This week we report on the Boston Rotary Club's thirty-fifth annual Governor's Prayer Breakfast, at which 250 people representing 100 business and charitable organizations were present; and we share some ideas from a talk given over breakfast by the dean of Harvard Divinity School to some of the alumni of Harvard Business School. Both gatherings focused on ways in which we can all do more to serve our local communities, especially by reexamining the values by which we live.

TEST OF OUR FAITH

In his welcome to the guests at the Governor's breakfast, Larry Moulter, president and chief executive officer of the New Boston Garden Corporation, suggested that his audience should be ready to disturb the peace a bit in order to help ailing children, who were the focus of this gathering. "Jesus was an agent of change," he said, "and so must we be in our community. We must involve ourselves, celebrate our diversity, work out what each of us can contribute."

What is required, said another speaker, the Reverend Ray A. Hammond, Pastor of Bethel African American Episcopal Church, Boston, is summed up in three key words: reconnection, responsibility, and renewal.

In his remarks, William F. Weld, Governor of Massachusetts, supported Mr. Moulter's suggestion that caring citizens should be disturbers of the status quo. "There are thousands of small children," he said, "whose homes are private hells—without comfort or a kind word. What is it in our culture that produces [conditions] like this?—drugs, alcohol, missing fathers?"

But the Governor was quick to express gratitude for the many organizations that are helping "to show kids the path to God's love." Among these willing workers, he said, the Church is uniquely equipped to help. "Any child can be saved by the power of love," concluded Governor Weld. "The unloved children in our midst are a test of our faith. I pray that we will pass that test."

The Governor's message was echoed in the words of the song by Jon Mohr and John Mays that followed his speech, "Love In Any Language":

HARVARD REACHES INTO THE COMMUNITY

Over the past four years, there's been an interesting collaboration between Harvard University's divinity and business schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which confirms that several institutions are already reaching into the community. This confirmation emerged during a talk given by Dr. Ronald F. Thiemann, Dean of Harvard Divinity School and author of Religion in Public Life: A Dilemma for Democracy (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996).

Dr. Thiemann explained that over the past four years, students from both Harvard schools have been serving together in more than fifteen field sites. They go together as a consulting team into not-for-profit organizations, many of them agencies of churches that need a new way of thinking about their mission and about the values they want to represent in that mission. Financial advice is sometimes given—for example, to religious communities that are helping immigrants to launch business ventures or that are striving to alleviate poverty in their area.

Among many other projects being undertaken by the divinity school's Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, which was established in 1992, Dr. Thiemann and his teams have been looking into the spiritual values of chief executive officers—among them prominent figures in the entertainment and financial service industries. "Our conviction," he said, "is that there are people who have fundamentally important ethical orientation in those industries and need an opportunity to express it. They seek a way to show a model of leadership that could be held up for others to aspire to."

SPIRITUAL COMMITMENTS

Dr. Thiemann also mentioned that over the past ten years there has been an increasing number of self-aware young professionals in many different areas of life who are not really being fulfilled in their work and who are seeking to shift their focus and orientation. Many of them approach Harvard Divinity School in their search for a deeper understanding of the basic commitments that drive people to do what they do.

"For that," he said, "they have to look at questions of faith. And they do that because they're interested in the relationship between faith and personal and institutional values. And, as these young professionals continue their education, they get a sense that they want to be leaders of organizations or institutions that can shape behavior through being committed to better fundamental values."

In his own scholarship and teaching, Dr. Thiemann has been studying and writing about the role that religion plays in shaping these values. When working with chief executive officers, he has invited them to reflect on three questions:

• What are the deepest spiritual and/or value commitments that you as an individual bring to your life?

• How do those fundamental values shape the way in which you try to create and nurture a culture within your organization?

• How do those values lead you to understand the role that your organization or your business plays in the larger society?—that is, your notion of social responsibility or citizenship.

"And we have been really struck with how eager people are to talk about this," said Dr. Thiemann, "and how much they are willing to say for the record about all three of those issues.

"In this process," he continued, "one of the things we're doing is helping senior executives to refine their own thinking. I believe that what we all have to learn is to find a language of fundamental values that we share. We need to recognize and honor our differences yet still find the common ground that will allow us to go forward with some sense of integrity, both individually and as a social organization. It's complicated, but I think it's doable; and I think the times really demand our attention to this question."