The Apostate Church

It was one of those “series of events” that our Lord loves to orchestrate. I was introduced to some articles by Buff Scott, Jr. by my good friend Jon Zens, and like I always do, immediately looked up the author to find out more about him. There wasn’t a lot about Buff on social media but I did get his email and found out that he lived in Phoenix. Imagine my delight when I found out that Buff lived only 10 minutes away from me. I recently spent some time with him and found him still active at soon-to-be 97 years old. He’s been writing a weekly newsletter called Reformation Rumblings for almost 40 years and he has been a proponent of relational gatherings for almost 50 years. You can read a sample of his newsletter here. If you would like to be added to his mailing list, please contact me. The following is an excerpt of one of his three books where he defends relational gatherings and his friend Olan Hicks defends the conventional church model.

If we reflect upon what has been addressed and corroborated by heaven’s declarations thus far, I think it is safe to say that the early ekklesia was not composed of sects, denominations, churches, or religious parties. God’s colony of redeemed sinners functioned as a humane and evangelistic community. Their meetings were informal but orderly, serious and alive, responsive, and mutually managed. Ours are “services,” as at a funeral, largely non-responsive and non-stimulating.

The early meetings were bereft of pulpits, collections to buy and maintain flashy edifices and to keep an elite pulpiteer vocationally afloat, ritualistic nonsense, and pew-sitters. Their environment was family-like. Our gatherings resemble formal business meetings, where business or worship doesn’t begin until the hands on the clock are at a certain crossroads. Our overall anatomy mirrors a corporation, an institution, not a compassionate community of concerned ones.

What dissimilarity! We have retrogressed, not progressed. We have traded the holy for the common, the celestial for the terrestrial, the spiritual for the materialistic, the sacred for the plain. Yet there are many receptive and seeking hearts within the corridors of the apostate church. God will deliver them, if they are willing to remove their soiled garments and replace them with garments of reconciliation. His children no longer need wallow in the partisan litter of the religious establishment, for God will raise up reformers to rescue His elect. He always has. He always will.

But it isn’t likely He will penetrate the divisive armor of those whose hearts are solidly enslaved by the institutional church, and whose deep-seated infirmity is “mad church disease.” The divisive spirit is a work of our carnal nature. It is reflected thusly: “We are right and others are wrong; we are the only church Jesus founded; no one else regards the Bible as the only source of authority as we do; all of our teachings are from the Bible and are error free.”

As long as this separatist spirit lingers within the contemporary church, she will never be able to apply a healing balm to “mad church disease.” Freedom in Jesus will always escape those who parrot this mindset and exhibit a cliquish spirit.

It is indeed a rarity to find freedom in the apostate church. The reason is that the party line must be parroted, her precepts supported, her traditions preserved, and the “church system” idolized. If we veer a little to the right or lean a little to the left, we will soon be verbally disciplined and told to shape up or ship out-or worse. This is not freedom-it is bondage. To find a man who is truly free to speak his mind and heart while employed by a church, or by one of her organizations, is like looking for shelter in a hailstorm. Even pew-sitting peasants are not allowed the freedom to speak their heart and mind without ecclesiastical reprisal.

The only way to be free in Jesus is to cast off our shackles and disavow the sectarian systems religious parties that have subjugated us, and that includes all of them. This I have done. This I will not undo. No church or religious organization upon the face of planet Earth has one bit of control over my life, my mind, or my beliefs. I will no longer be a bondservant to any of them. My only Master is Jesus and He alone. I will forever be His slave. I refuse to bow to any other. “Give me freedom or give me death” will always be my cry. For without freedom to think, to dissent, to investigate, and to question, our walk with the Lord would be hard to negotiate.

In a couple of places in this excerpt Buff mentions Mad Church Disease which is the title of one of Buff’s books. I hope to review it soon.