8| A Movement With an Expiration Date
Lessons from Herrnhut’s Rise and Fall
This is part eight of the Boxed Wine & Bad Ideas series on how we killed a church movement and how we can get it back.
Herrnhut
“Herrnhut should only continue as long as the purposes of God go forth unhindered.” — Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf
Recently I had the chance to take a stroll through the town of Herrnhut, Germany, where our story began. As I slowly browsed through the town and imagined life in the 1700s, I looked up and saw a bell in the courtyard of the local Moravian church.
The symbol of the bell in that town represents the birth and the death of this once thriving movement. The story of the bell gives us insight into how this humble, Spirit-filled, globe-shaking “church within the Church” lost its saltiness and, at the same time, left us with maybe the most valuable lesson I’ve found on movements within the Church.
The Bell Story
The inhabitants of Herrnhut were once people who would face death while sporting calm grins and letting recited hymns fall out of their mouths. By the time World War II came around, however, that had all changed. In the early 1900s many, if not all of those in Herrnhut decided to roll over and show their bellies and support Hitler and the Nazi party. Most Christians in Germany did the same.
Their town was eventually captured by the Soviets and the church and town center was set on fire. After the fire, miraculously there was only one thing standing: the bell tower in the courtyard.
“The Herrnhut congregation originally owned three bells, that […] were surrendered to the Nazi party for the German war machine during previous years. Immediately after the war ended, congregations across Germany began searching for bells to fill their belfries. Amazingly, a Moravian congregation in northern Germany located the only remaining bell from Herrnhut not melted down for military use. The bell’s authenticity was confirmed because it contained a quotation that Zinzendorf had inscribed on it. After two years, this bell was returned to the Herrnhut bell tower. We were stunned to learn that the stanza on the bell read, “Herrnhut should only continue as long as the purposes of God go forth unhindered.” That the bell tower was the only structure left intact reveals that God wanted this message to sound as clear as a bell to future generations. When the purposes of God ceased to go forth unhindered, Herrnhut ceased to exist.”¹
Herrnhut is not dissimilar to many men and women with high hopes and noble ambitions. Over time, an ideal gets held onto rather than the person of Jesus Christ and eventually the narrow road seems unfindable.
In my first book, The Millennial Manifesto: The Paradox of Progress, I wrote about the Constitutional Convention, and how a quote from George Washington stuck out above everything else that I had researched.
“It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”
George Washington and Count Zinzendorf, it seems, had a similar view on their work; in a way, it wasn’t designed to last. Washington knew that the Constitution wouldn’t be perfect and that they were forming a country full of people that were going to make a mess of things. The quote on that bell displays the same heart behind our friend, the Count. It’s just the way it goes on this side of Heaven. We forget. We screw stuff up. We lose our way.
The place of Herrnhut, just like all great movements, was never meant to last. It was meant to set a standard that could be rediscovered for those who care enough to search it out. Like hidden treasure in a field, those who care can grasp on the standard that was set when the move of God was a move of God.
The moment that our work becomes about our name or brand, our church or project, we miss maybe the most important lesson of movement: we cease to follow the example of the humble servant on a cross that is our God.
The moment I feel that what I do must directly impact my budget, my board, my name, my ambition, my lifestyle, or my image for it to be successful, then construction of the inevitable wine box begins.
For example, Jeremiah’s life turned out anticlimactic and pathetic. Would you consider his story successful? Jeremiah struggled because he didn’t see the results that everyone else saw. In Jeremiah 12, he’s whining to God about his lack of success and the way people see him as pathetic as they just live easy. God responds:
‘“If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?”
Jeremiah 12:5
God responded to him by speaking to who Jeremiah was designed to be. Of course you’re tired, Jeremiah! You’re swimming upstream, playing the same game everyone else is playing when I made you for something completely more — something different — something holy. If you asked to be consecrated then why are you confused when your life doesn’t look like everyone else’s?
Just like Jeremiah in that moment, we continue to use the metrics of Egypt, Babylon, Rome, and mainstream media to measure our success rather than the metrics of the Kingdom.
Paul spent years in prison. Would we follow a pastor like that now? The disciples were killed. Solomon, the dude who practically owned the whole world, said that everything sucks once you have it all so enjoy your work and your food and your drink and simply fear God and do what He says.
Les Brown used to say, “They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but everyone wants to find out for themselves.”
We have the privilege of borrowing the lessons from that past rather than wasting our time chasing the same wind that others before us did. We have the privilege of seeing where true joy regardless of circumstances comes from. Remember, this is chess, not checkers, and the win isn’t linear. Our greatest weapon is obedience, especially when it makes no sense.
I like systems. I’ll continue to use them and build them. I like plans. I’m going to continue to make them and follow them until God shows me where to break them. But all that sandstone, steel, and stained glass isn’t coming with us when we go.
What Remains
In The Ideal Life, Henry Drummond concludes his late 1800’s work with a chapter called, “How to know the Will of God.” He builds an argument for all of the good yet insufficient things that we hinge our faith on and utilize to hear God clearly. Because isn’t that what we all want? To hear Him. He finally tracks his whole argument down to one word: obedience. But he didn’t stop there, in that book he did something that I’ve never seen anyone do before. He tracked obedience down to something we can do, something in it all that we can control.
It was the word “willingness.”
Jesus, let us be willing, at any moment, to sacrifice who we think we are for who you created us to be and let us put our hands and minds to the work that will outlast the praise of men. Let our systems have an override button in your office and our plans be on paper and not in our hearts. Let your Church be built off of trust and holiness, not our own labor and our own brilliance. If it’s true that you’re the great iconoclast, then let each day bring a fresh revelation of a new part of you that we didn’t know existed.
You prayed for us to be one and your word never returns void, so to that let us say amen.
And as we pursue you, and as we become more like you, would you do it again?
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved — even though only as one escaping through the flames.
1 Corinthians 3:10–15 NIV
[1] Steve Thompson, “Herrnhut: A Prophetic Warning”
