This paper describes an eight-year service-learning experiment that created four distinct spaces in which campus and community members meet, reflect, and act together. This work explores the tensions between traditional and critical service-learning, and points to the importance of building relationships with members of local communities and nurturing shared community as a way for service-learning to begin realizing its civic engagement and social justice objectives. It addresses issues of power and meaning making. It presents a theory of community that suggests the connections between civic engagement and social justice with the practices of hospitality, compassion, listening, and reflection across social and cultural boundaries.