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Young Adult Convo 2007
Prague, Czech Republic Herrnhut, Germany A Journey Home to Find our Future (part I)
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| This month. Student Pastor Joshua Viste provides us with a travelogue of his recent faith adventure through "Moravian" parts of Europe. Josh's tale will be continued in the September issue of The Star.
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| Convo 2007
A Journey Home to Find our Future
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Recently I had the privilege to take part in a pilgrimage to the land of our spiritual ancestors along with 100 other young adults participating in Convo 2007. Each year Convo is held somewhere new but because we are celebrating the 550th anniversary of the Moravian Church it seemed appropriate for us to venture to our spiritual homeland to see where it all began. | |
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It all started on July 2, 2007 as we traveled from Bethlehem, PA to JFK airport in New York City to catch our overnight flight into Prague, Czech Republic. Upon arrival in Prague we were given two days to tour the historic town and many of its tourist attractions which draw visitors from across the globe. Prague is a beautiful city which contains many amazing statues, the famous Charles Bridge and Prague Castle, and various historic buildings which once may have been visited by known persons like Mozart. Even in the midst of all this splendor nothing quite compared to one rather plain looking building found in Old Prague on a side street called Bethlehem Chapel. Although rather dull this site was the place where it all began for us Moravians, because it was the place where our revolutionary leader, Jan Huss, led worship and grew to challenge the Roman Catholic Church's abuse of power and influence. It was at this place where our Church's ideas first began and from this place that the first followers of Jan Huss' teachings ventured out. A half mile from that little church, in the center of Prague lies a much larger than life statue of Huss which is set as a reminder of protestant revolution which Huss started 100 years before Luther acted upon similar beliefs as Huss.
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Following two days of touring around Prague our group, like those very first followers of Huss, we traveled to the small town of Kunwald, located maybe 100 miles outside of Prague. It was at this place that those followers of Huss assembled and began to see themselves as becoming something more than Catholic, and it is in this place that they came to consider themselves to be a part of a new group of Christians called the Church of the Brethren or Unitas Fratram or now known as the Moravians. Following a tour of the restored building where our spiritual ancestors had gathered to essentially "start" the Moravian Church in 1457 we traveled a couple miles down the road to see a Linden Tree that had been planted by those same people and has survived for all 550 years that the Moravian Church has been in existence.
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Our fourth day in Europe and it was time to travel to Germany to continue our tour of our Moravian history, but on the way we needed to make a stop at a place known as Chalice Rocks. Chalice Rocks is an area covered in large boulders which were deposited by the glaciers of the Ice Age. Due to the terrain of the area it became the ideal hiding place for Moravians during times of persecution when they could be killed for practicing their beliefs and for gathering to worship. The terrain is filled with high and low places and plenty of caverns and ravines making it perfect for evading persons who may be following on horseback.
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Following our short visit to the Chalice Rocks we moved on to our destination in Germany - the small town of Herrnhut. We arrived in the evening and were soon greeted by the youth leader of the Herrnhut Moravian congregation as well as half a dozen of the high school and college youth members. We enjoyed a cookout together and then moved into an evening of games and dances. Throughout the weekend we were privileged to interact with and become friends with Moravians from another country. Besides making friends in Herrnhut we were able to view first hand God's Acre, the cemetery where hundreds of our spiritual ancestors are buried, the various Moravian missions of the area, the Herrnhut Moravian church, the bowl where the Moravian Daily Texts are drawn and many other interesting Moravian buildings and sites. During our stay at Herrnhut we were also blessed to take part in a Singstunde in German and also worship with the Herrnhut congregation in a service which was translated into both German and English.
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On our third day in Herrnhut, following worship, we walked 2km down the road to the nearby village of Berthelsdorf. Berthelsdorf is the home of the Zinzendorf estate which is not being renovated after nearly a century of neglect. More importantly Berthelsdorf is the town where Moravians gathered at the Lutheran church on August 13th, 1727 and felt the Holy Spirit move among them to heal arguments and unite one another in what is known as the renewal of the Moravian Church. It was also at this time that Moravians felt moved to preach the gospel message to the ends of the earth and thereby began to be the missional church that we know today. Following lovefeast and communion we also felt that it was time to likewise go back into the world to share that which we had learned from the trip and so we left that place and traveled back to Prague to catch our flight back to the states.
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