Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

Founder of the Herrnhut Brethren; student at Francke's school for the nobility

As a boy, Zinzendorf entered Francke's school for the nobility in Halle in 1710 and stayed six years. During his studies, he and a few schoolmates formed a small fellowship they called the Order of the Mustard Seed. Later church history would make a great deal of room for that seed sown at a schoolboy's desk.

The desk

Zinzendorf entered in 1710 and left in 1716, spending six years at August Hermann Francke's (1663–1727) school for the nobility in Halle. Those were the high years of Pietism: the orphanage's buildings grew taller year by year, the Canstein Bible Institution's Bibles poured off the press, and dispatches from the mission front in India arrived in Halle on a regular schedule. The boy grew up breathing that air.

The Order of the Mustard Seed

During his studies, he and his schoolmates formed the Order of the Mustard Seed. The mustard seed is the smallest of seeds in Jesus's parables of the kingdom; the name these students chose for their fellowship was tiny, but the ambition behind it was not.

A tree grown tall

After leaving Halle, Zinzendorf founded the Herrnhut Brethren, known in church history as the Moravian Church. The line did not stop in Germany: from Halle, to Zinzendorf and the Moravians, to Wesley in 1738, and on from there to Methodism and the evangelical Great Awakening. Traced back to its source, it begins at a desk in Halle.

The smallest of beginnings

This city has seen a single seed grow into a tree written into church history. We who gather in this same city today remember the order of things: the affairs of the kingdom often begin from the smallest of beginnings, and God does not think little of a promise made at a schoolboy's desk.

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