One Voice at Herrnhut

In 1727, Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf faced an impossible situation on his estate in Saxony. He had offered refuge to persecuted Christians from across Europe — Moravians, Lutherans, Reformed believers, Schwenkfelders, even Anabaptists — and they were tearing each other apart. Theological arguments erupted daily. Factions formed. Some refused to worship alongside those they considered heretics.

Zinzendorf went door to door through the village of Herrnhut, listening, pleading, pointing each household back to Scripture. He drafted a covenant grounded not in uniform doctrine but in shared devotion to Christ. On August 13, during a communion service at the Berthelsdorf church, something broke open. Former enemies wept together at the Lord's Table. Moravian elder Christian David, who had once fled persecution in Bohemia with nothing but the clothes on his back, knelt beside a Saxon Lutheran who had once refused to speak to him.

From that single act of reconciliation, a prayer vigil began that continued unbroken for over a hundred years. The Herrnhut community sent more missionaries in twenty years than all Protestants had in two centuries.

Paul wrote that the God of endurance and encouragement would grant believers to live in harmony with one another, so that "together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." At Herrnhut, divided refugees discovered what Paul promised — that the God of Hope could fill them with all joy and peace in believing, until hope itself overflowed.