The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

by Charles H. Vogl

For a rapidly expanding community, it’s critical that prospective members are welcome to participate in community behavior before adopting common values. Visitors can have general interest or prefer to experience something before commitment. This is an idea that many religious and spiritual communities misunderstand. Few want to join a community where they must adopt an overwhelming number of life-changing values before they can participate at any level.

level. I had to determine what our group’s core values were: What would allow us to create a safe space for the members we sought out? It was important that members valued contemplative prayer, broadly defined, and thought it could enrich their lives. It was also important that members valued sharing and listening to each other’s thoughts about their experience of God.

The critical lesson here is that prospective members must have a way to behave like the current community members (participate) before we require them to believe in and value the same things we do (no matter how trivial or significant).

While everyone had good intentions, inviting an outsider who had neither the technical knowledge nor the musical interest for this special time changed the space and eroded the intimacy of the community time.

To ensure that the community is welcoming to new members, there must be a clear route across the boundary for outsiders with shared values who want to join the community.

these communities have a clear boundary where they know who’s in and who’s not.

By maintaining outer ring and inner ring differences, visitors can feel confident that they’re in fact visiting without unintentionally becoming a member.

If authority swings away from value-based inclusion in either direction, at least two things can destroy a community: First, members will begin to doubt the community’s true values, and their participation and membership will waver. Second, members will reject the authority’s values and then the authority.

This concept is important to understand because growing communities need to give newcomers access to gatekeepers. If there aren’t gatekeepers, it’ll become unclear how newcomers are evaluated, even if the evaluation is casual.

When we feel trapped by a crisis of belonging or notice that others are in this crisis, the solution is simple: extend invitations. Invitations resolve the crisis of belonging and as a solution they are so simple as to be almost unbelievable. The invitations can be to social gatherings, insider events, or one-on-one time. When we as leaders extend invitations, two things happen that break down a crisis of belonging.

The story reminds me that I never fully know the power of my invitations, even those that don’t get responses. I simply make them because they can, and do, change lives.

Silence together can be the most powerful time.

us. If neither of those things is true, then you can state that you’re beginning a new tradition. You can always say what person, philosophy, or experience inspired the activity at hand.

It doesn’t matter if the allotted time for the ritual is fifteen minutes, two hours, or a week. The explanation orients participants who may be unfamiliar, confused, or even frightened. They

I like to make sure that everyone is invited to do something. This is in contrast to pressuring someone to participate.

If you’re stuck keeping your traditions exactly the same, then know that you’re likely maintaining something that will grow less meaningful and appropriate for a community that won’t remain exactly the same.

In the end, good leadership will realize that the ultimate responsibility cannot be dispersed to the larger community. This is one of many leadership moments that requires a brief consultation with an inner compass. A decision to create the future instead of simply towing the past must be made.

The environment in which an event occurs affects the tenor of the ritual and the emotions of the participants.

Below is a list to help you think of ways to create temporary sacred spaces.

Visiting CrossFitters, on the other hand, feel welcome when they find all this no matter how far they are from home. They get to visit the intimate special place (minor temple) of distant members in the same greater community.

But there must be a single origin story about how the founders were inspired to form the community. The story must include how they learned something new, did something new, and then invited others to join them.

Origin stories are often considered true if they share factual, emotional, or ideological truth. They are strongest if all three are represented.

There must also be stories about how the community’s values are expressed and how they affect real people. These stories will tell everyone far more about the community identity than everything else combined.

As Brené Brown now famously discusses in her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, vulnerability is when we share something we fear may cause others to reject us.

These stories are so important that if they’re not shared, and the vulnerability and intimacy is never built, there will almost certainly be a superficial feeling of connection among members and with leadership.

Members need opportunities to share their own stories, whether in formal or informal venues (or both). This helps them feel that they’re seen and understood.

Symbols are powerful tools in building community because they quickly remind us of our values, identity, and commitment in a community. Using symbols is a way to make communities stronger.

The Sikh crossed swords refer to a turn away from pacifism to defense of the vulnerable.

In fact, community symbols work best when they’re not too literal. Literal symbols leave less interpretive room to represent numerous and evolving ideas.

People love tokens. They often have powerful meaning when leaders or peers present them in rituals.

They obviously have little or no exchange value. But they mean a lot to the recipients because they’re given with intention and meaning. They represent appreciation and respect.

The journey from the periphery into the inner rings can be described in this way:1

It’s not important that each member pursue inner rings. Not all members in our dinner series aspired to be a dinner leader. It’s perfectly fine for a member to find a preferred level and remain there.

The journey may be difficult, whether naturally or by design. This difficulty is what keeps the inner rings exclusive. But the path must be both known and available for those who are willing to commit and learn.

As long as each ring’s values are honored, members should be allowed to progress at their own pace. If all members are forced to progress at the exact same pace, then time is honored more than maturation.

You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left.

The diaconate has informal or formal authority in three key areas:

Problems arise if there’s no diaconate. Some communities pride themselves in giving all members, even visitors perhaps, an equal voice. Part of the idea is to ensure that no one can be left out or drowned out. It’s certainly true that good ideas and maturation can come from the least appreciated member.

At some point, ideas aren’t all equally valuable.

Without a diaconate, it’s impossible for the larger community to rightfully tell outsiders that these radicals don’t reflect the core community.

Alfred Adler, postulated that “the only individuals who can really meet and master the problems of life . . . are those who show in their striving a tendency to enrich everyone else.”7 It’s not just that many of us want to contribute. Contributing actually helps make us healthy and feel better.

Communities offer external and internal growth.

Communities provide the time and space for that internal growth to happen among friends. Strong communities teach esoteric knowledge.

For example, I know of a professional women’s business group that shares salary information with other members so they can all understand how women are paid in their field. This is meant to help rising professional women negotiate appropriate pay when the time comes.

The vision must be clearly shared by the managers in some way. Make sure your members and visitors know why you created or manage your community.

Along with the vision, members must know how the group supports and leads their growth

Once inside, a good manager will make the community a safe space by offering supportive words and useful advice right away.

The members’ shared stories show how much that community values the most elite performers and the most novice. Remember, the stories you tell and the people you celebrate in them will reveal far more about who your community is than anything else.

If you’re interested, you may want to look into Elinor Ostrom’s work. She’s a Nobel Prize–winning economist who has identified eight features necessary to maintain a stable community property resource.1 This wisdom applies to many of the communities you’ll grow. While Ostrom’s work overlaps with ideas I have already shared, it focuses more on long-term community management than on creating belonging and is worth exploring further for additional applications.

Getting more benefits than others must be earned, or the group will collapse.