The Antidote To Disunity

The Antidote To Disunity

It’s an old familiar story—people couldn’t get along with one another.

COUNT NICOLAUS Ludwig von Zinzendorf was born in Dresden, Germany, in a Pietist noble family in 1700. The Pietists were Lutherans who sought to know Jesus personally and to live a godly life.

At the age of six Zinzendorf committed his life to Jesus. In childlike simplicity he wrote love letters to Jesus and threw them out the windows of the castle. At ten he was sent to school in Halle, the center of German Pietism.

He completed his education at the University of Wittenberg, and in 1721 purchased his grandmother’s estate containing the village of Berthelsdorf. Soon thereafter a leader of the Moravians, the spiritual descendants of Jan Hus, came and asked him if oppressed Moravians could take refuge on his estate. Zinzendorf agreed, and in December 1722 the first ten Moravians arrived. They were given a plot of land that was named Herrnhut, meaning “The Lord’s Watch.”

Because the Pietist pastor of the Lutheran church in Berthelsdorf shared the Moravians’ vision in his preaching, Lutheran Pietists soon became part of Herrnhut, as did Reformed and Anabaptists. By 1727 the population had reached three hundred, but divisions were arising.

There were language barriers as well as squabbles between the Moravians and the Lutherans over the church liturgy. Zinzendorf, determined not to let Herrnhut destroy itself, moved there himself, going house to house trying to bring unity to the community.

On July 19, 1727, Zinzendorf organized all the adults into spiritual “bands” of two or three. He grouped people with a natural affinity for one another and appointed one of them as leader. They began to meet together regularly to pray, exhort, and share one another’s burdens.

The people in Herrnhut saw their differences start to fade as they focused on one another. On Sunday, August 13, the pastor of the Lutheran church gave an early morning address at Herrnhut to prepare them for the Lord’s Supper. The people then walked to the church in Berthelsdorf. The service began with the singing of the hymn “Deliver Me, O God, from All My Bonds and Fetters.” Then everyone knelt and sang,

My soul before Thee prostrate falls

To thee, its source, my spirit flies.

The congregation became gripped with such emotion that the sound of weeping nearly drowned out the singing. Several men prayed with great fervor. Zinzendorf led the congregation in a prayer of confession for their earlier broken fellowship. Then they partook of the Lord’s Supper together. After the service people who had previously been fighting embraced one another, pledging to love one another from that time on.

The residents of Herrnhut saw that day as their Pentecost. Soon an around-the-clock prayer ministry began at Herrnhut and continued for one hundred years.

The Moravians became the first missionary-sending Protestant church. When Zinzendorf died thirty-three years later, 226 missionaries had been sent out from Herrnhut to St. Croix, Greenland, Lapland, Georgia, Suriname, Guinea, South Africa, Algeria, Ceylon, Romania, and Constantinople. One of every sixty of the early Moravians became a missionary.

The day before he died, Zinzendorf asked a Moravian friend, “Did you ever suppose in the beginning that the Savior would do as we now really see in the various Moravian settlements . . . amongst the heathen?. . . What a formidable caravan from our church already stands around the Lamb.”

The next day Count von Zinzendorf joined that caravan adoring the Lamb upon his throne.

Reflection

It wasn’t a coincidence that the Moravian “Pentecost” was preceded by weeks of earnest prayer or that the first Protestant church to emphasize missions was the church with the hundred-year prayer meeting. What is God’s prayer role for you in reaching the world for Christ?

The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send out more workers for his fields.

Matthew 9:37-38