Over the past few years, we have been exploring these questions with faith communities and many community partners:

• What are we called to be in this moment as stewards of material and relational assets, including land, buildings, neighborhood connections and faith traditions?

• How can local faith communities embody reflective, relational, and impactful intentional discernment processes, community engagement, and organizing strategies rooted in their mission?

• What do we need to pay particular attention to in the midst of the economic, social, political, and spiritual moment we are in?

These collaborations have led us to supporting faith communities to practice discernment about faithful and equitable stewardship of buildings, parking lots, parsonages, land, and other assets.

History of the Faith Land Initiative

FLI utilizes an ever-evolving curriculum built on the faith-rooted organizing spiral of listen > learn > act > celebrate for deep discernment. Anti-racist values undergird and inform the process to help faith communities move toward acts of dignity restoration and community-based stewardship of land. FLI organizers engage with each faith community’s traditions and specific context, facilitating faith-rooted organizing practices, and anti-racist values to:

• Design and practice a contextual discernment process that centers deep listening, learning, and collaborative and effective decision making.

• Cultivate deeper relationships and engagement with neighborhood stakeholders, leading to more vital and active communities of faith.

• Facilitate a network of faith communities and community leaders building collective power around faithful stewardship of land.

The Church Council’s intentional shift toward community organizing in 2016 has grown deeper and more powerful in the years since. The heart of our shelter and housing programs of decades past continued onward through our advocacy work, and many faith communities who provided meal programs and shelters joined us. Through a partnership with Seattle University, we hosted 1:1 conversations with faith communities across Seattle to assess the impact of those services and listen for what they identified was missing. This culminated in a housing symposium at Seattle U. A consistent theme emerged: sustainable, transformational change meant reimagining the stewarding of faith-owned land and assets. Those faith communities asked if the Church Council might set the groundwork for their discernment. From these conversations emerged our Faith Land Initiative.

FLI was born to bridge two distinct worlds: predominately and historically white congregations who were experiencing decline in their physical facilities, membership, and finances, who were asset-rich but often lacked visions for their future; and communities of color which had tremendous vision but often lacked access to capital, space, and assets to bring their plans to fruition. These communities knew their land could be developed to curb displacement if they had the resources. The FLI pilot program was launched in 2020 to transform peoples’ relationships to each other, with the wider community, and to the land; to bridge disparate communities such that radical acts of dignity restoration and community stewardship of land could happen all over the Puget Sound region.  

The Church Council of Greater Seattle envisions a future when justice is realized, where all people experience liberation, profound peace, expansive equity, and joy-filled human flourishing. We live into this vision when faith communities move toward acts of dignity restoration and community-based stewardship of land.