Section 1. Overview: Some Spiritual Assets for Community Building

This and other sections in the Tool Box chapter on Spirituality and Community Building (Chapter 28) have been written with the support and contributions of experts connected with the Charter for Compassion. For more information about the Charter and its work, visit www.charterforcompassion.org.

Spiritual qualities, such as compassion and justice, are often directly connected with the work of community building. In this chapter, we examine these qualities, or assets, and consider how they may support effective, ethical, and caring community work.

In this chapter, “spirituality” refers broadly to qualities and values that can inspire people to act with care, justice, integrity, and concern for others. These qualities may be rooted in religious or spiritual traditions, secular ethics, cultural values, personal convictions, or other sources of meaning.

We begin by providing some general rationale and background:

Rationale. As many users know, a main goal of the Community Tool Box is to help people become more effective in community work, leading to stronger programs, more equitable conditions, and better outcomes for communities.

To do so, most sections in the Tool Box deal with practical skills or techniques, with guidance for specific action steps that people can take in community building. Examples are found throughout our Table of Contents – assessing needs, forming plans, training volunteers, evaluating results, and many others.

Those skills – those actions and tasks – are essential. Building strong communities, programs, organizations, or policy changes requires practical knowledge and effective action.

Yet effectiveness in community work involves more than skill alone. Technical knowledge is important, but how people use that knowledge also matters.

The role of personal qualities.

Community action requires not only skills, but people applying those skills in relationships with others. Effectiveness may also be influenced by qualities such as empathy, integrity, reliability, courage, patience, humility, generosity, and willingness to listen.

These qualities may be expressed through enthusiasm, a supportive comment, persistence after a setback, the willingness to acknowledge a mistake, thoughtful care for another person, or the courage to challenge an injustice.

These are somewhat different from technical skills such as writing a funding proposal or conducting an evaluation. They describe the values and qualities people bring to those activities and relationships.

In this chapter, we refer to a number of these qualities as spiritual assets. Readers may prefer to describe them as values, virtues, ethical qualities, character strengths, or by another term. The specific label is less important than understanding how these qualities can influence community relationships and action.

Spiritual qualities and assets. In this chapter, our aim is to explore a set of qualities that can contribute to thoughtful and effective community building.

“Spiritual assets” refers here to qualities and values that can guide people toward care, justice, integrity, connection, and concern for the well-being of others. They can be expressed through what we say, how we treat people, the decisions we make, and the policies and practices we support.

There are many such assets, but in this chapter we focus on several that can be especially relevant to community building:

• Practicing Generosity and Mutual Support
• Being Compassionate
• Forgiveness, Accountability, and Reconciliation
• Appreciation and Gratitude
• Spreading Hope
• Sharing Hospitality
• Practicing Humility
• Advocating for Justice
• Patience: Enduring Trials
• Practicing Respect, Tolerance, and Acceptance

Separate Tool Box sections following this overview consider each of these qualities in more detail.

Plan for this Overview section. Our plan and format are similar to those of other Community Tool Box sections:

• First, to clarify what we mean by spiritual assets.
• Then to describe why these qualities may matter in community building and how they can be applied.
• To identify situations in which they may be especially useful.
• To consider areas of community life in which spiritual assets may be especially relevant, together with examples of application.
• To suggest ways these qualities might be developed and supported.
• To discuss challenges, limitations, ethical questions, and boundaries that may arise when applying spiritual assets in practice.

Finally, we introduce the remaining sections in the chapter, each of which considers a particular spiritual asset and how it might be applied in community-building work.

What Is Meant by “Spiritual”?

Qualities such as compassion, gratitude, humility, justice, generosity, and forgiveness appear in many cultures, ethical traditions, religious traditions, and philosophies. They are not limited to a particular religion, denomination, community, or belief in a higher power.

In this chapter, spirituality refers broadly to values and qualities that can deepen people's sense of meaning, responsibility, connection, and concern for others. For some people, those qualities may be connected with faith or religious practice. For others, they may be grounded in secular ethics, culture, family, philosophy, human rights, or personal conviction.

Our intent is not to promote a particular spiritual or religious tradition. Rather, it is to explore how qualities such as compassion, justice, gratitude, humility, patience, and hospitality may support community building. Readers are welcome to understand or name these qualities through the traditions and values most meaningful to them.

How Can Spiritual Assets Facilitate Community Building?

Certain personal qualities – what we call spiritual assets in this chapter – can support effective community building when they are combined with practical skills, appropriate structures, accountability, and attention to community conditions.

Why might this be so?

Community work depends heavily on relationships. People who listen carefully, respond to others' concerns, recognize injustice, communicate respectfully, follow through on commitments, and remain open to learning may be better able to build trust and work constructively with others.

Conversely, indifference to other people's experiences, repeated disrespect, prejudice, unwillingness to listen, or disregard for people's rights can undermine relationships and make collective work more difficult.

These effects are not automatic. Compassion alone will not fix an unjust policy, and goodwill cannot substitute for adequate funding, accessibility, effective planning, or institutional accountability. Spiritual assets are most useful when expressed through concrete action and supported by fair community practices.

Here are two illustrations:

Appreciation and Gratitude. Small expressions of appreciation can strengthen relationships. Greeting a neighbor, thanking someone for their contribution, recognizing a volunteer, or congratulating someone on an accomplishment can communicate that the person is noticed and valued.

These gestures should remain responsive to people's preferences and boundaries. Not everyone wants conversation or interaction in every setting, and respect includes recognizing when another person prefers privacy.

Over time, repeated expressions of appreciation may contribute to a community climate in which people feel more comfortable recognizing one another's contributions.

Respect, Tolerance, and Acceptance. These values can also be expressed at the organizational or community level.

For example, a community's vision or mission might include statements such as:

“We welcome people of different backgrounds, identities, beliefs, and experiences.”

“We will be known as a community where people are treated with dignity and respect.”

“We work to ensure that everyone has meaningful opportunities to participate in community life.”

Statements like these matter most when they are supported by policies, resources, leadership, and daily practice.

Community values can be reflected in hiring practices, accessibility, language access, public participation, staff training, services, complaint procedures, budgeting, and the ways institutions respond when discrimination occurs.

Spiritual or ethical values may also influence others through example. A person who consistently listens respectfully may encourage similar behavior from colleagues. An organization that responds fairly to conflict may establish expectations that carry into future interactions.

These effects may be gradual and are not guaranteed. The important point is that values become more meaningful when they are consistently expressed through behavior and institutional practice.

Are these examples of spiritual assets? We believe they can be. Others may prefer to call them values, virtues, ethical commitments, or character qualities.

The key issue is not the label. It is whether these qualities support relationships, fairness, dignity, and effective community action.

What Conditions Are Most Favorable for the Expression of Spiritual Assets?

Qualities such as compassion, justice, gratitude, and humility can be useful in many situations. They may be especially important when:

• A disaster or serious community event has occurred, such as a disease outbreak, fire, severe weather event, environmental emergency, violence, or another event causing widespread harm.
• A clear injustice has occurred, such as discrimination, a hate crime, exclusion, or another violation of rights.
• Community members are discouraged, distrustful, exhausted, or uncertain that meaningful change is possible.
• Values-based leadership is weak, inconsistent, or unclear and people need leaders willing to act with integrity, compassion, accountability, and concern for the broader community.
• Groups are experiencing conflict and need ways to combine honest disagreement with respect and constructive action.
• Community institutions need to rebuild trust after broken commitments or harmful practices.

Perhaps, on reflection, you can add other conditions to this list.

How Spiritual Assets Can Be Used

The qualities discussed in this chapter can be expressed at multiple levels – among individuals and families, within organizations, and across neighborhoods and communities.

Compassion is one example. A compassionate response may begin with one person listening or offering assistance. At an organizational level, the same value might be expressed through accessible services, flexible policies during emergencies, fair treatment, or support for staff and community members facing hardship.

Individual and institutional expressions can reinforce one another, but neither should substitute for the other.

 

In our discussion, we give separate attention to spiritual expression on individual and family levels and on organizational and community levels.

On an individual and family level. Daily life provides many opportunities to express values such as compassion, humility, generosity, gratitude, justice, and hospitality.

Earlier we offered examples relating to appreciation, respect, acceptance, and compassion. A few others might be:

• Advocating for justice. Speaking up or taking appropriate action when someone's rights are being violated or when a policy or practice is unfair.
• Practicing humility. Recognizing what you do not know, sharing credit, listening to community expertise, and remaining open to correction.
• Sharing hospitality. Offering welcome, information, food, practical assistance, or other support in ways that respect people's privacy, preferences, safety, and boundaries.

Forgiveness provides another example, but it requires particular care.

In everyday life, forgiveness may involve relatively minor harms – an insensitive comment, a missed commitment, a misunderstanding, or damage that has been acknowledged and repaired.

Forgiveness may help some people move forward, but it should not be required or treated as the only healthy response to harm.

When forgiveness is freely chosen and circumstances are appropriate:

• A relationship may be repaired or strengthened.
• The person responsible for harm may have an opportunity to acknowledge what happened, make amends, and change future behavior.
• The person harmed may experience relief or closure, although people's responses vary.
• The interaction may provide an example of accountability, repair, and reconciliation for others.

Forgiveness does not require forgetting what happened, excusing harmful behavior, restoring a relationship, or remaining in an unsafe situation. Serious or repeated harm may require boundaries, formal accountability, legal action, professional support, or separation rather than reconciliation.

Similar considerations apply to other spiritual qualities. Their value depends partly on how they are expressed and whether they respect people's rights, safety, autonomy, and circumstances.

On an organizational and community level. Spiritual and ethical values can also be expressed through organizational structures and practices.

Examples include:

• Vision statements. A community organization or public institution can communicate the kind of community it hopes to create. For example, “Health for All” may communicate commitments to equity and fairness.
• Mission statements. Mission statements can communicate commitments such as inclusion, compassion, justice, service, or mutual responsibility.
• Value statements. Organizations can identify the values they consider important and explain how those values should appear in everyday practice.
• Planning documents. Strategic plans, goals, and objectives can connect values with measurable action.
• Policies and procedures. Values such as fairness and respect can be reflected in employment, services, accessibility, decision-making, complaint procedures, and accountability.
• Staff orientation and development.
• Daily program operations.
• Public communication and visual materials.
• Evaluation. Organizations can examine whether their practices reflect their stated values. For example, an organization committed to justice might monitor disparities in access, participation, health, education, or other outcomes relevant to its mission.

Expression in different community sectors and settings. Spiritual assets can be relevant in government, education, health care, workplaces, human services, the justice system, the arts, media, faith communities, nonprofit organizations, and other community settings.

Some Examples of Spiritual Assets in Practice

For each spiritual asset described in this chapter, there are many possible applications in daily community life. The following examples illustrate some possibilities while also raising questions about consent, boundaries, effectiveness, and appropriate use.

Hospitality. A neighborhood group develops a voluntary welcome program for new residents. Participants may deliver a welcome packet, provide information about community resources, invite residents to public events, or offer a small gift when appropriate.

Rather than arriving unannounced or expecting interaction, the program respects privacy and allows new residents to decide whether and how they want to engage.

* Is this form of hospitality valuable for community building? What kinds of welcome feel supportive rather than intrusive? How can communities make sure new residents have information and opportunities without pressuring them to participate?

Gratitude. A community-building program includes opportunities for participants to express appreciation for people who have helped them or contributed to the community.

This might include thank-you messages, recognition at a meeting, gratitude journals, appreciation boards, or informal expressions of thanks.

Participation should be voluntary. People should not be pressured to publicly disclose personal relationships or emotions.

* What are useful ways to encourage gratitude without making it feel required or performative? How can organizations recognize people whose work is important but less visible?

Generosity and Mutual Support. Community members contribute food, money, transportation, time, or other resources to neighbors experiencing a need. Mutual-aid networks may allow people both to offer and receive support depending on their circumstances.

* How can generosity address an immediate need while respecting the recipient's dignity and preferences? When should charitable assistance be paired with efforts to change the policies or conditions creating the need?

Justice. In an appropriate case, a school or community program uses a restorative process after harm has occurred. The person harmed and the person responsible participate voluntarily, with trained facilitation and appropriate safeguards, to discuss what happened, its impact, accountability, and possible repair.

Restorative approaches are not appropriate in every situation and should not be used to pressure people who have experienced harm into direct contact, forgiveness, or reconciliation. Safety, consent, legal requirements, power differences, and the seriousness of the harm should all be considered.

* When can restorative approaches support accountability and repair? When might another response be more appropriate? What protections are necessary to ensure that participation is genuinely voluntary and safe?

Compassion. An organization provides staff or community members with opportunities to strengthen skills such as listening, perspective-taking, responding to distress, recognizing bias, and connecting people with appropriate support.

Compassion training may draw on secular methods, religious or spiritual traditions, psychology, reflective practice, or other approaches. Participation should respect people's beliefs and should not require a particular spiritual practice.

Compassion also involves action. Understanding another person's hardship should lead, when appropriate, to practical support, more responsive services, advocacy, or changes in policies and conditions.

* Can compassion be strengthened through learning and practice? What kinds of training are appropriate in a diverse organization? How can compassion be combined with professional boundaries, accountability, and action?

The questions following these examples do not necessarily have simple answers. They illustrate why spiritual qualities should be applied thoughtfully rather than assumed to be beneficial in every form or situation.

Spiritual or values-based action may be valuable at both individual and community levels. At the same time, good intentions do not guarantee good results. Actions can have unintended effects, and community builders should evaluate whether their approaches are respectful, effective, equitable, and appropriate to the context.

Developing Spiritual Assets

People differ in how they express qualities such as compassion, patience, gratitude, humility, justice, and generosity. Those expressions may be shaped by family, culture, experience, belief, community norms, organizational practices, and other influences.

These qualities can also be supported and strengthened through reflection, practice, relationships, and organizational conditions.

How might this be accomplished?

Awareness. Stories, examples, discussion, reflection, and education can help people recognize how spiritual or ethical qualities appear in everyday community life.

Encouragement. Leaders, colleagues, peers, and institutions can encourage behavior consistent with values such as respect, compassion, gratitude, fairness, and service.

Guidelines. Organizations can describe what particular values mean in practice. For example, a commitment to respect may involve listening without interruption, using people's names correctly, providing accessibility, and responding to harassment.

Models. People can learn by observing leaders, colleagues, community members, and institutions that demonstrate the values they promote.

Supportive systems. Values are easier to sustain when organizational structures reinforce them. Recognition, fair policies, adequate staffing, supervision, time for reflection, and accountability can all matter.

Practice and training. People can practice skills connected with spiritual assets, such as active listening, conflict resolution, restorative practices, advocacy, gratitude, ethical decision-making, and compassionate communication.

Training should be voluntary where spiritual or religious practices are involved and should be adaptable to participants with different beliefs and backgrounds.

Some Challenges and Issues in Applying Spiritual Assets

We value the qualities discussed in this chapter and see many opportunities for their use in community building. At the same time, applying them is not always simple.

What challenges, limits, and ethical questions should community builders consider?

1. Desire and readiness. People cannot always be required to feel forgiving, hopeful, grateful, or compassionate.

Emotional responses vary, particularly after conflict, injustice, grief, discrimination, or trauma. Community programs can encourage values and provide opportunities for reflection, but they should avoid pressuring people to display particular emotions.

2. Converting values into action. A person may value compassion or justice yet remain unsure about what to do.

Barriers may include fear, lack of information, uncertainty about responsibilities, limited authority, concern about consequences, or lack of resources.

Clear action steps, supportive relationships, training, organizational backing, and accessible reporting or advocacy processes can help translate values into action.

3. Building consistent practices. Values become meaningful when they are expressed repeatedly rather than only during special events or crises.

Organizations can reinforce consistency through policies, supervision, leadership, routines, evaluation, and accountability.

4. Time and effort. Acting with care, patience, humility, or justice can require time and energy.

Community members and staff may also have family responsibilities, employment, health needs, financial pressures, caregiving, and other obligations. Values-based community work should not depend on endless unpaid labor or personal sacrifice.

5. Exhaustion and boundaries. People who continually respond to community needs, discrimination, crises, or conflict may become physically or emotionally exhausted.

Compassion does not require being available to everyone at all times. Rest, boundaries, shared responsibility, adequate staffing, professional support, and organizational resources can help make caring work more sustainable.

Forgiveness also does not require remaining exposed to repeated harmful behavior.

6. Emotional overload and disengagement. Constant exposure to suffering, injustice, crisis, or distress can make it difficult to remain emotionally engaged.

People may need periods of rest, peer support, supervision, reflection, or professional support. Organizations should avoid relying entirely on individual resilience when workloads or community conditions themselves need to change.

7. Competing responsibilities. People have obligations to family, friends, work, health, and other communities. No one can respond to every need.

Prioritizing does not necessarily mean a person lacks compassion. Sustainable community work requires realistic decisions about capacity, urgency, responsibility, and available resources.

8. Ethical issues. Spiritual or ethical values can sometimes point in different directions.

Compassion may need to be balanced with accountability. Hospitality may need to be balanced with privacy and safety. Patience may be useful in some situations but harmful when urgent action is needed. Forgiveness may be personally meaningful for some people but should never replace accountability or be demanded from someone who has experienced harm.

Questions to consider include:

• Is participation voluntary?
• Are people's safety, dignity, autonomy, and rights protected?
• Are there significant power differences?
• Could the action unintentionally excuse harmful behavior?
• Does the response address the underlying problem as well as the immediate situation?
• Are community members being asked to give more time, emotional labor, or resources than is reasonable?
• Who is responsible for making the situation right?

Ethical questions do not always have simple answers. They are one reason community builders should combine values with careful judgment, community participation, professional standards, and attention to context.

9. Special challenges for organizations and communities: Establishing appropriate structures.

Organizations and communities face an additional challenge: sustaining values when staff, leadership, funding, priorities, and political conditions change.

Values such as justice, inclusion, compassion, and respect are more likely to last when they are supported by clear structures rather than depending on a single leader.

These structures might include a human-rights commission, ethics or equity committee, community advisory group, restorative-practices team, peace and justice coalition, or another appropriate body.

Values can also be reflected in policies prohibiting discrimination and harassment, accessibility standards, language-access procedures, staff orientation, professional development, community-participation requirements, complaint processes, public reporting, and regular evaluation.

Whatever structures are used, they should be clear, transparent, adequately resourced, and supported across changes in leadership.

When values become part of an organization's normal policies, expectations, budgets, and accountability processes, they are more likely to continue over time.

* * *

The challenges discussed here are part of both community life and personal development. Qualities such as compassion, justice, gratitude, patience, humility, and generosity require continued reflection and practice.

No individual can express every value perfectly in every situation, and no organization becomes permanently compassionate or just simply by adopting a mission statement.

Communities can, however, create conditions that make ethical and caring action more likely: strong relationships, fair policies, accessible participation, adequate resources, accountable leadership, opportunities for reflection, and systems that respond when harm occurs.

The other sections in this chapter are designed to support further exploration of individual spiritual assets. As you read them, we hope the guidance helps you consider both their possibilities and their limits in practical community work.

In the meantime, as always, we wish you every success in bringing the values most meaningful to you into the important work of community building.

Contributor
Bill Berkowitz

Editor
Stephen B. Fawcett