In this Issue:

• • Building More Than Homes: Service, Faith, and the Work of Bridgebuilding
  • Letting Go & Building Forward
  • Building Homes, Communities, and Hope
  • Sharing the Lawn

By Elizabeth Le’anani Coffee, Managing Director, Lake Institute on Faith & Giving 

My parents instilled community service in me from a young age, and nearly all my earliest memories of volunteering are connected to our local church. I remember piling into our family van to serve in after-school programs or spending evenings at a shelter for unhoused single parents and their children. Our children’s choir sang in retirement communities throughout the year, and my parents’ Bible study group went Christmas caroling at the homes of church elders and widows who could no longer travel easily. 

Looking back, I realize these experiences formed my earliest understanding of community care, mutuality in giving, and service as a natural expression of my faith. They also taught me something I did not fully appreciate at the time: when people serve together, many of the divisions that shape our public life become less central. 

I never worried about the politics of the person folding clothes next to me, or whether I agreed with the person across the table at a soup kitchen about a particular social issue. We were simply neighbors doing necessary work together. 

Years later, a leader of a local community garden put words to what I had experienced all along: “Everyone puts a spade in the dirt the same way, no matter how they voted at the last neighborhood association meeting.” Service does not erase difference, but it creates space where difference can be held without becoming too much of a defining force. 

At a time when our public life feels increasingly fragmented across political, economic, and social convictions, it is tempting to search for quick solutions to bridge our divides. New technologies promise us connection. New strategies promise us consensus. New language promises us civility. And yet, many of us sense that something deeper is required. 

This is where faith communities have something essential to offer. 

Across traditions, faith communities are uniquely formed to practice bridgebuilding. They gather people across generations, political identities, racial and economic backgrounds, not just around shared beliefs, but around shared practices of meaning, service, and hope. Long before “social cohesion” became a public concern, faith communities were cultivating habits of proximity, patience, and moral responsibility. 

Bridgebuilding, at its core, is relational work. It requires sustained presence. It requires humility and the willingness to listen, to be changed, to acknowledge complexity rather than rush toward certainty. And it requires commitment to the shared flourishing. 

Faith traditions are shaped by stories in their sacred texts that do not deny conflict, but wrestle with it. Across these texts, we see stories of exile and return, of rupture and reconciliation, of death and resurrection. These narratives resist the illusion that unity comes easily. They remind us that repair is slow, embodied, and ongoing. 

One of the most powerful ways faith communities build bridges is through service. Service, at its best, is not charity that flows in one direction, but shared work that dignifies all participants. It places people side by side, oriented toward a common task. It reframes “the other” as a neighbor. 

When people labor together building homes, feeding neighbors, caring for children, or stewarding land, they are drawn into a shared vision for wholeness. They begin to see one another not primarily through ideological labels, but through mutual dependence and shared purpose. 

Service, then, becomes an antidote to polarization, not because it solves disagreement, but because it rehumanizes those with whom we prematurely cast judgment. It reminds us that before we are opponents, we are connected. 

In this landscape, bridgebuilding is not a program. It is a posture. It is expressed in how we listen, how we partner, how we tell stories about impact, and how we invite participation. 

Habitat for Humanity’s 50-year journey offers a compelling example of what this kind of bridgebuilding can look like over time. Founded on a vision of housing as a primary catalyst for human dignity, Habitat has long brought together volunteers, donors, faith communities, and homeowners across lines of difference. Its work has demonstrated how shared service can cultivate solidarity, even amid profound social change. 

As Habitat for Humanity marks this milestone, its experience raises timely questions for all of us engaged in faith and giving: What does it mean to lead faithfully in polarized times? How can faith communities serve as credible bridgebuilders without simplifying complexity or avoiding hard conversations? And how might acts of service, when practiced with humility and accountability, help renew our civic imagination? 

These questions will be at the heart of Lake Institute’s upcoming Distinguished Visitor conversation with Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. Reckford brings decades of experience navigating the opportunities and tensions of faith-based nonprofit leadership, offering insight into how service, faith, and bridgebuilding intersect in practice. 

We invite you to join us for this conversation. And not simply to hear a story of organizational success, but to reflect together on the deeper work of building communities marked by trust, dignity, and shared responsibility. In a world hungry for connection yet wary of institutions, faith communities remain one of our most vital resources for imagining and practicing a more generous public life. 

Bridgebuilding does not begin with agreement. It begins with commitment. Commitment to show up, to serve alongside one another, and to remain in relationship even when the work is unfinished. Faith communities, at their best, remind us that this commitment is not only possible, but necessary. 

And in times like these, it may be one of the most faithful gifts we can offer.