Today, another quotation from E.H. Broadbent (The Pilgrim Church, p. 294):
[John] Wesley’s determined adherence to the Established Church prevented him from seeing those principles which are taught in Scripture regarding the churches of God, and he never attempted to follow up his Gospel preaching by forming churches, on the New Testament pattern, of whose who believed. Yet in 1746 he wrote, “On the road I read over Lord King’s account of the Primitive Church. In spite of the vehement prejudice of my education, I was ready to believe … that originally every Christian congregation was a church independent of all others!”
Dear John, why, if you were indeed ready to believe, did you not continue along the path of restoration? What caused you to retain all the peripheral “stuff” of Christianity?
A piercing voice is heard, through the millennia, above Wesley’s sincere, yet ultimately short-falling, question: why, oh why, do we continue to depend on man-made church structures? Why do we hold so tenaciously to a-biblical and even un-biblical hierarchies? It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Anglican Church within which Wesley was working, or the United Methodist Church that he spawned, or the Roman Catholic institution, or the Church of Christ, or “River of Grace Ministries,” a stereotypical nondenominational church where Joe Jones, “founding pastor,” calls the shots. They are all man-made structures.
It’s been said that
- When the early church “moved” to Greece, it became a philosophy.
- When it moved to Rome, it became an institution.
- When it moved to Europe, it became a culture.
- When it moved to America, it became a business.
However, this is not the end of the story. God, help us. Move us backward in principle as we move forward in time.
