The 100-Year Prayer Meeting

The one-hundred year prayer meeting

A hundred years before Martin Luther, a young Catholic priest named John Hus was burned at the stake for teaching against various Roman Catholic practices including Papal indulgences and the idea of Purgatory.  Hus’s followers remained underground, but faithful, and about fifty years after his death organized themselves into a church in Bohemia called “Unity of the Brethren.”  This group kept its identity separate, but closely aligned themselves with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.  In effect, they were the first Protestants.

Later, in the 18th Century, a young God-fearing Count named Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf allocated a part of his estate for the resettlement of about 300 refugees of this group from Moravia, establishing a village they named Herrnhut.  At age 27, the charismatic Zinzendorf was nominated leader of this group.  Zinzendorf put an end to the infighting currently plaguing the group by calling the growing community to prayer and corporate study of the Scriptures.

On August 12, 1727, the Moravians conducted an all-night prayer vigil.  They had groups of two or three people in a designated place in the village praying every hour throughout the night.  This evolved into a daily practice that consisted without interruption for over 110 years!  They took their inspiration from the passage in Leviticus 6:13, that the sacred fire was never permitted to go out on the altar.

During this season of prayer, their hearts began to burn for the lost in the world.  This little community sent out missionaries around the globe with the purpose of evangelizing the lost and planting like-minded communities based on the model at Herrnhut. Within the first fifteen years, this community of 300 people sent out seventy missionaries who went and lived among unreached people groups, learned their language and culture, and introduced them to Jesus Christ.  One small group of men voluntarily sold themselves into slavery so they could reach Natives in the West Indes who had been enslaved on sugar plantations.  In the American colonies, they established communities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.  All were planted to be centers for the outreach of the Gospel among the Natives.  One group of Moravian families, en route to Georgia to plant another colony, was caught in a severe storm which made the experienced sailors on the ship panic.  As the families sat in the ship’s hold, rocking violently back and forth, they joined their hearts in calm prayer.  Watching them was a young Anglican minister, himself on a mission to evangelize the Natives, wrought with fear but amazed at the calm courage of the Moravians.  After the storm subsided the young minister, John Wesley, wrote in his diary, “I have come to America to convert the indians, but, Oh, who will convert me?”  This eventually led to his conversion on Aldersgate Street soon after.

During these 100+ years of prayer, the little church established many ‘daughter’ churches and over 30 successful communities around the world based on the Herrnhut model, sent hundreds of missionaries around the world, and formed hundreds of revival communities around Europe.  It is said that the Great Awakening of the 1800s in England and America, as well as the great Protestant missionary movements to follow, were lit by the fires in the Moravian prayer room.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-1/prayer-meeting-that-lasted-100-years.html

https://www.moravian.org/2018/07/a-brief-history-of-the-moravian-church/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Moravian_Church

https://revivalandreformation.org/resources/all/the-moravian-100-year-prayer-movement