Twentieth Century · Earn Trust · Part 2 of 3
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Seminary
For two years he ran an illegal seminary on shared prayer, shared work, and telling one another the truth.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a series in three parts. Part 1: The Choice · Part 2: The Seminary · Part 3: The Cost
The moment
In 1935 the Confessing Church asked Bonhoeffer to train its pastors. The seminary had no legal standing. The students who came knew they were giving up any future in the official church.
The school settled at Finkenwalde, near the Baltic coast. The Gestapo closed the seminary in September 1937.
What he did
He built a shared life, not only a curriculum. The day at Finkenwalde began and ended with common prayer and Scripture. Students spent time each morning in silent meditation on a short passage. They ate together, did the household work together, and studied together.
He set a rule about speech. Nobody was to speak about another member of the community in that person’s absence. If someone did, he was to tell the person afterward. The students found the rule hard. They also found that the rule changed the community.
He practiced confession. He asked the students to confess their sins to one another, and he did so himself with one of them. The director did not exempt himself.
He wrote down what they learned. The Cost of Discipleship appeared in 1937, with its warning against “cheap grace.” After the seminary was closed he wrote Life Together, a short account of Christian community drawn from those two years. In that book he says that the first service one owes to others in the fellowship is listening to them.
He kept going after the closure. He continued to train pastors in small hidden groups until that work too was shut down.
What leaders can take from this part
Formation happens in shared life. He could have lectured. He chose to live with the people he was developing. Character is learned at the table and in the chores as much as in the classroom.
Listening is the first service. He taught that a person who will not listen to a brother will soon stop listening to God. This is the first step of the LEADS Path, stated by a man running a school the state had outlawed.
Guard how people speak about the absent. One rule about speech did more for trust than any program. Teams are damaged most by what is said when someone is out of the room.
The leader goes first. He confessed to a student. Whatever a leader asks of a team in the way of honesty, the leader does before asking.
Try this week
- Adopt the Finkenwalde rule for one week: say nothing about a teammate who is not present, or tell that person what you said.
- Share one meal with your team with no agenda.
- Tell one person on your team about a mistake of yours before asking anyone else to do the same.
Sources
Consulted
Sherman, Franklin. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Last updated August 19, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dietrich-Bonhoeffer.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Accessed October 11, 2026. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dietrich-bonhoeffer.
Further reading
Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. Rev. ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by R. H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan, 1959.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. Translated by John W. Doberstein. New York: Harper and Row, 1954.
Find out where your team stands.
The LEADS Self-Check takes five minutes and shows which step to work on first.