One heart and soul
The Moravians at Herrnhut
A scattering of religious refugees came looking for shelter, and Count Zinzendorf gave it to them on his estate, the place they named Herrnhut. They arrived a quarrelsome, mismatched lot, and for a while they lived like it. Then in 1727 something broke over the community, and the bickering gave way to a unity the world had not seen in such a form since the book of Acts. They became, as Luke says of the first believers, of one heart and soul. Out of that knitting came two astonishing things. The first was a prayer watch, lit and never allowed to go out, hour after hour, that is said to have burned on without a break for a hundred years. The second was a flood of missionaries sent to the ends of the earth, some of them reportedly willing to sell themselves into slavery if that was the only way to reach the enslaved. Their break was not a leaving but an entering: out of ordinary, comfortable, every-soul-for-itself Christianity and into a shared life so total it frightened the watching church.
“The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.”
— Luke, of the first believers — Acts 4:32 (WEB)
“See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity.”
This is Disconnect as a break into shared life. The phase here does not strip something away so much as pull you out of yourself, breaking with a privatized, comfortable faith and into radical community and reckless mission. It asks whether you will let your walk stop being yours alone.
You can hold the faith privately for a long time and call it devotion. A walk that is yours alone, a budget that is yours alone, a future that is yours alone, with God somewhere in the arrangement. There is a break waiting from exactly that, out of a padded, every-soul-for-itself faith and into something far more shared and costly. Herrnhut is a break with exactly that. What happened there was not better organization; it was a holy discontent with mild, manageable Christianity that finally broke through into something shared and costly. It can mean your resources opened, your time given, your plans held loosely, even your security loosened for the gospel's sake. They pooled their prayers until the watch never went dark.
They pooled their lives until missionaries went out willing to lose their own freedom. None of that is safe, and none of it is private. The question this break leaves is not whether you admire people who lived that way. It is whether your own faith has ever cost you the thing they paid: the comfort of keeping it to yourself. The break into one heart and soul is not a relic of 1727. It is still on offer, and it still asks for everything you would rather hold back.
The Church is renewed, again and again, by people who break with comfortable individualism and recover the one-heart-and-soul life of the first believers, who held all things in common. The Moravians at Herrnhut were one such recovery: a prayer watch that reportedly burned on without a break for a hundred years, and a flood of missionaries who carried the gospel to the ends of the earth, some willing to lose their own freedom to reach the enslaved. That was no one-time wonder of 1727. It is one of the recurring ways the LORD revives His whole Body, pulling it out of privatized religion and back into shared resources, relentless prayer, and sacrificial mission. Before a watching world, the Church knit into one heart and soul is a sign the surrounding culture cannot explain.
What cannot be shaken is the unity the Spirit gives, not the unity we manufacture. Communities form and scatter; comfort comes and goes. But the one heart and soul that God knit at Herrnhut was His doing, and the life He pours into His people that way is among the things that remain when the rest is shaken loose.
- Where have I kept my faith private and comfortable when God may be calling me into something shared?
- What would it cost me to live with others of one heart and soul, and am I willing to pay it?
- Is there a holy discontent with mild Christianity in me that I have been quietly talking myself out of?
Lord, I have held my faith close and called it my own. Break me out of the comfort of keeping You to myself. Knit me to others of one heart and soul, and make me willing to give what such a life costs. Amen.