I recently “made it official” with my consulting business. Check out my website at NaomiGurtLind.com. I named my consultancy COMMUNITY MATTERS, because it really does. Lately, I’ve been fielding this question more and more: What is community engagement?

By my lights, community engagement is all the things that make a community feel like a community. The recipe will be slightly different in different places but the ingredients might include: robust participation in worship, commitment to social justice, strong chesed (caring) committee, a dedicated and diverse volunteer corps, connections and friendships across the breadth of the community, and more. All of it adds up together to a feeling of well-being and a sense of the importance of showing up when needed.

Community is something we do for one another. Community is everything we do for one another.

Congregations, minyanim and other organizations can benefit from some focused attention and purposeful analysis around engagement. Whether things are going well or not so well; things like sprucing up your communications, tweaking your chesed program or launching small-group encounters can spark real communal growth and change.

From time to time, even with a dish you make a lot, it’s a good idea to revisit the recipe and adjust the proportions. You might find you need to tweak something to spice things up!

Visit my site for more information. I’d love to serve your community!

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