This article first appeared in The Call in 2006.

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“I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord GOD. I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.”

Ezekiel 34:14-16

We are a small people, scattered throughout the UK and the wider world. Although spiritually we trace our existence back to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the waiting disciples in Jerusalem, through the centuries to the awakening of George Fox, through the assaults upon the Truth which were resisted by the likes of John Wilbur in America and John G Sargent in Britain, through the independent existence of the Friends meetings of Bournbrook and Fritchley, as a contemporary organisation we date from 1993, when our discipline was drafted.

Since then we have held our yearly and half-yearly meetings fairly consistently. Certainly since 1995 there has been at least one regular, local meeting for worship in Jesus’ name (Goshen, in Scotland). By the Lord’s grace we have survived; we have carried a small but still-burning lamp.

We have attracted to us, and brought to the feet of Jesus, many individuals who have found fellowship through The Call. We have provided a Friend in Finland with a certificate to say he is one of our number, thus enabling him to bear witness against military service, to the Glory of the Lord. We have welcomed a little worshiping community (Richland-Ashland Friends) into fellowship with us. In so many little ways, the Lord has let us serve Him. We praise His name.

One of the most difficult issues in our witness and theology, is the Apostasy. With love, we say that as much as the non-professing world is fallen, so professing Christendom has fallen away from the Truth, abandoned principle and experience in favour of institutionalism, liberalism and dry bibliolatry. This is a big claim, and it seems arrogant of a little body to make it.

A Friend, often quoted, said of the Church that it consisted solely of “those who hear and obey the voice of the Shepherd”. Do we hear His voice? And if we do, what do we say to those who challenge us that “it must be a poor and weak Gospel which makes so little inroad into the Apostate world”?

The witness of the Friend whose writing came before us recently was this: that Scripture itself tells of apostasy, from Genesis when Adam and Eve were disobedient and were expelled from Eden; through Exodus where the Children of Israel bowed before a golden calf; through all the books of Chronicles and Kings, where so-and-so “did evil in the sight of the Lord”; through the exhortations of the prophets to Israel to turn back to the Lord; to the books of the Evangelists who tell as much of those who did not believe in Jesus Christ as of those who did; through the letters of Paul and the other Apostles which exhort believers to keep the faith and to avoid false prophets and those who would cause a schism in the Church; right to the book of Revelation, which tells how humankind is finally winnowed as God’s creation is wound up.

Faced with that great witness we may, if we stand on God’s sure ground and speak what He gives us by His Holy Spirit, that the Scriptural history of apostasy continued until the present day. It afflicted and afflicts not only those who do not believe and do not profess to believe, but in a great part those who do!

To whom does it fall to call the world, and especially professing Christendom out of apostasy? The same body that is called upon to preach the Gospel – the only body that can preach the Gospel – the body whose very existence itself preaches the Gospel. The Church of Jesus Christ.

Are we that Church? God will judge that.

We do know that we feel His favour, that some of us have been led to labour in His name, to speak in answer to His urging, and above all to keep alive our little flock by feeding on Him, hoping that all has been according to His plan, His will, and to His glory. We seek none for ourselves.

The number of small meetings which independently come together to wait upon the Lord has been growing in the UK. Not all of these use our discipline, or call themselves by our name. Some folk use the conservative discipline of Ohio Yearly Meeting, others came together from and interest in the work of the New Foundation Fellowship. But they are all folk whom we know and love, people whom we visit, with whom we worship. They are, one and all, folk who have turned their backs on the apostasy of the world, as we have. We may not share a name, but we share the Name, above which there is no other.

There is much questioning amongst these independent meetings as to whether they should bond together, and be one recognised body. The Call does not pre-empt business carried out under the Lord’s ordering. However, we are sure that we will be called upon to bring before them the few loves and fishes that we have, to offer them in love, and to hope that the Lord will bless them, and feed us all with them.