Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

Groves used his medical knowledge to treat eye disorders successfully, and came to value
education in mission, but there was no future for the group in the troubled city. He left
Baghdad to survey the prospects of work in India, and eventually resettled his mission in
Chittoor, about 60 miles inland from Madras. He married again in 1835, on his return to
England, and new recruits went out to help his work in the Godavari Delta region, a
missionary work to which the Brethren are still committed today.
In his life of Groves, G H Lang, himself one of the Brethren, defines the principle of
Christian unity which he believed the first Brethren held as „liberty of fellowship with all the
family of God‟. He quotes Groves‟ first biographer:
„The original principles of this happy communion are fully detailed and largely dwelt
upon, in Mr Groves‟ letters and journals; they tended to nothing less than the
enjoyment of union and communion among all who possess the common life of the
family of God. The realization of these principles enabled Mr Groves, whether in
Ireland, England, Russia, or the presidencies of India, to go in and out among God‟s
people, everywhere, both conveying and receiving refreshment.‟ 104
Lang wrote his life of Groves when he himself was working as a missionary in a Muslim
country and saw in the situation in which he found himself an illustration of how this
principle of „liberty of fellowship‟ works. He writes:
„From thirty years‟ observation of travel in the gospel in nearly as many countries I am
sure this liberty is a most real asset for spreading the truth as to the church of God. I
write in a town in North Africa, 650 miles from the Mediterranean. Beyond to the
south stretches only the vast desert. It is a veritable outpost of the three kingdoms,
those of man, the devil, and God. To represent the last in this almost wholly Moslem
town I find, twinkling amidst the Islamic midnight, a small native Coptic Presbyterian
Church, a Lutheran Mission of godly Germans, aiming to reach the Moslems, and a
small company of Exclusive Brethren. Upon the principle that witnessing against their
errors is the primary duty I can have fellowship with no one, and must stand before the
Mohammedans either as one of the general run of irreligious English tourists, or as
claiming that those who seek to represent Christ do not do so. In the first case my
influence would be nil; in the other I should so far nullify what testimony to Christ
there is. If separation from evil is my first duty, I must refuse fellowship with the
Lutherans because of a relic of ritualism – they light two candles on the Table; to me a
childish thing but to which they seem to attach importance as a symbol of the presence
of Christ; I must repudiate the Presbyterians, for they have a „pastor‟ ordained by men,
which I think a rudimentary clerisy; I cannot accept the loving welcome of the
Exclusive Brethren because they hold a modified form of church federation, which I
judge to be non-apostolic and dangerous; and moreover, all three parties baptize
infants, a practice I abhor. But upon the principle of recognizing and supporting what
is of God, I can enjoy and help in the public ministry of the Word, in private study
104 Lang, G H, Anthony Norris Groves, saint and pioneer, Thynne and Co, London, 1939, p 148.
Groves‟ first biographer was his widow Mary (nee Thompson). The quotation by Lang from her
biography of her husband is from her Memoir of the late Anthony Norris Groves, Second Edition,
James Nisbet and Co, London, 1857, p 39.
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