What Happened to the Moravians?

Church planting is hot. Few things inspire me more than young adults called to vocational ministry who want to take the Gospel to the hard to reach. The tougher the city to reach, the more they want to go. The harder to reach the people group, the more willing they are to pay the price to take the Gospel to them.

Yet in preparing for our church's annual global ministries week when we bring in some of the partners we work with around the globe, I gained some new insights about the Moravians, a pietistic Christian sect that made frequent evangelistic visits to America and other nations during the colonial period. Most Christians only know about the Moravians as being instrumental in the conversion of John Wesley when he was returning from America to England as a failed Anglican missionary. The big reason for Wesley's failure is that even though he was an ordained Anglican clergyman, he was not truly saved.