Today during the Non-Profit Summit in Pittsburgh, I and Site Director, Lucinda Wade (Coraopolis) had the opportunity to hear keynote speaker, Robert Putnam, professor at Harvard University.

He shared about social capital and its positive impact on our organizations as well as in areas such as school test scores, infant mortality rates, career success, teen pregnancy rates, and premature death rates. For example, joining even ONE social group decreases your risk of premature death by 50%, which is as much as quitting smoking!

How does ethnic diversity affect social capital? Increase in ethnic diversity correlates to LESS trust in community, neighbors, government, each other. Diversity can threaten the benefits of social capital…EXCEPT in places where something else takes precedence, or “trumps” race. What is this “something else?”

Two examples were presented: the US Army and evangelical mega-church, Lakewood Church (TX). Both are ethnically diverse AND display a disproportionate number and strength of social relationships across race. Within both, discrimination was infrequent/disallowed and new identities that cut across race were created. These are keys to overcoming the difficulty diversity represents.

In light of NOH’s context of operation being local, evangelical churches:

Those in Christ have a new identity; old is gone, new has come
(1 Cor 5:17). This, not ethnicity, unifies us. “There is neither
Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

The Church experiences multiple layers of commonality: one’s relationship with God; relationships with others who believe the same; the congregation’s shared mission of spreading the gospel. This is an exponential dynamic for social capital within the church, rather than just shared mission.

“Spiritual capital,” created from the belief in the eternal value of the shared mission, is foundational to the social capital. God, the most diverse, the creator of the universe, has established the importance of social capital because His concern from the beginning of time has been relationship.

If all other relationships flow out that with God, the results must be positive, life-giving, trust-filled, etc.

May we, through the local church, promote lasting change in our communities by providing help to anyone, in settings of trust and relationship that flows only from the love of God.