By now everyone was sensing God was doing something new. Pastor Rothe invited the whole community to the Lord's Table on Wednesday, August 13. Zinzendorf visited each member of the community to prepare their hearts for the first time of communion since the months of discord.
Even as Pastor Rothe began the service, some started praising and weeping. God the Holy Spirit was clearly present in a deep and special way. Confession and forgiveness flowed. And when the service officially ended, clusters of communicants continued to fellowship together, savoring God's presence. 'From this day on', wrote one historian, 'Herrnhut became a living congregation of Jesus Christ.'
The new unity was expressed in a community lifestyle of worship, servanthood, love feasts, foot-washing ceremonies, and a 24-hour prayer chain began and was unbroken for over one hundred years! The Herrnhut residents began to receive in prayer a big vision of God's heart for the unreached peoples of the world.
Five years later, this small community of refugees began to send out missionaries to the Caribbean and Surinam, to Lapland and Greenland, to Morocco and South Africa, to Russia and Turkey, to Georgia and Pennsylvania. By the time [their leader] Zinzendorf died in 1760, it is said that this revived Moravian Church had done more for world missions than all the other protestant churches combined.
Source: Jeff Fountain - From "The Little Town That Blessed The World", pp. 39-40
Community of Jesus-followers Living Out John 17
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