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What we’re learning together

Frameworks and maps from TNN’s first year, offered as starting points for further learning, correction, and collaboration.

Our first year brought together organizations working in different places, at different scales, and at different points in a congregation’s journey toward neighborhood engagement.

Through retreats, conversations, surveys, and shared exploration, we began developing frameworks and maps to better understand neighborhood thriving, congregational engagement, and the contributions represented across our network.

These are works in progress, offered as starting points for further learning, correction, and collaboration.

FrameworkSeven components of neighborhood thrivingExplore ↓
MapThe congregational engagement journeyExplore ↓
FrameworkWhere organizations work, and howExplore ↓
What’s nextThe emerging Network LibraryExplore ↓

Working draft

Seven components of neighborhood thriving

A neighborhood is not one thing. This emerging framework names seven interconnected components, each with three key attributes. Select a component to explore it.

1Place & Built EnvironmentThe substrate

The physical and ecological stage on which the neighborhood exists: geography, infrastructure, watershed, canopy. Necessary but not sufficient.

Key attributes

Walkable shared infrastructureSidewalks, third places, transit that put people in contact on foot.
Intactness of natural & ecological featuresWatershed condition, canopy, green space, absence of active degradation.
Connectivity over divisionBridging features outweigh dividing ones. The same infrastructure can do either.

2RecognitionKnowing & being known

The texture of being a recognizable person in a recognizable place. The on-ramp to every deeper relational component.

Key attributes

Density of weak tiesHow many neighbors a typical resident can name and be named by.
Distribution across population & geographyWhether recognition is broadly shared or hides exclusion behind a healthy average.
Turnover-resilienceWhether recognition rebuilds as residents move in and out, or collapses.

3Rhythm & RecurrenceThe activator

The cadence of repeated encounter over time: daily routines, weekly rituals, seasonal gatherings, and the more-than-human time of the place itself.

Key attributes

Density & reliability of recurring activityHow often, and how dependably, neighbors are placed in repeated contact.
Distribution across the calendarRhythms spread across seasons and time scales: weekly, monthly, annual.
Inclusion of more-than-human timeSeasonal markers, phenology, the rhythm of the land held in shared awareness.

4Mutual ObligationCare that follows from recognition

What recognition becomes when activated by trust and reciprocity. The fabric of bilateral care that turns acquaintance into shared responsibility.

Key attributes

Reciprocity of careCare that flows in both directions, not only one. Trust lives here.
Trust under stressWhether obligation holds when something tests it. Diagnostic under load.
Distribution of mutual obligationWho is included in care networks, and who is not.

5Common StakesShared concerns & exposures

The conditions and risks residents share simply by living in the same place, whether they chose to or not. Visible most clearly when stress reveals them.

Key attributes

Shared exposure recognized as sharedResidents see the conditions they share as common, not just personal.
Capacity to convert concern into actionShared concern produces shared response, not only shared complaint.
Equitable surfacing of stakesWhose concerns get named publicly, and whose do not.

6Institutional AnchorsThe load-bearing structures

The formal and informal structures that hold material and relational life together across time: schools, congregations, libraries, businesses, mutual aid.

Key attributes

Presence & viabilityAnchor institutions exist and are alive: financially, participatorily.
Distribution across function & populationCoverage spans the range of functions and the range of people served.
Effectiveness, not just presenceInstitutions actually anchor: hosting gatherings, generating activity, rather than existing as shells.

7Story, Memory & IdentityThe temporal layer

The layering of past and future that makes a neighborhood accountable to both. What is honored, what is reckoned with, what is being built toward.

Key attributes

Continuity of narrativeHistory is held and passed on, not lost to turnover or development.
Honesty of narrativeDifficult history is named publicly: redlining, displacement, Indigenous dispossession.
Future-orientation residents shapeArticulated visions for the place’s future, held by the people who live there.

How the seven work together

The components are not independent. Place is the substrate. Recognition is what proximity can produce given rhythm. Mutual obligation is what recognition becomes when activated by trust. Common stakes are conditions residents share whether they recognize each other or not. Institutions hold material and relational life across time. Story makes the whole accountable to past and future.

Conditions that cut across all seven

The more-than-human shows up across place, rhythm, and story rather than as a separate component.
The boundary question (whose “we,” and who are we responsible to?) applies to all seven.
Geography excludes and relationship includes; the asymmetry has to be held with intentionality.
Measurement captures what is currently activated; cultivation works on what is latent.

View the one-page poster · Download

Emerging framework developed through TNN’s 2026 retreat conversations and shared synthesis. Working draft for continued learning and refinement.

Working draft

The congregational engagement journey

Six stages describe how congregations come to engage their neighborhoods, and where organizations like ours offer support. The journey is not a straight line. Congregations may revisit stages, move between them, or experience several at once, and organizations may work across many stages.

1
Awakening
Helping a congregation care about its neighborhood in the first place.
2
Listening
Learning the neighborhood, building relationships, discovering what is already there.
3
First experiments
Small, low-stakes attempts at showing up differently.
4
Building
Sustained programs, partnerships, staffing, and funding.
5
Embedding
When the work starts changing a congregation’s identity, budget, and leadership.
6
Sustaining through change
Leadership transitions, drift, and renewal.

Dashed arcs are illustrative: congregations may circle back to earlier stages at any point. In early member surveys, responses concentrated in the earlier stages. That is a question for peer learning, not proof that later-stage support is absent.

Working framework developed from TNN member surveys. Categories and interpretations remain open to refinement.

Adapted framework

Where organizations work, and how

This proximity-and-place framework locates work by geographic scale and by role. Organizations often work at several scales and in more than one role. We’re sharing the framework unpopulated for now. A blank cell does not mean a capacity is missing, and placing an organization says nothing about its importance or the quality of its relationships.

Proximity and place framework: geographic scale by role in the work. Cells are intentionally left unpopulated.
Geographic scale ↓Role in the work →	Direct Service / Ministry	Coordination / Integration	Funding / Resourcing
National / Multi-region	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped
Regional	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped
City	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped
Neighborhood	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped	Not yet mapped

Framework adapted from Dr. Shawn Duncan / Congruence Consulting, originally prepared for Sugar Hill Church.

Building on what we’ve begun

These frameworks are starting points, not finished answers.

In the next learning season, TNN members will explore the questions they raise, test ideas in their own contexts, and contribute new insights, tools, and stories to a growing Network Library.

The emerging Network Library

A developing collection to help members find one another, share what they know, and pursue work together. We’re building it step by step, testing what members actually use before adding more.

Organizational profiles
Individual member profiles
Expertise, skills, and resources members can share
Areas where members need support
Connections and opportunities for collaboration
Shared frameworks, tools, and learning resources
New contributions from the Learning Tables

The library is for TNN members and is still in development.

What we’re learning together

How the seven work together

Conditions that cut across all seven

Awakening

Listening

First experiments

Building

Embedding

Sustaining through change

Building on what we’ve begun

The emerging Network Library