Philipp Jakob Spener

The Lutheran church of the 17th century had inherited the doctrine of the Reformation, but its pulpits had grown increasingly formal, full of what critics called dead orthodoxy. Pietism arose in response: people needed to be born again, needed personal faith, needed to experience God for themselves.

Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) read Johann Arndt's True Christianity and experienced a spiritual renewal. In 1666, he became senior pastor in Frankfurt and opened a collegium pietatis in his own home, which he called an ecclesiola in ecclesia — a little church within the church. In 1675, Pia Desideria was published in Frankfurt.

Spener later left Frankfurt, moving through Dresden to Berlin. Halle University formally opened in 1694, but its theology faculty had already been assembled: in October 1691, Breithaupt was appointed its first professor of theology; in December, on Spener's recommendation, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) was hired, taking up his post the following January. All of this was arranged by Spener working behind the scenes at the Berlin court. Breithaupt, Paul Anton, and Francke later became known together as the three pillars of Halle Pietism.

Spener never came to teach in Halle, yet everything Halle became hung on that single letter of recommendation. An ecclesiola in ecclesia — a few people gathered in a home, believing in earnest — is a picture our fellowship's brothers and sisters will recognize. God's renewal of his church often begins with a small group: from the collegium pietatis in a Frankfurt home, to the orphanage in Halle, to this Chinese fellowship in the same city today — the line has never broken.