Amoenitas

The Free Dictionary defines System as “a group or combination of interrelated, interdependent, or interacting elements forming a collective entity”.  At the most basic level, all systems operate the same way – they receive inputs, undergo process, and generate outputs.  All living systems do this repeatedly and often selectively, according to rules that assist in maintaining equilibrium or balance.  All of creation operates in systems, from galaxies to households, from our bodies to our power grids, throughout nature and across cultures – systems are ubiquitous.

Since God authored all of creation in the vernacular of living systems, Jesus’ disciples need to be better equipped to observe, translate, understand and improve our efforts to serve in ways that compliment and integrate systems design, which sometimes differs from the common agenda.  Understanding the dynamics of creation through the lens of systems thinking enables believers to better recognize God’s activity in spheres outside our everyday context. Through this improved recognition, we can also better understand, trust and bear witness to His sovereign patterns of activity in the world around us.

Amoenitas is the Latin root word for amenity.  We often think of amenities as pleasant extras, or things that increase comfort or convenience.  In real estate, an amenity is a physical element that benefits a property and thereby increases its value.  In public health and economics, amenities may include any environmental benefit that reduces adverse health effects or increases the economic welfare of a community.  Amoenitas sees all living systems as potential amenities and operates to promote the pleasant sense of place and community that occurs when living systems are interdependent, balanced, healthy and operating in process, on purpose.

Amoenitas works across scale in a variety of sectors, domains, contexts, and communities of practice and applies innovative techniques and technology tools to help organizations in the non-profit sector - frequently those motivated by faith - to identify, analyze and understand key factors about their mission and ministry programs, projects, places and operations that can be optimized, reoriented, or improved to help balance, strengthen, improve and promote healthy sustainable living systems.  Amoenitas’ professional consulting services vary from MEL planning & programming for international development to geospatial analysis for environmental planning, site design and facilities management.

Through our work, Amoenitas seeks to raise awareness and advance understanding about the benefits of balanced sustainable systems; that understanding through a systems lens affords broader perspective through which we can embrace complexity by connecting context and detail with function and structure to guide better decision making, planning, design and evaluation; and that an applied systems approach to improve conditions (rather than “solving problems”) can operate as a framework to bridge shared understanding and benefit across varied disciplines and agendas that intersect faith, science, business, education, environment, industry, government and community.