hours, make some notes. Ask yourselves:

• What gifts or assets did we hear about?
• What concerns or hopes were raised?
• What relationships or connections did we discover?
• Was there anything people seemed particularly passionate about?
• Were any possible actions or next steps suggested?
• Who else should we speak to?

And as a team, keep asking:

“Where might God be in what we have heard? What might the Spirit be inviting us to notice or explore together?” (Don’t rush to answer. Sometimes the value is in simply sitting with the question.)

🗺️ Part 2: Asset Mapping

Asset-based community development begins with what is already present. Every community has gifts, relationships, knowledge, skills, places, traditions, and stories that can be overlooked when we focus only on problems or needs.

This section helps you begin to notice what is already there. Think of it as a living map that can grow and change over time.

👥 A. Individual Gifts

Who has something to offer?

💡 Remember: Gifts aren’t limited to formal qualifications. Someone may have local knowledge, practical experience, a passion for cooking/gardening/music, or a gift for making people feel welcome.

🤝 B. Associational Life

Where do people already gather? These are often the natural places where relationships already exist.

📌 Note: This isn’t about asking groups to help with a church project. It’s about recognising that these groups already have relationships, knowledge, and gifts of their own.

🏛️ C. Institutional Assets

Which organisations already have resources, relationships, or reach?

💡 Consider: The question isn’t “What can they give us?” but “Where might there already be shared concerns, relationships, or opportunities to work alongside one another?”

🏗️ D. Physical and Economic Assets

What practical resources are already available?

📌 Sometimes the answer isn’t to find something new, but to see something familiar in a new way.

🌟 E. Cultural and Spiritual Assets

What gives this place its story and soul? Some of the most important assets are the hardest to put on a map.

💡 Pay attention to the stories people tell. What do people remember? Who do they speak about? What events matter? What places are important? What traditions have survived?

🔍 F. The Missing Voices

Asset mapping should always include an important question:

“Who is not yet on this map?”

Ask:

• Who have we not yet listened to?
• Who may be excluded or overlooked?
• What barriers might be making it difficult for them to take part?
  (e.g., language, time, transport, disability, distrust, childcare, cost)

Then ask:

“Who will go and listen next, and what might we need to do differently to make space for their voice?”

🚀 Part 3: From Map to Action

A map is not the territory, and listening on its own is not organising. At some point, we need to decide what to do with what we’ve heard.

The purpose of listening and mapping is not to produce a perfect document. It’s to help us take faithful, realistic, and relational action.

❓ Three Questions Before You Act

1. What has God already provided?
   Start with abundance, not scarcity. What gifts, relationships, spaces, and possibilities are already present?

2. Where do the energy and the pain meet?
   What do people care enough about to act? Sometimes the place where people’s gifts, hopes, and concerns come together is where a possible next step begins to emerge.

3. What is ours to do—and what is not?
   We cannot do everything. Part of faithful organising is knowing:

   • Where we can contribute
   • Where we should support others
   • Where the best thing we can do is cheer someone else on or signpost people toward existing help.

📌 Resist the temptation to become the saviour.

📋 A Simple Action Plan

Keep the first steps small enough to be realistic.

💡 Ask: “What is the smallest next step we could take that would help us learn something?”
Not every action has to become a major project. Sometimes the next faithful step is simply another conversation.

✅ Covenant Check

Before moving ahead, pause and ask whether the following are true:

☐ We have listened more than we have spoken.
☐ Those most affected have had a genuine opportunity to shape what happens next.
☐ We are building on gifts and strengths, not simply trying to fix deficits.
☐ We have named what we have heard and prayed about it together.
☐ This action is likely to strengthen relationships, not just produce an output.
☐ We have thought about how we will report back to those who shared their stories and ideas with us.

📌 If several of these boxes remain unchecked, that may simply mean you need to keep listening.

🌱 Keep It Living

Use this guide freely. Adapt it for your chapel, circuit, neighbourhood, or particular context. There’s no need for every community to use it in exactly the same way.

• Date your maps and notes, but don’t file them away and forget them.
• Return to them. Add new voices. Cross things out when circumstances change.
• Notice new relationships and unexpected possibilities.

A map that never changes is probably no longer helping us to see the place as it really is.

So keep listening. Keep noticing. Keep asking where God is already at work—and where you might be invited to join in.

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." — Attributed to John Wesley