Heroes and Reformers of History … No. 10

COUNT ZINZENDORF: ECUMENICAL PIONEER

A Lutheran nobleman, Nikolaus Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf, who died in 1760, was a pioneer in Christian unity, and he was the first to use the term “ecumenical” in its modern sense. He early on discovered that only love can unite the fragmented children of God. He insisted that cooperation is not enough, for Christians must become one in heart. “Unity is always of the heart” he had a way of saying.

He was one of those few people that were religious all their lives, even from childhood. When but a boy he helped organize with others his age what they called the Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed. They pledged themselves to love all mankind and to do what they could to spread the gospel.

These youthful experiences presaged a life of devoted service to Christ and his church. Zinzendorf (The name is fun to pronounce!) became a man of many talents. Besides being a statesman, he was a pastor, teacher, theologian, missionary, hymn-writer, and liturgist. The last named is not usually counted as a gift, but in his case it was in that as a bishop in the Moravian church, which he helped found, he took public worship very seriously and created a liturgy that sought a balance between the intellectual and the emotional. He wanted worship sufficiently structured that it not be slipshod, and yet free enough not to be too rigid.

But even his liturgy reflected his passion for unity. His “Call to Worship” was “Unite the children of God that are scattered abroad, and bring them once together from the ends of the world.” He wanted the Moravian Church to be “an ecumenical microcosm” in that it would both reflect the spirit of Christian unity and would set forth the principles by which a united church could be realized. In this respect he was like some of the early leaders of the Stone-Campbell unity movement who wanted “this Reformation,” as they called it, to be a call for the unity of all Christians and not the creation of still one more sect.

While Zinzendorf was never other than religious, it was while he was on tour of Europe as a young man that he had an “experience” that turned his life in a different direction. In an art gallery he came upon Domenico Feti’s “Ecce Homo” (Behold the Man), which shows Christ wearing the crown of thorns. An inscription below the picture read, “All this I did for you. What are you doing for me?” While he was at that time destined for service in one of the German states, he was so moved by the painting that he offered himself to Christ’s service.

He helped start a network of Herrnhut (Lord’s Place), which were retreat centers for the Moravians, who were often persecuted for being dissidents from the state church and part of the radical Reformation. Once the Holy Spirit came upon the Herrnhut in a special way, he came to see that his mission was worldwide evangelism and that his missionary vision was to be realized through the Moravians, who came also to be called the Brethren.

Evangelism and ecumenicity! Zinzendorf came to believe that they were inseparable. We are to win sinners and then blend them. This was also the way to unite the divided church - unite them in evangelism! He liked to call his people “Christian ones,” which to him meant the true children of God who have a passion both for the souls of lost mankind and the unity of all believers.

He wrote 2,000 hymns which were eventually sung in 90 languages. A believer in the power of singing, he lamented the fact that there is more dogma in our singing than in our prose, and he sought greater spirituality. He saw singing as a means to unity. One of his hymns, “Christian Hearts in Love United” illustrates this:

Saviour, now for strength we plead,

In Thy love together banded,

To advance where thou dost lead,

Doing what thou hast commanded;

Heart and hand we pledge Thee here,

Give us grace to persevere.

Zinzendorf was the first ecumenical hymnologist. He collected hymns belonging to the church universal. His hymn writing and collecting grew out of his passion for unity. If believers can sing together in adoration of a common Savior, they are already in an important way united, he figured.

He may not have attained his goal of uniting Christians through evangelism, but his noble effort remains a glorious example. And the small denomination he helped found, rooted in a call for both spirituality and evangelism, is a testimonial to what a unity-conscious people can do for their own generation. In the eighteenth century the Moravians sent out hundreds of missionaries and inspired countless others. By 1740 they had sent missionaries to the Virgin Islands, Gold Coast, Surinam, Greenland, North America, and South Africa. Even though small in number, their self-sacrifice, commitment, and love are unequaled in the history of missions.

In this country the Moravians did a lot of work among the Indians. One historian estimates that because they were so Christlike in their dealings with their converts that they achieved more than all of the Protestant efforts before them. They would go anywhere and pay any price. In order to witness for Christ in the West Indies some Moravian missionaries actually sold themselves into slavery.

Zinzendorf and his tiny denomination, who were more interested in winning people to Christ and uniting them into a loving fellowship than in adding converts to their own roster, can well serve as the conscience of the modem church. The cruel irony is that such a deeply spiritual, missionary-conscious, and unity-loving people as the Moravians should work themselves into virtual extinction. While they live on to some degree in the modem Brethren groups, the Moravians may have proved themselves to be what Zinzendorf wanted, an ecumenical microcosm that was willing to be dissolved into the Body of Christ at large.

It is rare when any denomination takes the claims of Christian unity seriously, and yet one would suppose in view of our Lord’s prayer for the oneness of all who believe in him, that it would have high priority with any church. It is remarkable that Jesus, while on his way to the Cross, would pray for unity with such passion. And Jesus, like Zinzendorf after him, coupled the unity of believers with the evangelization of the world. Our Lord knew that a divided church could never win a lost world. “May they be one even as we are one,” he fervently prayed to the Father, “so that the world may believe that you sent me”

That great truth touched the heart and soul of Count Zinzendorf with such intensity that he was willing to give up being a Count and identify himself with a displaced and persecuted people who were willing to go to the ends of the world in order to win them and blend them for Christ’s sake. That should make him and them both heroes and examples in the ongoing history of the church, and especially to a people like ourselves who are supposed to be a unity-loving people. —the Editor