Day 4: What The Hell Is A Field-Builder?

Sanderson Jones
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

This is the fourth day of my experiment of working in public. It feels good to get this stuff out there, and think I’m finding the balance between quality and speed.

Yesterday, ended on a cliff hanger about the role I want to play in spreading and developing Lifefulness — the practice of building secular and inclusive congregational communities.

There’s an FB group on Lifefulness here, if it sounds like your bag then sign up. Onwards!

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Have you ever seen the Jackie Chan movie Who Am I? Well, don’t, it is awful. My only memories of the movie are that JC’s character has amnesia, and that he spends a lot of time standing on top of buildings shouting: Who am I?

The reason I bring this up is that quite a lot of my life is spent explaining my work and asking myself: Who am I?

See, when someone asks me ‘What do you do?’ it generally leads to my whole life story, several digressions on secular congregations, a pitstop on my life as a comic and I would just love something simple so I could save time at parties.

My official role at Sunday Assembly is that I’m the Co-Founder and Creative Director (oooh, fancy). My work involves:

  • Supporting the Community Organisers in Manchester and East End
  • Chipping in with the Action Team Leaders in London
  • Writing a book proposal
  • Hosting Sunday Assembly London
  • Speaking at schools
  • Working with the board
  • Taking a show to the Edinburgh Fringe
  • Talking at conferences,
  • Running workshops in businesses
  • And other stuff.

It seems like a weird portfolio of work that I know makes sense, but might not seem that way to the outside world.

This all changed when earlier this year I read a post by the excellent Cassie Robinson. about Building the Field:

“Growing the field of an area of practice, or intent around an issue…. it recognises that you need to be intentional about partnerships and cooperation, that you need multiple ways of influencing change at any one time, and over a long period of time, and that this needs different people and organisations across sectors and disciplines to work together.”

The idea of building a field (this is great article in SSIR about it) chimed with the way I had been seeing my work ever since I was elected an Ashoka Fellow (Ashoka is a brilliant organisation that supports the very best social entrepreneurs (I might be biased)).

One of the first things they teach their fellows is that to great population-wide systems change you should:

Grow your impact, not just your organisation.

Helping an idea take root, getting it to change society, means that you have to work with lots of different players, not just your own squad.

Sunday Assembly is a brilliant organisation, an inspiring movement and an amazing example of secular and inclusive congregational communities but to have the impact that we want we need a field of practice.

The Bridgewater Institute made this very handy list of different types of Field Builders — thanks!

The more I thought of building the field, the more it made sense for this cause: in order to create Lifefulness communities we’ll need to be part of a community.

Today, my role is to support Sunday Assembly to grow and prosper and to build an awesome gang around the idea of Lifefulness.

Who can get involved? Well, just for starters I think we’ll need these types:

  • Practitioners (and Future Practitioners)
  • Researchers and Academics
  • Collaborators and Partners
  • Policy Makers
  • Funders
  • Participants

The first step along this is a little Facebook Group called Lifefulness which, for the time being, will be a place for friendly folk to gather.

Close But No Cigar.

Curiously, understanding the role of the Field Builder doesn’t make it any easier to describe my work to people.

Person: What do you do?

Me: I am a field builder.

Person: Are you a farmer or a professional Sims player?

Intriguingly, there is another job title, commonly used in software, for people who spread an idea, get partners onboard and help practitioners: Evangelist.

Due to the nature of Lifefulness and Sunday Assembly, I think that title is a bit on the nose….

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Day 4 — done.

OK. This is going good. Great to get this stuff out there and to let folk in on my thoughts.

Remember the FB group on Lifefulness should it tickle your f..

Sanderson Jones

Written by

Social entrepreneur, comedian and community builder. Co-founder, Creative Director — Sunday Assembly. Ashoka Fellow. Now designing ‘Lifefulness’.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade