None of us lives for himself: Order of the mustard seed

Studying to understand a bit more of covenant and community, the most powerful example I've come into, is a true story of the fellowship of the young count Zinzendorf and his four friends in the 19th century Germany, the Order of the Mustard Seed. These aristocratic students formed a secret order of spiritual knighthood in order to be loyal to Christ no matter where life would lead them. When these young men matured, their focus became the integrity in positions of responsibility. These men committed
to be real to Christ
to be kind to all people   to send the gospel to the world

Faith of these men turned out to be a mustard seed indeed starting invisibly small but growing to become a great tree. Later years, some people who joined this order were kings, bishops and one of them worked to abolish slavery in his position in America. The secret order was revealed only in 1737 when an officer of a German army died in Amsterdam. These men demonstrated Christ through their lives. Today in the Western world we have hardly any good example of a vow or a covenant kept for a life time, let alone one shared with other people. No wonder we have hardly no communities through which Christ is demonstrated to the nations either.

24-7 prayer movement has written a new response to our need to commit to serve the Lord through our lives like Zinzendorf's fellowship did. Today's OMS is an loosely organised community of groups taking vow as an response to Jesus' call to live life authentic, relational and missional. The book "Vision and the Vow" reflects the meaning of the rules of live in today's society.

The original rules  of the Order are well worth reading (wonder how Christianity AND society would look like if all believers had followed these):   
"Everyone should work to further the Kingdom of God within the context of their own profession."
"We want to give THE WORLD the best of everything we have to offer."

Many of the rules are aimed at creating an atmosphere where we as Jesus-following community would got each other's back instead of stabbing it:
"We will support good WHEREVER it is found and never work against it."
"If any of has a personal opponent who is also a servant of God, and their work is going well, a member of the order will support what their opponent is doing. This way even the things that our enemies do for God will prosper, and great blessing will come from our actions."
"Where anyone has a good intention or has made a promising start, we will support them whole-heartedly. This will be so even when their plans are not yet fully worked out, so that out of it our common Lord may be glorified."

And finally:
"Even if we never see wonders... we are planting THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN INTO THE NATIONS and will look for the FRUIT which grows from it."

Comments

[emmanuel]

very cool stuff niina. i especially liked the last part you wrote about supporting eachother good whereever it shows up and eachother even if we're not fully on track.

keep on keeping on!