Life Together

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In other words, life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic. Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles and promise of the whole Church.

For Jesus Christ alone is our unity. ‘He is our peace’. Through him alone do we have access to one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one another.

‘Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light’ (Eph. 5.14).

There are some destroyers of unison singing in the fellowship that must be rigorously eliminated. There is no place in the service of worship where vanity and bad taste can so intrude as in the singing.

There is the solo voice that goes swaggering, swelling, blaring and tremulant from a full chest and drowns out everything else to the glory of its own fine organ.

Let nothing be done by force; let everything be done in freedom and love.

After the day’s work we pray God for the blessing, peace, and safety of all Christendom; for our congregation; for the pastor in his ministry; for the poor, the wretched, and lonely; for the sick and dying; for our neighbours, for our own folks at home, and for our fellowship.

the evening prayer of the family fellowship should include particularly the petition of forgiveness for every wrong done to God and our brothers, for God’s forgiveness and that of our brothers, and for readiness gladly to forgive any wrong done to us.

He who would learn to serve must first learn to think little of himself. Let no man ‘think of himself more highly than he ought to think’ (Rom. 12.3).