Praying Together

Opening

Good morning church. I know the usual Wednesday typically incorporates a full sermon. However this morning I am going to only give a sermonette, followed by some practical teaching and then some guided practice in which all of you will participate. The goal of today is for Airport Baptist Church to be better equipped to pray together on Sunday mornings before the service and hopefully incorporate this method of praying together in Sunday schools and Wednesdays services as you all see fit. So lets start by looking at some church history.

Power of Prayer in Church History

Count Nicolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf was born in Dresden, Germany, in a Pietist noble family in 1700. The Pietists were Lutherans who sought to know Jesus personally and to live a godly life.

At the age of six Zinzendorf committed his life to Jesus. In Childlike simplicity he wrote love letters to Jesus and threw them out the windows of the castle. At ten he was sent to school in Halle, the center of German Pietism.

He completed his education at the university of Wittenberg, and in 1721 purchased his grandmother’s estate containing the village of Berthelsdorf. Soon thereafter a leader of the Moravians, the spiritual decedents of Jan Hus, came and asked him if oppressed Moravians could take refuge on his estate. Zinzendorf agreed, and in December 1722 the first ten Moravians arrived. They were given a plot of land that was named Herrnhut, meaning “The Lord’s Watch.”

Because the Pietist Pastor of the Lutheran church in Berthelsdorf shared the Moravians’ vision in his preaching, Lutheran Pietists soon became part of Herrnhut, as did the Reformed and Anabaptists. By 1727 the population had reached three hundred, but divisions were arising.

There were language barriers as well as squabbles between the Moravians and the Lutherans over church liturgy. Zinzendorf, determined not to let Herrnhut destroy itself, he moved there himself, going house to house trying to bring unity to the community.

On July 19, 1727, Zinzendorf organized all the adults into spiritual “bands” of about three. He grouped people with a natural affinity for one another and appointed one of them as leader. They began to meet together regularly to pray, confess, repent, exhort, and share one another’s burdens.

The people in Herrnhut saw their differences start to fade as they focused on one another. On Sunday, August 13th, the pastor of the Lutheran church gave an early morning address at Herrnhut to prepare them for the Lord’s Supper. The people then walked to the church in Berthelsdorf. The service began with the singing of the hymn, “Deliver me, O God, from All My Bonds and Fetters.”

The congregation became gripped with such emotion that the sound of weeping nearly drowned out the singing. Several men prayed with great fervor. Zinzendorf led the congregation in a prayer of confession to their earlier broken fellowship. Then they partook of the Lord’s Supper together. After the service people who had previously been fighting embraced one another, pledging to love one another from that time on.

The residents of Herrnhut became the first missionary-sending Protestant church. When Zinzendorf died thirty-three years later, 226 missionaries had been sent out from Herrnhut to St. Croix, Greenland, Romania, and Constantinople. One of every sixty of the early Moravians became a missionary.

The day before he died, Zinzendorf asked a Moravian friend, “Did you ever suppose in the beginning that the Savior would do as we now really see in the various Moravian settlements…amongst the heathen?…What a formidable caravan from our church already stands around the Lamb.”

The next day Count Von Zinzendorf joined that caravan adoring the Lamb upon his throne.

Reflection

Now, it was a variegated christian community made up of people from different places, with different languages, different cultures, yet all suffering persecution for the same faith. The fighting came about not in regards to essential doctrines of the faith, and not about sin in the camp. But the conflict was in regards to liturgy. This means the order of the service, the type of music, the type of hymns, who sang or lead worship and who didn’t and other various elements of the service. Perhaps even the location of seating or the cosmetics of the space being used was in dispute. Regardless of the specifics, the division was about personal preferences. Not absolute truth. Not sin. Has such type of infighting gone on here in Airport Baptist Church? Is it perhaps even going on now? What was the solution Count Zinzendorf sought?

He grouped people with a natural affinity toward one another and called them to regularly pray with each-other, exhort and bear one another’s burdens. This commission was begun on July 19th and by August 13th that same year, the Lord had so moved in their hearts through their praying together and their fellowship, to such a degree that they were repentant at all once! In the worship service, during the very liturgy that they were previously divided over, they became one people and were filled with love for one another, with the personal preferences that so divided being brought to nothing compared to the concern they now had for one another.