Serving Those in Need A Handbook for Managing Faith-Based Human Service Organizations

One of the underlying assumptions of this book is the belief that most of the world's faiths view human beings as more than just physical needs and appetites. They have abilities and strengths of mind and will; they suffer mentally and emotionally; they need to live in relationship with others. In those relationships people often fail us, yet those failures should, where possible, be borne and forgiven. We also will fail, and perhaps people also will forgive us. In nearly all of the world's major religious traditions, human beings are seen as sources of both strength and weakness. Often the weaknesses are to be forgiven; they are not, however, to be accepted and certainly not encouraged. Everyone, these traditions tell us, can be more or better than what they are. All are capable of realizing their essential nature. By being in community with others, we begin to understand this. Although articulated and actualized in various ways in different traditions, the dominant thrust of their teachings is that we realize our true humanity and highest nature in community with others. Even traditions that value wandering ascetics and eremitic holy men do so because those persons are able to manifest the values of the tradition and because of the element of holiness and religious enlightenment they impar