Add us to your circles!Living in Community
A special calling – living in community, for instance – must never be confused with the church of Christ itself. Life in community means discipline in community, education in community, and continual training for the discipleship of Christ. Yet the mystery of the church is something different from this – something greater. It is God’s life, and coming from him it penetrates community. This penetration of the divine into the human occurs whenever the tension of desperate yearning produces an openness and readiness in which God alone may act and speak. At such moments a community can be commissioned by the invisible church and given certainty for a specific mission: to speak and act – albeit without mistaking itself for the church – in the name of the church.
Articles on Living in Community
A Visit to Koinonia
When my husband and I learned that Koinonia was seeking to rediscover their original vision of community, and shorthanded bringing in the pecan harvest, we got together with some friends and ten of us young people left Pennsylvania and hit the road for southwest Georgia...
Living the Sermon on the Mount
“How do we respond to the Sermon on the Mount?” is a question that must be asked by each new generation. Each generation must find its own answer to the call of Jesus. Yet throughout the centuries there is a fellowship of those who face the powerful challenge of the Sermon on the Mount without reservation, ready for unconditional discipleship..."
Living in Community
In 1920, Eberhard Arnold founded a community movement that still exists. After living in community for 90 years, his words still challenge those who live communally today. "The Spirit drives us to all people and brings us joy in living and working for one another, for it is the spirit of creativity and love..."
Big and Small Obstacles to Living in Community
"If everybody wants to be in the right, or even if only one person wants to be in the right, it is impossible to live in community. That is egotism or self-love. Touchiness, like opinionatedness, is another form of self-love."
From Stress to Peace
"I've been looking for peace my whole life. I never dreamt I would have this true happiness and peace. I wasn't looking for community, but community found me. I cannot believe it—I can be myself for the first time in my life."
The Life of Charles Sinay
Charles first began corresponding with our community in 2004, and in 2006, two of our members visited him while on a trip to the West Coast. Charles was increasingly drawn to the witness of full Christian community, as described in the opening chapters of the Book of Acts, and to modern attempts to live together fully in the spirit of the early Christians....
Let Your Heart Be Moved
Feeling the sorrows and joys of others instead of focusing on our own--that is what life is all about! And we need to bring this to our children, too. It's the only valuable education, for through it they will become true human beings, and find community with others. Humans are communal beings. If we live alone, we go insane. But if we seek the hearts of those around us, it will eventually bring about the gathering of all peoples, as described in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: "Alle Menschen werden Bruder!"-All men will be brothers!
Ebooks on Living in Community
Why We Live In Community
From the forward by Basil Pennington: "It may be difficult for today’s Christians to hear Arnold’s constant reminder that the fullness of life, which is found only in community, comes at the cost of complete self-sacrifice. Yet that is the Paschal mystery of life through death. And it is a sacrifice shot through with joy. Arnold brings out the real paradox that is so essential for the vibrant community, but so difficult to attain: the requirement that each member lives out a personal decision to surrender to the whole and yet exercises his or her will for the good. The secret behind this is, of course, the Holy Spirit, a secret a faithless world cannot know – hence the many strivings for community that end in shambles, with deeply wounded people feeling totally betrayed." Includes two interpretive talks by Thomas Merton.
Against the Wind
Baum's account recreates a colorful slice of history, a time when thousands of young men and women across Weimar Germany rejected bourgeois mores and struck out on a different path. Arnold, an aspiring young writer and speaker, was a driving force behind this "Youth Movement". But he went further, leaving the limelight, a comfortable lifestyle, and a promising career, to try living in community the answers he had found. He started a community based on Christ's teachings and example. Arnold was able to unite a motley assortment of workers, aristocrats, and students from diverse political and religious persuasions under a shared vision of Christ's kingdom as a living reality.
A Testimony to Church Community
In 1920, venturing into an unknown future—and leaving wealth, security, and a public speaking career—he moved with his wife Emmy from Berlin to a tiny village, where they started living in community on the basis of early church practices as described in the Book of Acts. A Testimony to Church Community contains a biographical sketch, selections from his most important works, and brief memoirs by friends and colleagues.
A Joyful Pilgrimage
A Joyful Pilgrimage is the story of a remnant that survived, a community movement that began when Emmy Arnold and her husband Eberhard, a well-known writer and lecturer, abandoned their affluent Berlin suburb to live a completely different life. It is her own story, candidly told, of a venture dared and realized, in spite of poverty, persecution, skepticism, and trust betrayed. Through it all Arnold clung to her belief that we can break free from the structures of power, greed, and injustice that divide us..
The Early Christians in Their Own Words
The Early Christians is a topically arranged collection of primary sources. It includes extra-biblical sayings of Jesus and excerpts from Origen, Tertullian, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria, Justin, Irenaeus, and others. Equally revealing material from pagan contemporaries -- critics, detractors and persecutors -- is included as well.
Love is Like Fire: The Confession of an Anabaptist Prisoner
Peter Riedemann (1506-1556) wrote this confession as a 23-year-old while imprisoned in Austria on account of his faith. At the time, the Anabaptists - spiritual forefathers of our Bruderhof movement - were being drowned, beheaded, and burned at the stake as heretics by the thousand for their commitment to baptism of believers, economic sharing, nonviolence, and the restoration of a New Testament Christianity free from state control and institutional hierarchy. Living in community has never been as vibrant and living.
Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount
Arnold shows us that following these commandments consistently is neither an ideal nor an ordeal, but a matter of course in the community of Jesus. In the community of Jesus, life becomes clear, simple, decisive, and unequivocal. Gone are the many doubts and compromises, the many half-truths and the half-heartedness. We can only love God with our whole heart and strength; we can follow Jesus only with undivided dedication – otherwise we are not following him at all.
Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind
From the forward by Henri Nouwen: "Every word he speaks comes from his experience in community, where discipleship is lived. It is in community that we are tested and purified. It is in community that we learn what forgiveness and healing are all about. It is in community that we learn who our neighbor is. Community is the true school of love. Arnold lived community all of his life. He knew its demands and its rewards. Most of all, he knew that it is in community that we encounter the Christ of the Gospel."