The Moravians

"Lo, through ice and snow, one poor lost soul for Christ to gain; Glad we bear want and distress to set forth the Lamb once slain." - Moravian missionary to Greenland


Sixty years before William Carey set out for India, Moravian missionaries landed on the West Indian island of St. Thomas to make known the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Moravians were a group of Protestants that esacaped from anti-Reformation reaction in Bohemia and Moravia (present day Czech Republic) during the 17th century and had taken shelter on an estate at Berthesdorf at the invitation of Nicholas Zinzendorf, an evangelical Lutheran nobleman. "The whole place represented truly a tabernacle of God among men. There was nothing to be seen and heard but joy and gladness." (Grant)

In the first 150 years of this "passionate and glad" community, the Moravian community was to send no less than 2,158 of its members overseas! Stephen Neil said, "This small church was seized by a missionary passion which has never left it."

"I have one passion, and it is Him, only Him," - Zinzendorf

My prayer is that we all find more of a deep love for Christ and for the world He was born to die for this Christmas!