We live in community because we love to be together, and we love following Jesus together. Jesus said that where two or three are gathered in his name he is there with us, and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s a direct call to community. If you’re not living in community it’s also hard to share everything in common and take care of each other like the first church did (Acts 2:42–47).
The reason we live like this is because we believe it’s the best way to follow Jesus, but once you’ve lived in community for a while you wonder why people live any other way. A lot of the day-to-day problems people deal with – paying bills, getting a meal on the table, finding a good school for their children, access to medical care, feeling isolated – are answered by community.
We hope that our communities can help people to have a vision of what society can be like: a place where each child and older person is loved and taken care of, a place where we work against loneliness and poverty, where marriages stay together, where there isn’t violence, and where people willingly give up all their possessions for a cause that is greater than themselves. Read more about why we live in community at the Bruderhof.