The Nature of the Church

There are certain essential features of the church which must remain unchanged but in the natural course of progress there would have been developments beyond the simplicity that existed in the church in the very beginning. There was a certain amount of development in the church during the lives of the apostles and it seems clear that further development would be needed after their passing if the Christian movement was not to disintegrate. Some innovations were to be expected even if there has been no apostasy. Innovation and apostasy are not necessarily synonymous.

It is our purpose to examine these developments to discover, as best we can, what were normal and good in contrast with those that reveal apostasy. With these results in view we hope to be in a better position to analyze our present condition and to point out at least some of the things needed to produce the conditions in the church that reasonably might have been expected to exist had there been only normal development without apostasy. It is the author’s hope that he may contribute something toward this end.

―Albert F. Gray