Tips for Working Interfaith in Your Community

Why Work Interfaith?

You don’t have to work interfaith to build assets in the religious community. However, we’ve found that working interfaith is one of the most valuable parts of mobilizing the religious community. It has several benefits:

  • It puts into practice the idea that asset building can unite people across faith and ideological lines who have a shared commitment to young people.

  • People enjoy learning with and from people from other traditions.
  • It provides networking and development opportunities for people from all traditions. This is particularly important for those in traditions without a strong presence in the community—who may have few if any opportunities for professional development.
  • It increases your ability to engage all aspects of your community in asset building.
  • It contributes to enhancing mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation in the community.

Ideas and Tips for Working Interfaith

  • Do what you can to make leadership inclusive of religious pluralism. Be intentional in reaching out to congregations of all traditions. Remember that they may be suspicious of efforts introduced by majority religious groups, so it may take time to build trust.
  • Give time and space for trust and openness to grow. People aren’t used to working interfaith. It can be awkward. Some may be suspicious and on guard—sometimes for many good reasons. Help people learn to talk with each other, learn from each other, and grow to trust and respect each other. Work to create an environment that is neutral and safe for all.
  • Listen to each other. If you’re wondering if something would be appropriate or inappropriate, ask people from the different traditions represented. Respect their responses.
  • Keep the focus on asset building. Use it as the common ground. Avoid moving to specifically religious activities or content that may not be comfortable or appropriate for some traditions. Keep in mind that groups from minority religious groups (e.g. Jewish, Eastern traditions, Pentecostals) may be uncomfortable taking the risk of raising questions or objecting to practices that may seem second-nature to people from dominant traditions.
  • Be careful about religious content during meetings and events. In Search Institute’s work, we encouraged pilot sites not to make prayer, meditations, religious music, or other religious rituals part of their regular meetings and events. As trust grows, it may become appropriate—and a great opportunity for building mutual respect—to encourage people each to share more from their own traditions. But it can be awkward and threatening at first.
  • Don’t jump into interfaith youth activities first. Some faith traditions that are more than willing for adults to work interfaith are much more reluctant to draw their young people into interfaith efforts. They worry about efforts to convert their youth. If you want to move to interfaith youth activities, first work on building trust among the adults who are involved.
  • Watch out for faith-specific language that can be off-putting to people in an interfaith context. Most often in this culture, the problem comes with Christian terms. Some examples:
    Instead of…
    • youth ministry
    • minister, pastor, priest
    • church

Try to Use…

  • youth work
  • clergy, spiritual leader
  • congregation or faith community