Henry Melchior Muhlenberg

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg had been a teacher at the Halle orphanage. In 1741, the son of August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) urged him to accept a call to North America; in 1742, he arrived in Philadelphia. He carried with him a Latin motto: Ecclesia plantanda — the church must be planted.

To plant is to set a sapling in new soil and let it take root. In 1748, he founded the first Lutheran synod in North America, drawing scattered congregations into one body. Later generations called him “the patriarch of American Lutheranism”; the University of Halle still maintains a Muhlenberg research center today — neither the city nor the man has been forgotten.

Muhlenberg was not an isolated case; Halle was a supply line to North America for decades. In 1734, Protestants expelled from Salzburg (under the expulsion edict of 1731) founded a town in Georgia they named Ebenezer; both pastors who founded it had once taught at the Francke Foundations. Pastors, books, and medicine crossed the Atlantic from Halle, year after year.

In those days, Halle sent its people out and planted churches on the far side of the Atlantic; today the direction has reversed — a group of Christians from China has been planted in Halle. The fellowship that gathers, prays, and puts down roots in this city is doing exactly the work of that Latin motto: what is planted must live, and must grow.