The work of San Jose Bridge Communities concentrates on the value of being with one another in community, especially across barriers that usually keep people apart.  This expression comes from the book A Nazareth Manifesto, by Samuel Wells.

Usually, our efforts to bless people in need center on some kind of sacrifice or work.  People with resources give to those without, or they teach those who don’t know, or they mentor those who need a guide.  This is a good, compassionate response.  But it leaves in place the underlying circumstances that caused the need and defines those in need by their deficiencies.

We think the truer, deeper goal is community.  That’s what God modeled for us in Jesus -- he could have zapped the earth from Heaven and solved all our problems in an instant, but instead he made a way to come down and be with us.  The most important problem for him to solve was our broken relationship with him.

As Wells says, “the goal of all our working for and working with is not independent, free-standing individuals released from all setbacks and problems and challenges; but an interactive and permeable community of interdependent beings, who discover gifts where others might only see needs, and unearth treasures where others might only see trouble.”

San Jose Bridge Communities aims to be this kind of community.