What is BreadBreakers?
Our Vision: To ignite a movement of compassion that brings new wholeness to our communities and discourse.
Our Mission: Building communities where people of all stripes can truly belong together, authentically know one another, and productively discuss things that matter.
Here’s how it works:
For just two hours, multiple tables of people set aside the need to "win" and instead focus on sharing, listening, and connecting. Guided by experienced table hosts, we'll tell our stories, try to understand each other, and practice being in community with those with different views or backgrounds.
The Six Main Ingredients
Curiosity
We restrain our instincts to “win” and instead immerse ourselves in each others’ thoughts and stories. This takes intentional effort—but it shifts us from a posture of combat to one where deeper understanding is possible.
Storytelling
Our stories are the windows to our humanity. They are the fairy dust that brings the abstract to life, animating intellectualized discussions with real stakes, lived experience, and unignorable feeling.
Compassion
BreadBreakers is about opening hearts. Going beyond polite respect and practicing Agape Love— unconditional, nontransactional, indiscriminate between friend and foe—until it is no longer a discipline, but an instinct.
The Personal
Without this, our conversations “could’ve been an email” (or a book, or a news article, or a...) We’re seeking deeper understanding of people as well as substance. Not just what you believe— why you believe it, how that connects with your story, identity, and decisions.
Extravagant Grace
Mistakes are assumed. We commit to growth and learning, not purity. Kindness is unearned, benefit of the doubt freely given. We greet conflict with open, honest conversation, and remember “it could have been me”; more often, “it was me.”
Community
The core of BreadBreakers is to get to know your community and build a stronger one around you.