{"id":107,"date":"2013-05-23T15:12:39","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T15:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/user44356.vs.easily.co.uk\/?page_id=107"},"modified":"2018-07-05T13:06:04","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T12:06:04","slug":"daily-watchwords","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/?page_id=107","title":{"rendered":"Daily Watchwords"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Watchwords\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With the opening of each New Year many members of the Moravian Church begin reading the new edition of the Moravian Daily Texts,<\/em> or Daily\u00a0Watchwords<\/em> as it is familiarly called. The Moravian Church was a pioneer in the publication of a book for use\u00a0in public and private daily devotions. Even today in many countries in Europe\u00a0the Daily Watchwords<\/em> is the only such devotional book available.<\/p>\n

This custom can be traced to Herrnhut and to Count Zinzendorf. He\u00a0usually held the evening devotionals, and during the service on May 3, 1728, he read a “watchword” from Scripture for the people to remember and\u00a0think about during the following day. As the congregation grew and not all\u00a0 members were able to attend the evening service, someone was appointed to go to each home in the morning and announce the text for the day;\u2014 So long as he lived Count Zinzendorf arranged the texts, drawing them from a large collection which he gradually assembled from the Bible. In 1730 he\u00a0 chose in advance the texts for 1731, and they were printed in the first Text\u00a0Book. <\/em>This method of advance preparation has been followed ever since,\u00a0except that after the death of Zinzendorf the texts were arranged by a\u00a0committee instead of an individual. From the age-old collection of texts certain leading ministers of the Moravian Church in Herrnhut, Germany, draw a watchword for each day of the approaching year, prayer being offered that each may be a message\u00a0from God to His people. An appropriate doctrinal text from the New Testament is\u00a0then selected to accompany each watchword. These texts are then sent to each\u00a0province of the Unity and are translated into the language of the people. In\u00a0many places a few lines from hymns are added to each text to emphasize or\u00a0explain the thought.<\/p>\n

Each province is at liberty to include in its Daily\u00a0Texts\/Watchwords <\/em>additional material\u00a0as it considers desirable. The British edition includes a hymn verse and a thought for the day.\u00a0On\u00a0 Sundays it also includes the appropriate Bible references from the ecumenical three-year\u00a0lectionary – Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel – for each Sunday. Also\u00a0included is a set of prayers for the days of the week and for the memorial days\u00a0of the Church.\u00a0At the back of the\u00a0British edition is full details of every Moravian Church congregation in the British\u00a0 Province.\u00a0Worldwide the Daily Texts<\/em> is printed in 51 languages and\u00a0dialects, from Czech to Tibetan, Zulu to Inuktut (Labrador). The number of\u00a0readers cannot be stated even approximately, but it is widely used by members\u00a0of other denominations as well as by members of the Moravian Church. The popularity of this publication continues to grow each year with\u00a0more and more people across ecumenical lines sharing in the tradition of the Daily\u00a0Texts.<\/em> By bringing the Daily Texts<\/em> into your home or sharing with\u00a0others, you are carrying on a tradition of prayer and devotional reading that\u00a0has continued for 278 years.<\/p>\n

The Daily Watchwords for the British Province can be purchased at Fulneck or from Moravian Church House (see the Moravian Church website).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the opening of each New Year many members of the Moravian Church begin reading the new edition of the Moravian Daily Texts, or Daily\u00a0Watchwords as it is familiarly called. The Moravian Church was a pioneer in the publication of a book for use\u00a0in public and private daily devotions. Even today in many countries in … Continue reading Daily Watchwords<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":30,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-107","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1753,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/107\/revisions\/1753"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fulneck.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}