Unpacking the Discovery journey
There are six distinct parts to the Discovery process, each part, or
step, building on the previous one.
Each part comes with its own toolkit of resources to help you work through it.
Once you have completed each step you would have gone through a comprehensive skills audit, community needs assessment, and would have put together a workable project plan.
Each part provides a blend of community development tools and exercises, team building, and biblical reflections presented in a fun and accessible way.
The six parts are:
Celebration is the first of these steps. Celebrating what we have and where we live is often overlooked in churches, but it is an extremely important and worthwhile activity at the beginning of any process. Through drawing out and celebrating the skills and resources God has given us as individuals and as a church, and identifying those positive aspects of our community can be a source of real encouragement to people as they struggle to see what impact they can make. It will help bond a team of people together, inspires people to think positively about the difference they can make, and it’s an act of worship to God who, like the little boy in the story of the feeding of the 5,000, asks us to give what we can and allow him to bless and multiply.
There are a number of fun activities in the Celebration Toolkit that help us to draw out the things within our community that we can be proud of.
It will also provide a basis for an audit of the skills, resources and experiences from within the church congregation, which will be useful to refer back to at various stages of the Discovery process.
The second step starts to introduce a number of tools to help us better understand the needs in our community and provides a basis for a discussion on what issues as a church you would want to explore further.
We start by drawing a big map of our community. We then plot out where we see evidence of social need and begin to discuss what the impact of this might be.
This exercise helps the Discovery group to begin to work together, it provides the opportunity for them to voice their experiences and perceptions of need within the community and together identify their top issues to look at in greater detail.
To help them do this the Toolkit introduces the Problem Tree, which is a simple but effective way of analysing the issues or problems identified in the community map. The problem tree helps the group to recognise what the outcome or symptoms of that particular problem in the community might be, and what the root causes of it are. This process allows the Discovery group to begin to see where they might begin to address some of the problems they have identified.
Toolkit 3 then helps prepare you for going out into the community to gather more specific information on some of the top issues identified in the previous step. This is a key stage in the Discovery process as it is important that the church is well prepared before it engages with, and perhaps raises the expectations of, the wider community. The exercises and activities in the Toolkit help to ensure that we are not just telling the community what we believe to be the problems in the area, but rather involving them at the beginning of the process to help the church to determine what the specific issues are, the key people to involve, and how we can continue to involve them throughout the project.
The Toolkit contains information on how to put together and deliver a community questionnaire, how to run a focus group discussion and how to collate and review all of the information gathered.
Once you have built up a picture of both the skills and resources available to you, and the specific needs within your community, it is often tempting to rush on ahead and set up a project based on these findings. However, it is really important that we allow ourselves time to stop and reflect more purposefully and to listen to what God might be calling us to do as a church. Dreaming Dreams is a sort of breather in the Discovery process and contains some ideas and reflective exercises to help us to pause and listen to God. Through looking at the story of Nehemiah we can begin to see what is possible with God working through those who are faithful to his purposes. The Toolkit helps us to think beyond what we have the potential to deliver and aspire towards achieving our dream for our community in the knowledge that anything is possible through God.
This opportunity in the process to pause and reflect is also a helpful time for churches ensure that they do not overlook the simple acts of neighbourliness that we often disregard in preference to a big project. Are we making sure that we are getting to know our neighbours and meeting those within our community who need to encounter the love of Christ in a small and simple way?
The final part in the Discovery process helps the group to put all of their research and ideas into a simple and workable project plan. As with all of the Discovery tools and activities this toolkit demystifies the more complicated parts of project planning and makes the process of planning fun and exciting.
Using the Hot Air Balloon activity groups can identify the various activities required to achieve the aim of the project, and they would have considered who they need onboard, what could hold them back, and what could blow them off course – all of the key elements of a good project plan!
The Toolkit explains how the group can begin to allocate tasks, and how to put together a project timeline. It also provides some basic information on how to monitor progress, and how to identify whether the project is successful.
Although it isn’t a part of the Discovery process, an additional Toolkit is provided within the Discovery materials which may be useful at this stage in the process. It contains a host of useful information on how you can continue to maintain a strong and effective team that delivers your project objectives. It focuses mainly on recruiting and managing volunteers, but also covers areas such as team building, good governance, and how to have effective meetings.
Intererested? Find out the dates of next taster day or facilitator training
Want to host the two-day facilitator training in your area? Email discovery@tearfund.org or phone 0845 521 0021.
Want to know what impact the process has had on others? Watch a film showing the experience of two churches