Community Stewardship Coordinator (Shika)

Community Stewardship Coordinator

The Community Stewardship Coordinator holds a relational and integrative role at the heart of the Zen Center. This position is responsible for cultivating, sustaining, and deepening connection across three interwoven communities:

• Soto Zen Sangha, including current Zen practitioners, members, retreat participants, and program attendees
• Alumni of Foundations in Contemplative Care (FCC)
• Alumni of the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship (CMF)

This role is contemplative, organizational, and strategic. The Coordinator ensures that people who have been touched by the Zen Center's teachings remain connected to practice, to one another, and to the ethical and relational commitments of the Soto Zen lineage.

Core responsibilities include:

• Sangha Nourishment & Community Care
• Alumni Leadership & Program Oversight: Contemplative Medicine Fellowship & Foundations in Contemplative Care
• Retreat & Offering Integration
• Outreach as Community Relationship Building
• Cross-Team Collaboration & Institutional Memory

What it means to serve in this role:

• Understands that how work is done matters as much as what is done
• Is shaped by the ethical commitments of Zen practice and in relationship with their teacher and the sangha
• Can hold complexity, vulnerability, and ambiguity with steadiness
• Approaches community as something to be tended, not managed

This staff role is expected to:

• Uphold the Bodhisattva Precepts in professional and personal conduct
• Practice respectful communication, even in moments of tension
• Receive feedback as part of ongoing maturation
• Steadily engage their own formal Soto Zen practice, in relationship with a Zen teacher and actively and regularly participate in the sangha, as a grounding for their service

This role is for someone who understands that community is a living thing, that practice ripens over time, and that institutions endure only when relationships are held with integrity, humility, and care.

To serve here is to participate in something larger than oneself—and to do so with attention, devotion, and accountability.