Preliminary Conference Schedule
This is a working version of the conference schedule which is still evolving (mixing scheduled items with a few tentative items). Numbered items are scheduled. Bulleted items are not quite scheduled yet.
- Opening – Bill Snyder: Communities of Practice: Organizing for Renewal – June 27 (see more detail below)
- Robert Putnam reading: Prayer request circles vignette from American Grace – June 29
- Josh Plakoff and Estee Solomon Grey: Isomorphism between Judaism and Communities of Practice – July 5
- Lisa Colton: the Jewish indie minyan “phenomenon” – July 7
- Joe Kutter: Community of Practice initiatives in the American Baptist Church – July 20
- Sr. Maxine and Julie – anunslife.org an online Catholic community – July 21
Not quite scheduled yet:
- Frank Daugherity, “A Christian community ministering to disaster victims in Japan.” Spiritual and religious communities are alive and well in Japan, despite the devastation from the 9.0 earthquake and Tsunami. Frank observes the interactions of several communities during a work mission with http://crashjapan.com/ during the first half of July. CRASH is a group of Japanese Christians that have been doing relief work all over Asia. Frank is an ordained minister and long-time member of CPsquare who lived in Japan for 20 years earlier in his life. How do the several communities show up and how might they evolve in their response to this crisis? Join us for an interview at (TBA).
- Dave Makokwski, “WebEx support for Tibetan New Year in an international Buddhist Sangha.” (TBA)
- A transcription and publication project as community of practice: http://www.unfetteredweb.org/pod/who-and-how
To give a flavor of our conversations, here are a few of the provocative propositions that William M. Snyder, co-author of Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge (Harvard Business School Press, 2002) with Etienne Wenger and Richard McDermott, has offered to kick off our conversations.
The learning church: initial propositions
William M. Snyder wsnyder@socialcapital.com
January 7, 2008
- The superordinate purpose of the church is the ongoing discovery and fulfillment of the Mission of God
- This provides a context for setting expectations and priorities at global, diocese, and congregation levels
- As “the Body of Christ,” the church is built on human faith and relationships as well divine inspiration
- Thus the church, like any community or organization, is affected by personal and social dynamics
- This means attending to issues such as power, conflict, and personalities as well as scripture, sacraments, and spirit
- Many faith communities do not demonstrate capabilities required to engage and energize members to fulfill their mission
- Key capabilities include leadership, community-building, and practice-innovation and -development
- We must dramatically increase our learning capacity to thrive: technical learning for improvement and transformational learning for sustained vitality and influence
- Much to learn about learning from organization experience in other sectors
- There is a growing repertoire of learning-related concepts, methods, and structures to draw on
- A key strategy for learning is cultivating generative relationships—across congregations as well as within them
- Mutually supportive relationships among peer practitioners are key for generating ideas and getting them shared and applied
- “Communities of practice” foster learning, innovation, and collaboration
- The church is a unique organization with distinctive capabilities—and barriers—for transformational learning
- Large-scale, systematic change is not easy for established organizations, particularly ones (such as the Church) with a deeply embedded hierarchical structure and ideological buffers that obscure market forces
- Yet the Church also has distinctive advantages: members’ faith and their communal commitment to embody the love of God provide an openness to the Spirit and a trustworthy foundation to build on
- The Church’s “witness of hope” to the world also inspires internal renewal






