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. Thus it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.

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.

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.

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

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.