The Lord's Work

The Catholic Apostolic Church combined liturgical worship, charismatic experience, ecumenical vision, and eschatological expectation. Philip Schaff commented that the claims made for its apostles, if true, commanded every Christian's attention. Historians and liturgists alike have been fascinated by the Church, but deterred from researching it because of the notorious difficulty of access to material. This account of the church's growth and decline draws on archival sources from several countries, many not hitherto used for research, and publications in German as well as English. Previous accounts in English have focused on the Church in the English-speaking world, but this book breaks fresh ground by covering the Church's development in every country where it was active. Surveying Catholic Apostolic history, polity, and ministry, it seeks to tell the story rather than using the Church as a test-case for a preconceived hypothesis. In so doing, it opens up a range of lines of inquiry for future researchers.

""There have been a number of books on themes relating to the Catholic Apostolic Church, but never before a comprehensive history like this. Grass has mastered a wide range of sources relating to the whole period of the body's existence and to the many countries where it once flourished. He has added new themes but also extended our knowledge on aspects of the body's history and doctrine discussed in past publications. In short: nobody should get away with the old master narratives after the publication of this book.""
--Manfred Henke, New Apostolic Church historian

""Tim Grass's excellent pioneering historical account of the Catholic Apostolic Church--a new movement in nineteenth-century Christianity which believed God had instituted a new body of apostles to seek to unite Christendom and to prepare Christians for the imminent return of Christ in judgment--describes the growth and decline of the church in Germany as well as the English-speaking world and its influence on twentieth-century theological and liturgical developments.""
--W. M. Jacob, Visiting Research Fellow, King's College, London

""Tim Grass has given us a superb history of the Catholic Apostolic Church. A master of his subject, he writes with clarity, understanding, and empathy, bringing his readers inside the beliefs and practices of this extraordinary movement for the renewal of Christendom.His story is a moving one of vision, promise, renewal, and luminous worship, followed by disappointment, silence, and altars covered--all set against an enduring Catholic Apostolic faith in a divine plan.""
--Stewart J. Brown, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Edinburgh


Tim Grass is a Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon's College, London, Assistant Editor for the Ecclesiastical History Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He also serves as Facilitator of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative. Tim has authored Gathering to His Name: The Story of Open Brethren in Britain and Ireland (2006), SCM Core Text: Modern Church History (2008), The Lord's Watchman: A Life of Edward Irving (2011), and F. F. Bruce: A Life (2011).