Drift and the Church

Two thousand years ago, a stepped up to John the Baptist on the bank of the Jordan River to be baptized. No one knew anything about Him. There were rumors and a fading memory of miraculous events that occurred in Bethlehem 30 years earlier, but nothing had come of it.

Who was this man? John seemed to know Him. Strangely, a dove descended on Him as He came up from being immersed in the water, and thunder sounded, or some said words were spoken from Heaven.

This man was different. He was the Son of God. He began a work, He would build a church, which has not finished its work, yet – 2000 years later.

Every great movement begins with one man, a man with a vision. Jesus was such a man. At an earlier time, Moses had been such a man. So had Abraham. Later, men like Martin Luther, John Wesley and William Sowders would be visionaries who would launch godly movements.

Because these men’s vision had been of God, they did not remain alone. Others caught the vision, and were attracted to the movement. In the case of Jesus, there were the twelve, the 70, various sisters, crowds at times, and 120 who truly caught sight of what the purpose of the vision was all about.

After the death of Jesus, the vision did not fail. Thomas thought the movement would die with Him. John 11:16. But it did not die. Jesus commissioned eleven men to carry on the work. It looked impossible. They were not rich. They were not educated. They were not leaders. They had no earthly power. Eleven men against the Roman Empire. Eleven men against the world. It was a venture in faith. But it succeeded.

What one man began to build, the church, continued beyond His death. It grew. It spread. It was no longer just a man, and those who followed Him. It became a movement.

The movement was innovative. For the next 40-70 years, the movement had great success. We know it as the Early Church. It spread first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then Samaria, and finally to the ends of the earth.

Those who had been personally recruited by the founder, such as Peter, and John, were instrumental in the phenomenal success of the movement. But others were added later, such as Paul, who greatly advanced the work. In a few years, the movement turned the world upside down. Acts 17:6.

Sadly, however, the leadership that stretched back to the Founder died off. A new generation began to replace the pioneers. The very success of the movement brought new pressures to compromise with the world. The movement began to drift off of its historical foundation.

Whenever a movement loses its core values and is no longer innovative and “cutting edge,” it begins to drift. Drifting is not deliberate progress toward a goal. Judges 2:10 speaks of a generation arising that knew not God, or His works for their fathers.

Every true church is only one generation away from apostasy. But it is not supposed to apostatize. Each generation is to lead the following generation into a relationship with the Lord. Psalms 145:4 says: “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.”

If you read Jude 3-4, you will see that the posture of the Early Church changed from one of evangelism and spreading truth, to one of defending truth. Why? Because the church was apostatizing, drifting off of its foundational truth and order.

By 90 A.D., there were only 7 churches still in Asia Minor in Revelation 2 & 3, and five of those were in danger of the candlestick being removed. Many churches were still meeting, with people attending services, but they were no longer on the foundation of truth and New Testament order that they had been built upon years earlier.

The movement lost its edge. Things were still happening. There was still a form of godliness, but they were denying the power thereof. New leaders compromised with the world, and preached easy messages, drifting away from life-changing truth. The movement became a mechanism.

A mechanism looks like a movement, but there is no vision, no forward progress, no innovative advancing of the original vision. People are still there, but they are just going through the motions.

The most dangerous time for any organization or institution is when it begins to drift from a movement to a mechanism. If the drift cannot be impeded, and resisted, it will drift into a mechanism, and then on to be just a monument.

A monument, like a statue, looks very nice, but there is no life there. The Pharisees started in the third century, B.C., before the Maccabean Wars. They began with the noble goal of resisting the corrupting influence of Greek culture and to encourage the people to remain true to the Mosaic law. They started well, but drifted off their foundation. 300 years later, Jesus said they were just a monument – He called them “whited sepulchers” in Matthew 23:27.

Man > Movement > Mechanism > Monument

This process; from man, to movement, to mechanism, to monument, happens in every organization over time. It happens in corporations. What happened to the companies that made trolleys and steam engines? If they failed to innovate and advance, they became a mechanism, a monument, and disappeared. Like many monuments to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, they are now gone.

A man named Sears had a vision. A man named Roebuck joined him. They began selling merchandise by catalog. After they retired and after their deaths, other men and women turned their vision into a movement. Sears became the number one retailer in America – no other store chain was even close. But in the 1960s and 1970s, Sears became a mechanism. The innovative edge that Sears brought to retailing slipped away. Nobody had a vision of the times. Nobody saw what was happening. Today Sears is in danger of becoming a monument, a fossil, unless someone can impede the drift.

The fate that befell Woolworth Co. and Montgomery Ward will afflict every mechanism. Drifting away from the innovative, foundational principles that built the movement will always result in a mechanism and eventually a monument.

Fellowships, even those originally commissioned of God, do not last forever. The Early Church apostatized in less than 90 years. Martin Luther, John Wesley, and other men launched powerful movements, but those movements became mechanisms – and even monuments. The Lutheran church today is a monument to Martin Luther.

Our fellowship was started by the Lord giving a man a vision. That man was William Sowders. He imparted his vision in others, and a movement was formed. That movement continued and grew after his death. But he died over 50 years ago, and his movement has been in existence for some 90 years. Are we in danger of drifting off the foundation and turning into a mechanism, or even a monument?

This is not about the restoration of truth – truth is progressive. Historical drift is about the loss of innovation, losing the “cutting edge” mentality, and drifting off the foundational principles that were innovative, and were distinguishing characteristics of this movement when it began on the banks of the Ohio River.

What was innovative about the Body of Christ under Bro. William Sowders? It wasn’t just the doctrines – for every fellowship has doctrines that are distinct. It wasn’t just a message of holiness, for there were many holiness movements 90 years ago. We need truth restored, we need holiness. But there was something more.

It would take hours to detail the differences between the Body of Christ and nominal Christianity. As I see it, there are five major points of difference – and each one could inspire several messages. This fellowship, under Bro. William Sowders was unique in doctrine, spirit, purpose, order and organization.

By doctrine, I do not mean that Bro. Sowders had all of the truth on every subject. Rather, I refer to the regard that we have for the Word. Every denomination has theologians, but I know of no other fellowship that holds the Bible in such high regard. Not just the ministry, but the entire congregation is admonished to read, study and understand God’s Word. No twenty-minute sermonettes; but anointed preaching by the hour.

The spirit that characterized this movement was charity. I Corinthians 13. No other fellowship or organization has focused on this vital aspect of fellowship. The purpose of Bro. Sowders movement was different: to prepare members to be a part of the bride of Christ, and to prepare the church to give a final witness to the world.

The order of this fellowship was different. There was a different way of worship. Church services were not pre-planned and programmed. People were admonished: “Watch the Spirit. Be led by the Spirit.” The operation of the church was entirely different from Babylon. Finally, the organization was different. This fellowship had no earthly headquarters, no membership list, and no structured hierarchy.

What Bro. Sowders and a core of fellow-ministers and followers began has become a movement. But if we drift off of our foundation, we will become a mechanism, or even a monument. The purpose of this article is to identify the danger, sound the warning, and to encourage ministers and saints to impede the drift that will sap us of our vitality and life.

Every true church, and every movement, and even every business venture eventually drifts off of its foundation, and loses its effectiveness. The third chapter of the book of Judges shows the cycle of historical drift. In Judges 3:7, Israel did evil. Verse 8: The anger of the Lord burned against Israel. In verse 9 Israel cried out to the Lord. So in verses 9-10, the Lord raised them up a deliverer. Then in verse 11, Israel had peace (during the lifetime of the judge.) Throughout the book of Judges, and even the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the cycle repeated again and again.

This historical drift happens in churches also. II Thessalonians 2:1-2 shows that Paul knew the church would drift away into apostasy. It is very difficult to keep a church in the truth. By the close of the New Testament record, in Revelation 2 and 3, there were only seven churches in Asia Minor, and five of those were in danger of going out of existence. One of those churches was in Ephesus. That church was in danger of losing its first love. It had been founded only 40 years earlier. Paul spent three years, night and day, warning them. He wrote them an epistle. He sent Timothy there. John moved there after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. But the church was still drifting.

Paul and Barnabas spent much of their first missionary journey in the Roman province of Galatia. In Acts 13 and 14, during the years A.D. 45-48, they founded churches in Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and other cities. Those churches were put upon a foundation of truth. But in only ten years, historical drift set in. The Galatian churches were drifting off of the foundation of truth. Judiazers were leading them into error. Around A.D. 57, Paul’s first epistle to be preserved in the New Testament, was written. It was to the Galatians. What did he say?

In Galatians 1:6, Paul wrote that he was astonished that they were already moved off the foundation. Then in Galatians 3:1-3, he said “You must have been bewitched, to leave the truth; you are foolish.” Finally, he said He was perplexed, and was going back to the beginning, laboring to re-form the foundation that had built the church. Galatians 4:19-20. The statements in the fourth chapter of Galatians give hope. Even when a church has drifted off the foundation, Paul felt that active intervention could re-form that foundation.

The Galatian situation is not an isolated example. The book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who had drifted away from the truth. Hebrews 5:12 says they ought to be teachers, but needed one to teach them again the first principles of the oracles of Christ. And Hebrews 2:1 warns, “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.” (The NIV translation says, “so that we do not drift away.”)

All of the epistles written late in the history of the Early Church were designed to impede this drift. All three of John’s epistles were written to counter false doctrine and false teachers. II Peter warns against false teachers. Paul had his Hymaneaus, Philetus, and Alexander. John had Diotrephes. Jude confronted men who crept in unawares.

I realize that the restoration of truth is progressive. I am not talking about that. I am referring to drifting away from the foundational principles that launched our movement. A drift into worldliness will destroy us. Drifting into Babylonish ways will turn us into a mechanism or a monument. Our fellowship cannot be like everything else in Christianity. We cannot be like Babylon. We must continue to be different. Every church and every movement eventually drifts. We are foolish if we think that somehow we are immune. If Ephesus, Corinth, Antioch, Jerusalem and other great and powerful churches drifted, we will too. We have to counteract drift.

Eight Steps to Impede Drift

There are several important principles that every church and movement needs to keep in mind:

1. Drift is inevitable
2. Drift is more deadly than Satan’s frontal assault
3. What one generation rejects, the next generation tolerates, and the third generation embraces
4. Drift means that complacency gradually replaces commitment
5. Drift means the desire to serve is gradually replaced by the desire to be served
6. Drift means that wants evolve into needs
7. Compromise feeds drift
8. It is almost impossible to take a firm stand while sliding down a slippery slope
9. The death of powerful leaders is a critical time in drift (People wanted Rehoboam to ease up; new leaders compromise for popularity; etc.)
10. Churches don’t drift – leaders and people do
11. Almost no religious movement has retained spiritual vitality into a second century
12. Drift can be impeded