Working With Our Neighbors 
for Flourishing Places

Flourishing places don't just happen. They require neighbors and institutions that are committed to the work of helping that place to flourish. Churches can play a vital role in this process. In this issue, we share several stories about working toward healthy and flourishing places that recently caught our eye.
 

Cultivating Communities works alongside cohorts of churches that are in close-proximity to each other, providing resources and helping them discern what it might look like for their congregations and their places to flourish. Our first three cohorts (one in the mountains of East Tennessee, one on the west side of Chicago, and one that just started in Indianapolis) are now underway.

(Learn more about our cohorts and 
the Cultivating Communities Learning Journey)

Four strategies to make your neighborhood safer Here are four evidence-based strategies you can use to take power and transform your neighborhood. While these strategies may not lead to immediate changes, they shift the underlying social, economic and environmental characteristics of your neighborhood to make it truly safer in the long run. ( via The Conversation )

Catholics plant hundreds of trees to combat extreme heat in D.C. The roughly 80 trees taking root at St. Thomas More Academy are the result of a collaboration among several D.C.-area organizations. Together, the groups have planted tens of thousands of trees as they’ve embarked on a mission to increase the district’s tree cover at a time when development poses a continuing threat to existing green spaces. (via Sojourners)  

Indianapolis-area readers... The Englewood Review of Books will be hosting a conversation with Sara Billups on Monday evening, July 3. The author of the new book Orphaned Believers: How a Generation of Christian Exiles Can Find the Way Home, Billups offers a hopeful way forward for those who have become disillusioned with Evangelicalism (Read a review of Orphaned Believers)  While in the Midwest, Billups will also be doing events in Cincinnati and Champaigne, Illinois (Learn more about these events)