Members want to know who’s in the community and shares their values. Visitors want to know a safe way to explore without committing themselves. Novices prefer to know at what point they’ve joined a community. A boundary is the recognized demarcation between insiders (members) and outsiders. This boundary should be more about making the inside space safe for insiders than about keeping outsiders out. Where there’s a boundary, insiders feel more confident that they share values and that they understand one another better than outsiders.
For example, my friend Amanda belongs to a young mothers’ group based in her hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. There’s an online forum they use to communicate on social media, and informal in-person gatherings when they see one another in town. Only moms are allowed. Amanda has shared how important this is to her, because she feels judged and scolded by strangers who comment on her choices as a mother. She believes only mothers can understand and empathize with the challenges she and her peers face with their young children. This means pediatricians, therapists, or even experienced nannies are not welcome unless they’re also mothers. In this community, even fathers don’t qualify because they don’t share a mother’s experience. Amanda has noticed that even mothers from a few years ago had different medical knowledge, parenting advice, and equipment available for their time. That creates a certain kind of empathy separation. It’s important to her that when she shares her fears, challenges, and failures, she’s safe from uninformed, dated, or insensitive judgment. The boundary is very important.
In monastic orders, the barriers to crossing the boundary can be high indeed. It often includes a novice period with several stages (postulate, novitiate, and juniorate). During this time, elders assess whether the novice can live according to the principles, values, and disciplines of the order. This process can take years. After successfully crossing the boundary, a member can be called a “life-professed” member with voting privileges. Boundaries like this are found in virtually all Christian monastic traditions, including Roman Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and Eastern Rite. In Shamanic traditions all over the world, stepping onto the sacred path of priesthood requires students to be willing to lose everything in their lives in order to become something new. This can include family relationships, working roles, and belongings. 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.
Without a boundary you’ll face an everything–nothing conundrum. Some communities want to be open to anyone and everyone. This arises from a generous instinct: making a community open for all sounds welcoming. Most leaders, even if they claim to “welcome everyone,” actually mean something a bit more restrictive. If everything in the universe is good (and nothing is not good), then good things can never be differentiated from anything else in the universe. Good then identifies no (particular) thing because all things are good. Likewise, if everyone in the world belongs in your community, this can mean your community cannot be distinguished from no community.
A community is defined by at least one or more values (maybe something as simple as valuing bicycling or living on your block). This value can often be recognized by an interest or activity. For example, my friend Bruce walks for over an hour each Friday night on the streets of East Oakland. He is part of Ceasefire Oakland. Anyone can join. But only certain people join him in perceived dangerous neighborhoods. These members are brought together by their value of showing the city that someone cares about creating peace through nonviolent presence.
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.
You may already have an invisible boundary and authority. Often communities think that they have no boundaries or gatekeepers, but actually they do. Both the boundary and the gatekeepers may be informal and unarticulated. Still, most insiders know who has the authority to reject a potential member, or even expel an existing member, if that person is acting inappropriately or doesn’t share the community’s core values. Some communities deny the existence of this boundary or authority. But when asked, members can often recall an instance when someone was excluded (often for good reason), and it’s then clear how the exclusion was enforced.
Many years ago, when I was living in New York, I was asked to help grow and formalize an Interspiritual community. Interspiritual refers to a tradition of learning from several different spiritual traditions to pursue faith inquiry. At an initial meeting that included participants from across the country, some members said that the group was for everyone no matter their beliefs, practices, traditions, or anything else.
While I was certain that they were sincere, I suspected that this was not entirely true. As I learned more about the history of the community, I learned that there was a time when a member advocated polyamory and polygamy, which was far too iconoclastic for most of the group. Many even feared that they would all be stigmatized because of that member’s exuberance. After several conversations, he was asked not to participate, and he’s no longer involved. When I pointed out that this looked like a clear example that not everyone belongs in the group, it started a conversation to name the boundary that was already there. It wasn’t easy, especially since an hour earlier all had been convinced that no such boundary existed.
An exploration zone is important for visitors. This is how we protect insiders while giving outsiders a chance to participate, to learn more about our community, and to decide whether it’s right for them. We can encourage explorers by sharing some specified activities and areas, but not all. These are outer ring activities. Areas reserved for insiders (whether formal or informal) are inner ring. The vast majority of activities can be outer ring. The larger the outer ring, the more outsiders can evaluate a community before seeking membership. It’s important to have an inner ring, too, as this gives shared-values explorers something to aspire to and provides that important safe space for your members.
For example, my friend Adam, the executive chef in San Francisco, tells me that his community of upper-level chefs hosts dinners for friends (outer ring event), but at these dinners the kitchen is accessible only to the chefs (inner ring). They don’t want to spend their evening explaining what they’re doing or training amateur cooks. They have the privilege of using the kitchen. Sometimes newcomers who seem to share their values are also invited to other private dinners reserved only for the chefs (inner ring). Adam tells me that if newcomers contribute a dish that’s uncreative or poorly prepared, they won’t be invited back. The community wants only members who are excited by food and who can put in the time needed to create great food.
If you prefer welcoming visitors to all community activities, an inner ring can be designated by privileges (at these same events). This means that members are allowed to do things that visitors are not. These privileges might include the following:
Providing opening remarks
Inviting guests
Scheduling events
Reserving space
Teaching skills
By maintaining outer ring and inner ring differences, visitors can feel confident that they’re in fact visiting without unintentionally becoming a member.
The boundary is maintained by either a formal or an informal authority. Think about the communities you value. Even if there’s no formal authority structure, there’s probably a person or group of persons who can exclude someone they think is dangerous. It’s imperative that the boundary is protected according to community values, as opposed to personal preferences, petty concerns, or whimsical criteria. The boundary can be poorly protected in two ways. First, it can be overly inclusive, if people with mismatched values are permitted inside. In this case, members will feel unsafe. It will be difficult or impossible for them to share vulnerability and deep connections when members don’t trust that all the other participants in the community share their core values. Second, it can be overly exclusive, if shared-values participants are excluded. In this case, questions will be raised as to what the true community values are and, even more specifically, where the authority really lies.
In regulating the boundary, it’s important to recognize what unstated values are actually enforced in contrast with those that are outwardly stated. 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.
Because of these dangers, both explicit and implicit values must be discussed and prioritized. You may know that fairly recent analysis of admission data for Harvard University appears to indicate that a limit is placed on the number of Asian students admitted each year. The limits may be egregious. According to the New York Times, “In 2008, over half of all applications to Harvard with exceptionally high SAT scores were Asian, yet they made up only 17 percent of the entering class. Asians are the fastest growing racial group in America, but their proportion of Harvard undergraduates has been flat for two decades.” Unfortunately, this resembles the blatantly racist admissions policies of the early twentieth century designed to limit the number of Jews at Harvard.1
The Harvard admissions website includes the following language: “We seek promising students who will contribute to the Harvard community during their college years, and to society throughout their lives.” It describes a stated value of students who will contribute. Unfortunately, the admissions numbers indicate an additional unstated value of limiting Asian student access. As Yascha Mounk, who teaches at Harvard, wrote in the New York Times, “The real problem is that, in a meritocratic system, whites would be a minority—and Harvard just isn’t comfortable with that.”2
While I cannot know how right Mounk is about what makes Harvard comfortable or what causes the numbers, you can imagine that the cachet of this community could diminish when the boundaries are enforced by values that are unattractive or downright distasteful. How much will Harvard suffer if all understand that white admissions have been protected more than any other for at least one hundred years? Will some “society contributors” go elsewhere?
If members trust that the boundary is enforced according to explicitly stated values they embrace, they’ll appreciate the enforcement. Maintaining this trust requires keeping the space safe from intruders and wholeheartedly welcoming shared-values outsiders.
Remember the Interspiritual group I mentioned earlier? When I learned that someone had been asked to leave, I inquired about who had done the asking. I was told that it was two leaders who themselves maintained that they were not leaders. One, Jim, is a formally trained Buddhist who has practiced that tradition for many years. He insisted that he was only a facilitator. But when I pointed out that he had the authority to ask a member to leave, the group had to reconsider whether there were boundary keepers and what authority they held. They understood that if I asked someone to leave the group, my request would not have the weight of authority that Jim’s did.
Community values will mature over time as times and people change, just as values do for whole countries and generations. For a long time, social clubs in the United States preferred to keep their membership male and all white. In the twenty-first century, any social club with such values is immediately suspected of being old and stuck in the past, or worse. Unless they want to attract only racist and sexist people, such clubs will have difficulty attracting new members.
Values, boundary, and enforcement all must remain dynamic. This is how a community matures. If maturation stops, the community will gradually become irrelevant. You can probably think of communities that were once important and are now irrelevant or on the way out. A friend of mine joined the local chapter of a national men’s group. They have secret knowledge to learn, secret rituals to complete, and even secret places to meet. My friend really likes the members of his group. He’s also aware that many other chapters are desperate for members. They’ll take anyone just to keep from dying out. This men’s group is becoming irrelevant because it values all-male secret meetings in a time and place when that’s far less valued than before. If the group doesn’t adapt to our more gender-equal times, it may lose all relevance.
Gatekeepers are important for helping visitors across the boundary. They’re the people who can give newcomers access to the community. Whether officially or unofficially, gatekeepers evaluate whether an interested newcomer should be welcomed across the boundary and into the community. They may be the same as or different from those who can exclude.
For example, imagine a choir that has a strong community (perceived concern for one another’s welfare). It may be that anyone in the choir can invite people to audition, introduce them to leaders, and include them in social events (outer ring), while there may be only one or a few insiders who have the (informal or formal) authority to keep someone away. The gatekeeper here is the choirmaster, who will decide if this newcomer has the potential to be a strong singing voice and is welcomed to inner ring practices and performances.
In other communities there may be many gatekeepers, but if newcomers never meet one, they can’t ever truly cross the boundary. 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.
A friend I’ll call Travis is a pastor at a large urban church that embraces radical inclusivity. We have talked for hours about how the church can grow to serve the next generation. The church is so famous that at least half of the two thousand–plus attendees each Sunday are visitors and tourists. The church has no problem sharing what it is, what it values, and how it should act.
However, both the leadership and I know that it’s hard for visitors who want to get beyond just visiting to connect with the church community. While there’s a simple membership card to fill out in the pews, it’s not at all clear what happens next. I know people who became formal members but didn’t know where to go or whom to contact to make personal connections. They volunteered at the church's meal program, but found that they were treated more as free labor than as people looking to connect with other church members. They left the volunteer experiences without anyone welcoming them to the church community or expressing any interest in knowing them better.
Imagine the attrition rate because visitors couldn’t find a way in. Is this happening in the communities we’re forming? My friend’s church needs formal or informal gatekeepers who can be easily approached. Right now, visitors have to seek out the pastors to find out more about membership, and there are only three pastors. Gatekeepers could help give newcomers access by extending invitations as soon as visitors shared that they want more.