A Communion That Changed the World

In the summer of 1727, the small village of Herrnhut in Saxony was tearing itself apart. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf had opened his estate to religious refugees from Moravia, but the community of three hundred had splintered into bitter factions — Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptists, and Hussite descendants arguing over doctrine and worship.

On August 13, during a communion service at the Berthelsdorf church, something broke open. Witnesses described an overwhelming awareness of God's presence falling upon the congregation. Men and women who had been at each other's throats for months wept, embraced, and prayed together through the night. The divisions dissolved like frost in morning sun.

What followed astonished the world. Within two years, these former refugees — most of them uneducated tradespeople — sent missionaries to the enslaved people of the Caribbean, the Inuit of Greenland, and the indigenous peoples of South Africa. They learned languages no European had bothered to study. They went in pairs, often at the cost of their own lives. By 1760, the Moravians had launched more missionaries than all Protestant churches combined over the previous two centuries.

When the Spirit fell at Pentecost, He did not create a quiet, private devotion. He shattered barriers of language and culture, turning a huddle of frightened disciples into a movement that crossed every border. At Herrnhut, the Almighty did it again — proving that what happened in that Jerusalem upper room was never meant to be a one-time event.