There can be no Christianity without community

"9 For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it” - 1 Corinthians 3: 9-10.

Following in the footsteps of St. Paul, worldwide missionaries build churches, visit the imprisoned, support and raise money for homeless, engage in medical mission work and preach the Gospel to all those who are willing to hear.

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was one of those who followed in Paul’s footsteps. Zinzendorf resigned from a life of wealth, politics and privilege to follow God's call. He established on his personal estate a refugee settlement for persecuted Christians. His goal was to form ecclesiolae in ecclesia—"little churches within the church"—to act as a leaven, revitalizing and unifying churches into one communion. "There can be no Christianity without community," he said. This remarkable religious refugee community experienced a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit which led the group to a passionate concern for worldwide missions. Under Zinzendorf's leadership this outcast group set the stage for the modern missionary movement as we know it today and kept continuous hourly prayer intercessions going 24/7/365 for more than 100 years.

Count Zinzendorf was born into one of the most ancient and noble families of Europe in 1700. Zinzendorf was a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. He was born in Saxony, educated at Halle and the University of Wittenberg as a lawyer, studying theology as a secondary pursuit. His education, Lutheran upbringing and position within society brought him into contact with different Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish traditions. He lived at a time which promised renewal of the church. This was the time of the Enlightenment, the birth of historical critical research and modern science which began to challenge long standing religious beliefs.

It was in 1722; Zinzendorf was approached by a group of Moravians to request permission to live on his lands. The Moravian brethren had sprung from the labors and martyrdom of the Bohemian Reformer, John Huss. They had experienced centuries of persecution. Many had been killed, imprisoned, tortured or banished from their homeland. Zinzendorf granted their request and ten Moravian Protestants arrived by December to found a settlement on the count's land. They named it Herrnhut, "the Lord's Watch." By May 1725, 90 Moravians were gathered at Herrnhut. Because of the spirited preaching at the Berthelsdorf Parish Church, the population of this "small city" reached 300 by 1726. Zinzendorf was so moved by their devotion to Christ and their godly example that he joined them. Together, they empowered one another on to greater devotion.

Zinzendorf was intrigued by the history of the Moravians and began to read about the early Unity at the library in Dresden. At that time, the Moravian theological tradition was 235 years old, predating the Protestant reformation, tracing it roots back to 1457, with the initial attempt to simply follow Jesus as stated in the Sermon on the Mount. However, early in 1727 the disgruntled infant community at Herrnhut became deeply divided and critical of one another. Intense controversies threatened to disrupt the community. The majority comprised the ancient Moravian Church of the Brethren. Other believers who were later attracted to Herrnhut included Lutherans, Reformed and Baptists.

They argued about predestination, holiness and baptism. The growing parish community was in serious division and it was then, in 1727, that Zinzendorf left public life to spend all his time at his Berthelsdorf estate working with the struggling church community. Largely due to his leadership in daily Bible studies, the group came to formulate a unique document known as the “Brotherly Agreement,” which established basic principles of Christian behavior.

Residents of Herrnhut were required to sign a pledge to abide by these Biblical rules. A new spirituality now characterized the community, with both men and women being committed to bands or choruses to encourage one another in the walk with Christ. There followed an intense and powerful experience of renewal. During a special communion service at Berthelsdorf Church, the entire congregation felt a powerful presence of the Holy Spirit and their previous differences quickly vanished. At this service, God poured out a special blessing on them. All present, rapt in deep devotion, were stirred by the supernatural touch of a power which none could define or understand. One participant reported, “No one present could tell exactly what happened on that Wednesday morning, 13 August 1727. They hardly knew if they had been on earth or in heaven.”

Zinzendorf described the service as “a day of the outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon the congregation; it was its Pentecost.” Two weeks after the great outpouring, 24 men and 24 women of the community covenanted together to spend one hour each day, day and night, in unceasing prayer to God for His blessing on the congregation and its witness. At least two people were at prayer every hour of the day.

The children, also touched powerfully by God, established their own prayer times among themselves. Those who heard their youthful supplications were deeply moved. The children's prayers and supplications had a significant effect on the whole community. Everyone was committed to see that, “The fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously; it must not go out.”

The numbers committed to this endeavor soon increased to 77 from the community. This prayer meeting would go non-stop for more than 100 years and is understood by many as the spiritual power behind the impact the Moravians had on the entire world. Can you fathom the spiritual power that was unleashed by such non-stop intercession before God’s throne?

See Missionaries and Prayer Warriors video.

Visiting Copenhagen in 1731 to attend the coronation of King Christian VI, Zinzendorf met a converted slave from St. Thomas in the West Indies, Anthony Ulrich. The man was seeking a pastor to go back to his homeland to preach the good news. Zinzendorf solicited two men from his congregation who became the first Moravian missionaries. The two lived among the slaves and preached the Gospel as the first Protestant missionaries of the modern era.

This experience began the Moravian renewal and led to the beginning of the first Protestant World Mission movement. Active missions grew rapidly to around the globe. Within two decades, Zinzendorf sent missionaries to Greenland, Lapland, Pennsylvania, Surinam, Africa's Guinea Coast, South Africa, and Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter, Algeria, the native North Americans, Ceylon, Romania and Constantinople. In short order, more than 70 missionaries from a community of fewer than 600 answered the call.

In 1741, Zinzendorf himself did missionary work in the American colonies and sought to unify the German Protestants of Pennsylvania, even proposing to establish a “council of churches” in which all would preserve their unique denominational practices but would work in cooperation rather than competition. He founded the town of Bethlehem, where his daughter Benigna organized the school which would later become Moravian College. Zinzendorf’s overwhelming interest in the colonies involved evangelizing the Native Americans and he travelled into the wilderness to meet with the Chieftains of several tribes and clans in both Pennsylvania and New York.

The count returned to Herrnhut in 1743 and conveyed his passion to see the Gospel go to all the nations. As a result, many of the community went out into the world to preach the Gospel, some even selling themselves into slavery in order to fulfill the great commission.

Zinzendorf's theology was extraordinarily Christ-centered and innovative. It focused intensely on the personal experience of a relationship with Christ and an emotional experience of salvation rather than simply an intellectual assent to dogma. Zinzendorf cast the Trinity and the believers in terms of a family, referring often to the Holy Spirit as “mother.” He accorded women a much more substantial role in church life than was normal for the 18th century. He permitted women to preach, to hold office and to be ordained.

Zinzendorf's thinking was also focused on church renewal. He envisioned the Moravians not as a separate denomination but as a dynamic renewal society which would serve to revitalize existing denominations and help create new types of work in mission areas. There are numerous communities in Pennsylvania where the Moravians would plant a church and school for the settlers and Native Americans and then transition it to whatever denomination they perceived to be the strongest in that area.

It is important to note that Zinzendorf’s emphasis on evangelism and a personal, spiritual relationship to Christ were largely uncommon for most of the established Protestant churches of the 18th century. From the beginning his philosophy of missions was highly developed. He insisted that missionaries learn the language of those they sought to reach and that they live among those people with righteousness and good works to exemplify a life walked with God. In a period of slavery and racial intolerance, Zinzendorf adamantly maintained that all races and genders were special to God and none were superior. It is interesting to note that while other Christians fled to America to escape persecution, the Moravians voluntarily journeyed here to evangelize.

The Moravian Brethren believed that Christianity should be a "religion of the heart," which went against the growing acceptance of Enlightenment beliefs. They emphasized experience of faith and love over doctrine and thus were more accepting of varying denominational differences. In fact, Zinzendorf may have been the first churchman to use the word "ecumenism," a movement promoting unity between different Christian churches. The Moravians also placed special importance on community; families' allegiances were replaced by "choirs, groups delineated by age, sex and marital status.

Zinzendorf's wealth, leadership and piety proved the necessary means for establishing the vision for this movement. Efforts were made to reach out beyond the Moravian fold to reflect Zinzendorf in this connection to Lutherans, Reformed, Baptists and Wesleyans and the influence he had on men like William Carey. At the same time, elements of Moravian practice have been adopted among Evangelicals generally: Bible studies, small group efforts, prayer vigils and even the concept of a two day "Saturday-Sunday" Sabbath now common to the American culture.

A decade after Zinzendorf died in 1760 at Herrnhut, the Moravians had sent out at least 226 missionaries. Though the Baptist missionary William Carey is often referred to as the “Father of Modern Missions,” he himself would credit Zinzendorf with that role, for he often referred to the model of the earlier Moravians in his journal. In fact, after reading a Moravian missionary journal (first published in 1790), Carey exclaimed, “See what these Moravians have done! Can't we Baptists at least attempt something in loyalty to the same Lord?” It is also through the missions-minded Moravians that John Wesley came to faith. The influence of this small community at Herrnhut, which committed to unceasingly seek the face of God, has truly been historic and impossible to measure.

The noted American historian, Kenneth Scott Latourette, said of the Moravians: This was a new phenomenon in the expansion of Christianity, an entire community, of families as well as of the unmarried, devoted to the propagation of the faith. In its singleness of aim it resembled some of the monastic orders of earlier centuries, but these were made up of celibates. Here was a fellowship of Christians, of laity and clergy, of men and women, marrying and rearing families, with much of the quietism of the monastery and of Pietism but also with the spread of the Christian message as a major objective. It was not sustained by a minority of the membership, but of the group as a whole.

Mark Gunderman can be reached at gunderman2001@aol.com.

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