Who is Jesus and what it MEANS to follow him?

Are we supposed to have a ministry to his rememberance or continue his ministry? Herrnhut makes you ask these questions. Count Zinzendorf wanted to help the poor nd needy, and thus agreed to let persecuted "underground" believers move into his lands in German Saxony. A small village of 300 hundred people struggled to find a way to live as a community of believers from different backgrounds. But they did find a way; so God led them to continue prayer watch for 120 years, in 65 years send out 300 "lay" missionaries to the ends of earth becoming the first Protestant missionary movement in the history of the church: since the time of Celts they were the first people except the Catholics to send out missionaries (Czech Moravians, Luther, Calvin didn't do that). Moravians also established a simple communal lifestyle where generosity was essential, and resulted into elimination of extreme wealth and extreme poverty.

What I so specially like about Herrnhut is that there has never arisen any bigger church in the region; the spirit-filled believers were sent away to the end of the earth! Moravians understood that the "pagans", that is outsiders, poor and needy were in the centre of God's mission. Some young Moravians sold themselves into lifetime slavery in order to bring Christ to African slaves in areas forbidden for missionaries. Many people returned Herrnhut only in coffins to be buried in Herrnhut. Even walking in the graveyeard of Herrnhut you get the feeling that people who lie there have once actually LIVED! And I ask God that my community of people would rather live shortly with bright consuming flame than long with a flame hardly visible. Is it possible that dead bones challenge a generation by having more life in themselves than a living generation does??? In fact, Connect Europe was called together through vision of the valley of dry bones in Hez.37.

The ends of the earth those days were Greenland and Africa...makes me wonder what are the ends of the earth in God's eyes today? And the Moravians really established Jesus-following communities in the places they went: there is still a Moravian church in Greenland. In the museum in Herrnhut we saw an interesting picture of wine tree Jesus being the trunk, Moravian movement groving from that and producing branches all over the world through church planting. I think this is a sign of true encounter with God. We are to bear fruit to the nations, as much today than in those days in the beginning days of modern missions. And when Jesus can be in the centre, there is fruit. In Herrnhut you don't find big memorials of past history, but you can feel it is a place that God sovereignly visited. It is possible.

Comments

[sean]

My thoughts exactly.
Keep up the good blogging.
-Sean
__________________
www.SeanDietrich.com
"All my music is free."