Last night, my family and I went to our church’s Christmas bonfire. No stage. No program. No carefully choreographed emotional arc that crescendos right on time with the bridge of a worship song written sometime after 2016. Just fire. Cold air. A few folding chairs that have definitely survived a couple potlucks. People standing around with coffee in their hands, my kids running in that feral-but-safe way children only do when adults have decided to relax instead of manage outcomes.

It was quiet. Not awkward quiet. Not someone-should-say-something quiet. But the kind of quiet where nobody feels the need to fill the space because the space itself is doing the work. We talked. We laughed. We stood and stared into the fire like people have done since God first figured out how to strike a spark in the dark. And it was… nice.

Which sounds like the weakest theological endorsement imaginable. But maybe that’s the point. Because somewhere along the way, the Church decided that nice wasn’t enough. That stillness was suspicious. That quiet fellowship needed a hook, a lesson, a takeaway, a QR code. Last night didn’t have any of that.

And somehow, it felt closer to Bethlehem than most Christmas services I’ve sat through.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good Christmas program. I’ll cry at a kids’ choir faster than a Hallmark movie gets a snow budget. Live nativities? Fine. Let the camel spit. It’s tradition. But we’ve reached a point where the Church treats December like it’s competing with Radio City Music Hall.

More lights.

More songs.

More rehearsals.

More exhaustion. And less… togetherness.

We cram our calendars so full of celebrating the incarnation that we forget to actually sit with the fact that God showed up quietly. No drum roll. No angelic overture audible to the whole city. Just a handful of shepherds keeping the night watch, wondering if they were hallucinating.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable reality Scripture keeps whispering while we’re busy shouting. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 Not be productive. Not be impressive. Not be booked solid from Thanksgiving to Epiphany. Just “Be still.”

Stillness makes us nervous because it removes our illusion of control. In stillness, you can’t curate the moment. You can’t steer the emotional temperature. You can’t distract people from themselves. Stillness is risky hospitality. Because when you invite people to slow down, you invite them to feel, grief, joy, doubt, longing, exhaustion. All the things we usually try to drown out with noise and movement.

The Moravians understood this long before we had production teams and worship countdown timers. They understood that hospitality isn’t just about opening your home, it’s about opening time.

Time to sit.

Time to breathe.

Time to be human in the presence of God without rushing toward resolution.

That’s not weakness. That’s discipleship with its shoes off.

Luke’s Gospel gives us one of the clearest pictures of holy stillness in all of Scripture. “And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them… And all who heard it wondered.” Luke 2:17–18

Notice the order. They see. They sit in it. Then they speak. Wonder precedes witness. The shepherds don’t burst into Bethlehem with a marketing plan. They don’t organize a symposium on angelic encounters. They don’t monetize the moment.

They stand there.

They look.

They absorb.

Only then do words come. Hospitality doesn’t rush people to testimony. It allows time for awe. And awe, when it’s real, cannot be microwaved.

Then there’s Mary. Poor, young, pregnant Mary blessed above all, carrying God in her body and chaos in her life. “But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” Luke 2:19

This is one of the most Moravian verses in the entire Bible. Mary doesn’t clarify. She doesn’t preach. She doesn’t defend herself to the comment section. She holds.

The Greek word for pondering, symballousa, means to throw together, to turn over slowly. This is contemplative hospitality. Making room inside yourself for what God is doing without forcing it to make sense yet. Mary hosts mystery. And we would rather solve it, label it, or rush past it than sit in the weight of it.

The Moravians weren’t born out of comfort. They trace their roots back to Jan Hus, burned at the stake a century before Luther. His followers were hunted, displaced, scattered. By the early 1700s, they were refugees in every sense of the word:

Spiritually bruised.

Politically unwanted.

Traumatized and tired.

In 1722, a group of them found shelter on the estate of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Germany. Different dialects. Different backgrounds. Different theological nitpicks. Translation: a church plant from hell. Infighting. Suspicion. Doctrinal hair-splitting that could make a Baptist convention blush. Zinzendorf didn’t fix it with a sermon series. He fixed it with a table.

The Lovefeast: Holy, simple, and intentionally unimpressive, the Moravian Lovefeast wasn’t communion, but it brushed shoulders with it. No bread-and-wine sacramental language. No clergy-centered hierarchy.

Just:

• Simple food (bread and coffee)

• Hymn singing

• Scripture read plainly

• Prayer

• Long stretches of silence

Everyone ate the same thing. Everyone sat together. No one was rushed. It was deliberately unimpressive. Because the point wasn’t transcendence. The point was togetherness under Christ.

This makes my New England heart happy living in the South, the land or sweet tea people don’t understand the importance of Coffee for the soul. And it was so important to the Lovefeast. Coffee wasn’t a luxury in 18th-century Europe.

It was:

• Affordable

• Communal

• Warm

• Stimulating without intoxication

Wine divides. Coffee gathers. That wasn’t accidental. Hospitality shapes theology. What you serve, how you serve it, and who you sit with says more than a doctrinal statement ever will.

Picture this, it was Herrnhut, Germany, August 13, 1727: You can’t program this. After months of shared meals, confession, prayer, and reconciliation, the Moravians gathered for communion. Something broke open. They described: Deep repentance. Reconciled hearts. Overwhelming awareness of Christ’s presence. Unity without uniformity.

This birthed a 100-year, 24/7 prayer watch. And from that stillness came one of the greatest missionary movements in church history. All of it traced back to tables before pulpits.

Stillness isn’t passive, it’s trust. “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:14 Stillness is not apathy. It’s faith that God is working even when you stop performing. We don’t like that. We’d rather stay busy than admit how badly we need Him to move without our help.

Watch White Christmas again. Yes, the singing and dancing are great, but the most powerful moments are the quiet ones. Two people talking. Regret. Longing. Grace. It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t remembered for its chaos, it’s remembered for George Bailey standing still, realizing he was never alone. Even Miracle on 34th Street understands that belief isn’t born in noise, it’s born in quiet conviction. The Church should know this better than anyone.

Bethlehem wasn’t l oud, Bethlehem wasn’t a stage. It was a shared space. God didn’t arrive with fireworks, even though millions of angels in the sky may make a few megachurch pastors jealous. He arrived as a baby who needed to be held. That’s hospitality from heaven.

So let me say this clearly: Thank you, Pastor Tom. Thank you to everyone at Cornerstone Church in Rincon, Georgia. Last night mattered. You modeled something ancient and holy. Something Moravian. Something desperately needed for everyone. You made space.

What would happen if churches stopped asking: “How do we get people to come?” And started asking: “How do we make space for them to stay?” The Moravians answered that with bread, coffee, silence, and songs sung shoulder to shoulder.

No hype.

No branding.

No pageant or living nativity. Just presence.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what the world is still waiting for.

Stay still Church, Stay still and welcome for your community, and as always…

Stay Salty & Burn Bright