The Moravian Idea:  Christ Is All
by the Rev. J. Kenneth Pfohl 

Who are the Moravians and what makes them different? This address was written by Bishop and  Pastor at Home Moravian Church

"We speak of our Church as (a Christ-centered church,) a church that centers all on Him. And we mean it very literally. We mean it with a positiveness difficult to sufficiently make clear. We mean it so certainly that we make Christ and Christ alone our creed. We are not a creedless church, but we are a church of a single creed — “Christ and Him crucified remain our confession of faith.” We seek to make Him our all and in all, the one great essential, the one thing needful. Synod after synod, speaking for the Church, has declared it: “Christ is all.”

It has never been the desire of the Moravian Church to add another creed to the many creeds of Christendom. We have considered that there were too many already. Our effort has been to unify them around the one essential fact of Christian faith, viz: a crucified Saviour. So we have become a Church of a single faith. If, for example, a brother comes to us saying, “Your forms of worship, your liturgies, your hymns and music are not like others,” we answer, “That is not material. To be found in faith in Christ Jesus is the essential thing.” Or another says, “Your form of government differs from others. They have the congregational, the episcopal, or the presbyterial, you hold to the conferential.” Again we would say, “It doesn’t matter. We do not consider it one of the essentials. But to have the heart washed clean in the Saviour’s blood and to love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity is the supreme need.”

 If there come one asking, “What must I do to be saved?” we answer with the apostle of old: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” He whose sins are washed away through the atoning blood of Christ is filled with loving desire toward His Saviour, and with deep gratitude and devotion he comes to Him praying with one of old: “Lord, what wilt thou have me do?” He is ready for any service and every service his Lord commands. To him Christ’s word is law, and obedience becomes the first rule of his life. Christ is Master and Lord.