Instructor
Rev. Dr. Allison Coventry
Transforming Communities
Stop guessing what your community needs. Learn how to listen, understand, and respond.
Fircrest Presbyterian 1250 Emerson St, Fircrest, WA 98466Start Date: February 18, 2027
End Date: February 19, 2027
Time: 9AM-4:30PM (PT)
AdvancedDay of Week: Thursday & Friday
Capacity: 12 Seats
Topic: Organizational Development
2 SessionsEarly Bird Non-Member Price: $449.10
Number of CEUs Available: 13
Fircrest Presbyterian 1250 Emerson St, Fircrest, WA 98466 Advanced2 Sessions
Topic: Organizational Development
Start Date: February 18, 2027
End Date: February 19, 2027
Time: 9AM-4:30PM (PT)
Day of Week: Thursday & Friday
Capacity: 12 Seats
Early Bird Non-Member Price: $449.10
Number of CEUs Available: 13
Transforming Communities: Community Engagement Training for Churches
Stop guessing what your community needs. Learn how to listen, understand, and respond.
Your church or organization wants to make a meaningful difference in its community.
But good intentions do not automatically tell you what people need, which ideas will work, or where your organization is uniquely positioned to contribute.
Transforming Communities is an intensive workshop for ministry leaders, coaches, and teams who want a practical process for listening to their communities, understanding their own organizational identity, and developing ministries and initiatives that respond to real needs.
Using ethnographic tools, design thinking, and collaborative practices, you will learn how to move from assumptions to deeper understanding and from good ideas to more contextually grounded action.
Listen Before You Build
It is easy for organizations to begin with solutions.
A new program. A new outreach effort. A new strategy.
Transforming Communities begins somewhere else: with listening.
You will learn practices for paying attention to the people, stories, assets, challenges, and opportunities already present in your community before deciding what should happen next.
The goal is not to import a one-size-fits-all model.
It is to develop the skills to understand your particular context and respond to it more faithfully.
What You Will Explore
Clarify Your Organization’s Identity
Before asking what your community needs from you, get clearer about who you are.
Explore your organization’s strengths, identity, values, and mission so that new initiatives grow from a grounded understanding of what you are uniquely equipped to offer.
Listen More Deeply to Your Community
Learn ethnographic and community-listening practices that help you move beyond assumptions.
Pay attention to the experiences, desires, relationships, and needs of the people who actually live in the community you hope to serve.
Use Design Thinking for Ministry
Turn what you hear into possibilities.
Design thinking provides a practical process for identifying needs, generating ideas, testing approaches, learning from feedback, and adapting as you go.
Rather than waiting until you have the perfect plan, you learn how to listen, experiment, and respond.
Strengthen the Team Doing the Work
Community engagement is rarely the work of one person.
Through collaborative exercises, participants will strengthen communication, shared understanding, and cohesion while developing clearer ways to work together around mission and community needs.
This Workshop Is for You If…
Your church or organization wants to engage its community more meaningfully but is not sure where to begin.
You have programs or ideas, but you are not confident they reflect what people actually need or want.
Your organization is entering a new season, neighborhood, or ministry context.
You are considering revitalization or rethinking existing programs and priorities.
Your team needs greater clarity about its identity, mission, or direction.
Or you want a repeatable process that helps you listen and adapt instead of relying on assumptions.
Pairs and teams are especially encouraged to participate so that the learning can be carried back into your organization together.
What You Can Take Back to Your Organization
You will leave with practical approaches for:
- Listening to your community before designing solutions
- Identifying assets, needs, and opportunities within a local context
- Clarifying organizational identity, strengths, and mission
- Using ethnographic tools to understand people’s lived experiences
- Applying design thinking to ministry and community engagement
- Developing ideas collaboratively
- Testing and adapting initiatives as you learn
- Strengthening alignment within your team
- Creating a repeatable process for future ministry decisions
A Process You Can Use Again
The goal of Transforming Communities is not to give you one program to replicate.
It is to give you a way of working.
Listen carefully. Understand your context. Clarify what you bring. Develop possibilities. Test them. Learn. Adapt.
Those practices can help your organization respond to changing community needs long after the workshop ends.
Enroll in the Class
Instructor
Rev. Dr. Allison Coventry
FAQS ↓
Why should I become a member?
Members get to register for classes early – a full week before they open to the general public! Plus, members receive a 10% discount on all events and classes and access to value-add content in their inboxes throughout the year. To become a member, you can sign up here, or purchase a membership when you buy your class.
What kind of help in payment is available?
We offer discounts of up to 50% to clergy, staff, and lay ministry leaders of our official partners, which includes the Olympia Presbytery, the Northwest Coast Presbytery, and the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia. Partnerships have no financial cost, and are available with (a) regional or national denominations), (b) multi-site churches, or ( c) large nonprofit organizations. If you would like to encourage your organization to become a partner, please email your regional leader to let them know! You can even introduce them to us by cc’ing transforming@theseattleschool.edu, and we’ll put them in touch with the right person for next steps.
Early bird discounts are available during the first week of registration.
Becoming a member costs offers 10% on all classes and events for a full year. Often, just one class is enough to make the membership cost worth it.
If you pastor with a denomination, you may have resources for professional development. Check with your regional supervisor for more information on funds available.
What are the community guidelines?
Please see the full community guidelines on this page. If an instance of community guidelines are violated and cannot be resolved within the class, participants may let us know by emailing us transforming@theseattleschool.edu and we will direct you to The Seattle School’s incident report form.
What happens if my class is cancelled?
If the Center cancels an offering for any reason, all participants will receive a full refund of registration fees.
If a program is rescheduled, participants may choose to transfer their registration to the new date or receive a full refund.
How do I request a refund?
Refunds are available according to the following schedule:
- 60+ days before the program start date: 75% refund
- 30–59 days before the program start date: 50% refund
- Less than 30 days before the program start date: no refund
If you need to cancel your registration, please email transforming@theseattleschool.edu and include your name and the course title.
If the Center cancels a program, all participants will receive a full refund of registration fees. If a program is rescheduled, participants may choose to transfer their registration to the new date or receive a full refund.
How do I contact technical support?
Technology should not be the hardest part of your learning experience. If you encounter errors in the catalog, problems with payment, or difficulty accessing course materials, please let us know. You can find the technical support form here. We try to respond within 48 hours (business days only).