Contents
For three hours on May 12, 1727, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf addresses the residents of Herrnhut. Before him sit just over 220 people who five years earlier had no connection to one another and who by now are barely on speaking terms. At the end of the day they sign a common set of statutes. Three months later the settlement is seen as having been founded anew. An example of the Team Principle of Identity.
A Settlement Falls Apart
Situation
In 1722 Protestant refugees fleeing religious persecution in Moravia arrive at the Berthelsdorf estate in Upper Lusatia. It belongs to Count Zinzendorf (1700–1760). Led by the carpenter Christian David, they build a settlement near the village and call it Herrnhut – “under the Lord’s watch.” The place attracts Christians of very different stripes. After five years more than 220 people live there. And they quarrel. One point of contention: does Herrnhut belong to the Lutheran parish of Berthelsdorf, or is it a congregation in its own right? The camps harden to the point that some residents call the count the “Beast” of Revelation.
Connection to the team principle
These people have a great deal in common: they are Christians, many are refugees, all live in the same place. That is not enough for a “we.” A shared situation is not yet a shared identity. As long as it remains unclear who “we” actually are and what we stand for, every dispute comes down to “me” against “the others.”
From House to House, Then the Signature
Situation
Zinzendorf steps in. He visits the residents one by one, house by house. On May 12, 1727, he gathers the community and speaks to it for three hours. The residents adopt the statutes, the “Brotherly Agreement,” and sign them. The statutes govern how they live together. The residents confess their quarrels and commit themselves to love and simplicity. Later Zinzendorf discovers how closely these rules resemble the order of the old Unity of the Brethren, which had been banned in 1620.
Connection to the team principle
The Team Principle of Identity says: shared values turn “I” and “the others” into a “we.” In Herrnhut this happens in two steps. First comes a conversation with each individual – values cannot be decided over people’s heads. Then comes an explicit commitment, sealed with a signature. “We just happen to live here together” becomes “This is what we have signed up for.” The fact that the new rules echo an older tradition also gives the young community a lineage.
The Summer of 1727
Situation
A signature alone does not make a community. On August 5, Zinzendorf and fourteen brothers spend a night in conversation and prayer. On August 10, Pastor Rothe is swept up in the revival during a service. A few days later, the people of Herrnhut and Berthelsdorf celebrate Communion together in the Berthelsdorf church. Accounts differ on the date: most give August 13, 1727; a few name August 12. The congregation’s diary records, in essence, that on that day they learned to love. To this day the Moravian Church regards it as its spiritual birthday – its Pentecost.
Connection to the team principle
The signed statutes set out what is to hold. The shared experience makes it their own. Many teams know only one of the two: the mission statement on the wall that no one has ever lived, or the powerful shared experience from which nothing binding follows. Herrnhut shows the sequence that lasts – first clarity, then the experience that seals it.
What Follows from the “We”
Situation
Two weeks after Communion, 24 men and 24 women commit to praying in turns, one hour a day each. This round-the-clock prayer watch continues for more than 100 years. The community is organized into “choirs” by age, sex and marital status. The Daily Texts (Losungen) have appeared in print since 1731 and today are published in more than 50 languages. As early as 1732 the first missionaries leave for St. Thomas in the Caribbean, and in 1733 for Greenland – from a place that at the time had a few hundred inhabitants. In God’s Acre, the community’s cemetery, all the gravestones are alike, as a sign that before God there are no distinctions. Today the Moravian Church has more than a million members worldwide, more than half of them in Tanzania.
Connection to the team principle
A clarified identity releases energy that was previously tied up in conflict. And it creates its own forms: a fixed rhythm, small groups, daily words, identical gravestones. Through such forms newcomers learn who “we” are without anyone having to explain it to them.
Key takeaways
Key Lessons
- Don’t count on a shared situation to create a “we.” Spell out what your team stands for.
- Talk to each person individually before you commit the whole team to something.
- Make your shared values binding – in writing, and in a way that everyone agrees to personally.
- Once things are clear, create a shared experience that seals them. Paper alone doesn’t bind people together.
- Give your values everyday forms: fixed rhythms, small groups, visible signs.
Summary
In 1727 Herrnhut was a divided settlement of people from different backgrounds and traditions. Through one-on-one conversations, a signed set of rules and a shared experience in August, it became a community that only a few years later was sending missionaries out into the world. The “we” did not grow out of where people came from but out of values to which everyone had explicitly committed – which is exactly what the Team Principle of Identity describes.