The Importance Of Life Together

Life Together offers a fresh and faithful vision for the life of discipleship in community. The introduction tells us that this book is a recording of Bonhoeffer’s learning’s from an experiment that took place in Finkenwalde, Germany (now Poland). From 1935 to 1937 Dietrich Bonhoeffer served as pastor, administrator, and teacher at an underground seminary there. He insisted that if seminarians were to learn about and lead within the Christian community, they must also enter into and learn the practical disciplines of the Christian faith in community. This led to the formation of a community house‖ where those involved in seminary education would share life together. Here, Bonhoeffer put into practice the conviction that the renewal of the church …show more content…
Bonhoeffer speaks of the scriptures to be more powerfully when read together. The practice of consecutive reading allows the listening community to discover the whole story and to enter into it as their own. When it comes to worship, there is a unique and beautiful picture of union and harmony, both through praise and prayer. Common prayer involves praying as a fellowship and in our own words. It is important for common prayer to reflect the real cares, needs, joys, thanksgivings, petitions, and hopes of the community. It is equally important for the community to support the praying brother or sister by making the prayer its own. The obvious form of communal worship that is portrayed in the bible is Jesus’ table of fellowship. Jesus keeps three kinds of table fellowship with us: daily fellowship at meals, table fellowship of the Lord’s Supper, and the final table fellowship in the Kingdom of God. Every one of these meals fills Christians with gratitude for the living and present Lord. Bonhoeffer stresses the emphasis between my daily bread verses our daily bread. It is our daily bread; we are called to be apart of the table …show more content…
There needs to be a discipline of time apart, away from the rush of activities, relationships, noises and duties of daily life. It involves a defined time to let the Word of God dwell in us, to hold before God our own life in all of its particularity, and to intercede for those whom God has called us to care and pray for. Bonhoeffer isn’t saying that we need to practice in private, but that it is needed and healthy for the context of a relationship to the Christian community. In this chapter is the famous quote that is often heard, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community... Let him who is not in community beware of being alone... Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and