LIVING TOGETHER IN THE INTEGRIERTE GEMEINDE

Unlike the Bruderhof, the IG is not structured in the classical ‘commune’ mode. It does not consist of a group of people who have voluntarily agreed to pool their goods and money. That said, the IG's members do share their lives, and do form a community. Traudl Wallbrecher, key figure and ‘founder’ of the IG, pointed out that ‘[e]ach member is responsible for his finances, but in agreement with the Community he makes everything available for the common tasks’ (Integrated Community 1996, 59). How, then, does the IG operate? The cellular unit of the IG could be called the ‘table community’. This is a group of people who eat and talk together fairly frequently. There does not appear to be a regulation as to how many times per week the table community should eat together, but it is likely that they meet daily, though perhaps with some minor exceptions. The table community is perhaps best seen in the context of the IG's stress on the notion of the ‘new family’. For the IG, Jews and Christians together should form a ‘People of God’. The People of God is the believer's new family, and the table community is a concrete manifestation of this new family. In a sense one moves from the old, blood family into a new family composed of believers. The table communities may well be composed of groups of IG members who live in the same houses, called ‘integration houses’. These appear to be a less important feature of the IG than was the case, with more members living outside. The diminution in importance of the integration house does not in any way lessen the role of the table communities.

A number of table communities in an area will together form a geographical community of the IG. There are, for example, six such geographical communities of the IG in Munich. These communities are not large: on average each community will have around 100 members. This is not an accident but relates to the theology of the movement. One of the leading theologians of the IG has indicated the biblical reasons why communities should have no more than 120 members. Gerhard Lohfink stated in his book Does God Need the Church? that a community should not contain more than 120 people.