The Art of Community Quotes

“The strongest communities also teach their members how to improve internal health, including emotional and mental growth that cannot be learned from books or videos.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“Mature and strong communities give members opportunities to learn how to succeed in some way. That is, they help members grow in a way they would like to grow. The community supports growth and may explicitly lead this growth. This growth can be toward managing life as a whole or in some specific skill set or area of life.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“A group may share interests and values, but a community has connections so that members care for the welfare of one another. Second, you’re simply not recognizing the membership identity. Consider why someone would seek you out and what that person hopes to gain as a member. Consider what that person expects of members and leadership, both formal and informal.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“A community’s values evolve as times and people change. Your community almost certainly values something more than outsiders do. It’s not important that on the first day you can recognize and name the ultimate values for your community. In fact, it may take some time to understand what things you value more than others. Moreover, as time passes and culture changes, it’s imperative that the community values also change. This is how you stay relevant in a dynamic world. For example, it was not long ago that many American communities (like churches) valued racial segregation. While this is still a value in some places, a lot has changed since the 1950s.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“I was attracted to that community because we valued telling important stories that would bring a measure of justice and healing to the world. We valued spending our time and money to tell stories that might never provide a positive return on the financial investments we made. We all valued making a difference in the world far more than our own comfort. To this day, I am proud to be a social change documentary filmmaker. Understanding the shared values that attract and keep members in a community is important for leaders. For continued success, leaders must both clearly share and personally represent the values so others can recognize what they want to join.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“Shared values Membership identity Moral proscriptions Insider understanding”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“If you fear failure because your community is coming to an end, please know that ending doesn’t necessarily mean failure. You may have simply created what was needed at the time, and now you get to start the next commitment.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“It’s okay for a community to end. This can happen for any number of reasons: people move away, the goal is accomplished, interest has shifted away, other priorities arise, you can’t serve members anymore. When a community ends, the relationships can continue. If we consider that the community’s real purpose is to enrich members in some way, then it’s okay if at some point a community stops gathering. You may not keep your temple, or enact your rituals, or use your symbols. With luck, you’ll still have the relationships that were formed in your community, and this alone can be considered a success.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“There’s also a more powerful kind of insider knowledge that indicates belonging. I call it “perception.” Perception comes when members learn either from explicit teaching or from experience that certain things are not as they appear to outsiders. Access to this esoteric perception is one of the jewels of membership (formal or informal).”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“Communities offer external and internal growth. Almost all communities teach members some external skills.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“The second goal is to contribute to someone or something. Even in the early stage of psychology, one of the founding minds of the field, 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.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“The first goal is to belong, to be welcomed somewhere and to connect with others.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“Many leaders confuse self-selection (no invitation necessary) with “everyone belongs.” If someone in the history of the world can or will be excluded from your community, then there’s some difference between potential insiders and all outsiders. No matter how small the difference or how wide the welcome, the distinction (shared value) is important to identify so that future members can recognize it and understand that they belong inside. If you think of very strong communities, the kind that stand together even when facing death, the kind that spend their last resources to rescue a member in trouble or to travel great distances to support someone in need, whether monasteries, militaries, or families, these communities have a clear boundary where they know who’s in and who’s not.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“Boundary: The line between members and outsiders. 2.   Initiation: The activities that mark a new member. 3.   Rituals: The things we do that have meaning. 4.   Temple: A place set aside to find our community. 5.   Stories: What we share that allows others and ourselves to know our values. 6.   Symbols: The things that represent ideas that are important to us. 7.   Inner Rings: A path to growth as we participate.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“What and whom do we protect? What is intolerable? What do we share? With whom do we share? Whom do we respect? How do we show respect? When you think of communities that have fallen apart or eroded, you may think of activities that betrayed the community’s values and moral prescriptions, whether or not the values or moral prescriptions were clearly articulated.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“I call this membership identity. The identity may not apply to all areas of a person’s life. In fact, to an outsider it may appear that the values and identities are inconsistent with other areas in the person’s life. For example, someone can be generous and kind in one community (church, poker group, or alumni association) and a selfish bully everywhere else. You’ve probably seen this kind of compartmentalized identity. What’s important to understand is that when a member is in the community, the community’s values and identity feel comfortable and right. Further, when members are around other members, those values and their identity are reinforced.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“Because members share values, the community helps answer three important questions for members in some way: Who am I? How should I act? What do I believe?”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“No matter what the explicit values are, the implicit values will reveal the real deal.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“Values Bind a Community”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“define a community as a group of individuals who share a mutual concern for one another’s welfare.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“The communities I’m encouraging you to build should make people (including you) stronger, happier, and full of well-being.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“To create something that others want to join and support, we have to remember a core tenet: communities function best and are most durable when they’re helping members to be more successful in some way in a connected and dynamic world.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging

“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.”
― Charles H. Vogl, The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging