Quotes About Community

God alone judges, and God's judgment is helpful and healing. After all, we can only serve other Christians; we can never place ourselves above them.

He who holds his tongue in check controls both mind and body (James 3.2ff.). Thus it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.

The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium. Those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misusing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear.

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community. ... But the reverse is also true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

Just as Christians should not be constantly feeling the pulse of their spiritual life, so too the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be continually taking its temperature.

The existence of any Christian communal life essentially depends on whether or not it succeeds at the right time in promoting the ability to distinguish between a human ideal and God's reality, between spiritual and emotional community.

Even the most personal prayer no longer belongs to the individual, but to the church that gave birth to this person and through which this individual lives.

God is not with the stronger battalions but with the small host of the praying, watchful congregation. God's strength is powerful in the weak.

Christliche Bruderschaft ist nicht ein Ideal, das wir zu verwirklichen hätten, sondern es ist eine von Gott in Christus geschaffene Wirklichkeit, an der wir teilhaben dürfen:

The only thing I am really clear about in the whole problem is that a 'culture' that breaks down in the face of danger is no culture.

It was Bonhoeffer and his friends who proved by their resistance unto death that even in the age of the nation-state there are loyalties which transcend those to state and nation.

In normal life one is often not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches life. One easily overestimates the importance of one's own acts and deeds, compared with what we become only through other people.

Since I as a Christian cannot live without the church, since I owe my life to the church and now belong to it, so my merits are now no longer my own, but belong to the church.

I've often found it a great help to think in the evening of all those who I know are praying for me, children as well as grown-ups. I think I owe it to the prayers of others, both known and unknown, that I have often been kept in safety.

Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship.

But God has put this Word into the mouth of men in order that it may be communicated to other men. When one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others. God has willed that we should seek him and find his living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of a man. Therefore, a Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer

Wir gehören einander allein durch und in Jesus Christus. Was heißt das? Es heißt erstens, dass ein Christ den andern braucht um Jesu Christi willen. Es heißt zweitens, dass ein Christ zum andern nur durch Jesus Christus kommt. Es heißt drittens, dass wir in Jesus Christus von Ewigkeit her erwählt, in der Zeit angenommen und für die Ewigkeit vereinigt sind.

What may appear weak and insignificant to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as Christians should not be constantly feeling the pulse of their spiritual life, so too the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be continually taking its temperature.

Spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ.

Spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ.

The universality of the church was illustrated in a marvelously effective manner. White, black, yellow members of religious orders orders—everyone was in clerical robes united under the church. It truly seems ideal.

The hungry person needs bread, the homeless person needs shelter, the one deprived of rights needs justice, the lonely person needs community, the undisciplined one needs order, and the slave needs freedom" (p. 97). Treating human beings as things, commodities, and machines is a special hindrance to receiving Christ

Es ist nichts Selbstverständliches für den Christen, dass er unter Christen leben darf. Jesus Christus lebte mitten unter seinen Feinden. Zuletzt verließen ihn alle Jünger. Am Kreuz war er ganz allein, umgeben von Übeltätern und Spöttern.