John McKnight (1)

I read and loved this book, then interviewed the authors together, on my radio show. Here's what I said, introducing the book.
I got a look at this book, and the subtitle is Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. And, it sat on my desk a little bit, and I just looked at it, and I wasn't real excited about it right away, but then I opened it up and I started looking at it, and all of a sudden I got really excited, and I have to tell you, this is a book I'm telling people about. So, I am saying, "You have to read this book," because I think it's an important book that really looks at where we're going, where our culture is, in a very different light that reminds us of who we are, where we've been, and where we're going… (more)

To propose the existence of abundance at a time when so many people are discouraged and overwhelmed might appear to be a hard sell. But that's exactly what John McKnight and Peter Block effectively do and nurture through their wonderful book "The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods" and the Abundant Community website (http://www.abundantcommunity.com) they maintain to support and spread their work--and ours. A heartfelt and encouraging paean to the power of collaboration, the book serves as a positive source of inspiration for rethinking many of our unquestioned assumptions; it also consistently serves as a useful handbook for those of us interested in and committed to building the sort of collaborative coalitions that make a difference locally, regionally, nationally, and globally with surprisingly little effort. McKnight and Block begin the rethinking process by drawing a distinction between what they call "citizen" and "consumer" societies--maintaining that until we reverse the trend away from the citizen to the consumer model, we're going to miss the obvious abundance of resources around us and the opportunities to overcome the challenges that leave so many people feeling incapable of effecting change. The writers are explicit about the problems we create when we fail to acknowledge and build upon the abundance that remains untapped within communities; they are equally explicit about the numerous, simple achievable changes we can make to address these challenges. The abundant community that McKnight and Block want to help us strengthen is built upon several core beliefs that too few of us recognize; drawing upon their lucid and inspiring work takes us one big step on a path to finding solutions to the challenges that we face.… (more)