Newspaper Article

A final straw for one couple
By Bill Alnor
Delaware County Daily Times September 1, 1986

Greg Martz began to suspect something was very wrong with the Church of Our Saviour several years ago when the Rev. Frederick Drummond took him on a whirlwind tour of America's great churches.

The plan was for Martz, an architect, to borrow some of their construction ideas for the Concordville campus and new world headquarters of Drummond's church.

During that trip, Martz said, he noticed Drummond frequently used sexually explicit language he didn't expect to hear from a minister.

Using church offering money, they visited the Crystal Cathedral in Southern California, the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, the Church on the Rock in Texas, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., the Metro Church in Los Angeles, Calif., the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and others, Martz said.

His attendance at the church began to slacken after the trip, Martz said. Finally, he became so disenchanted that he made the decision to leave with his wife, Jane, and two children, Kelly and Sean.

Coupled with their decision to leave was a visit to a Hazelton Assemblies of God church, where they saw a church feeding the poor, caring for the needy, and sending out missionaries. They noted that the Church of Our Saviour supports no missionaries, nor contributes any funds to any mission organizations.

"Fred could (not) care less about the poor," said Greg.

The final straw came in December, said Jane, when during a Sunday evening service led by the Rev. Thomas Brackett, an assistant pastor at the church, Brackett spoke for "two hours on praising God," Jane said.

Suddenly Drummond showed up at the back of the church, marched to the pulpit with a scowl on his face and "preached for another two hours on how God was fed up."

"God's fed up with all of you!" She recalled Drummond screamed to his flock that night. "He's going to remove me from here, he's so fed up. God wants to thrash everyone in this congregation," she recalled Drummond thundered to the flock.

"I looked at my daughter," said Jane, "and I said, "That man is off his rocker.'" That was the last service they attended.