It’s hard for me to take much of Frank Viola. He has a harsh writing style to him and though I’m totally into reading about the issues he focuses on, I guess I just don’t get what field he’s playing in. I love the brother and read his Pagan Christianity TWICE before reviewing it (to help make up for everybody else preferring to review first and read later). So he’s written a little article that’s floating around the web called “Finding Organic Church.” Its basically written to answer the question he hears over and over again, “What if I want to experience this kind of body life but there are no organic churches in the area to be a part of and we can’t relocate?” Frank’s basic response is to do what Aquilla and Priscilla did; to do what John the Baptist did - prepare a foundation for someone else to come. To Frank, that means gathering people together and cultivating interest in organic church by starting reading groups, BBQs, etc. Then invite (or cultivate) a nearby itinerant church planter to teach the church how to be led by Jesus rather than by a person.

I see this all through Acts and the New Covenant, and it has some practical/psychosocial handles to it as well (how can someone regularly participating in the group authoritatively tell everyone not to lead?). I know that this will be a useful method for ministry in organic church planting, and I’m thankful for the work he’s done on it. Keeping it in check that it is ONLY a method and not the lynch pin to life, the universe, and everything. (Americans have this love affair with franchising. It’s in my blood too.) But it seems to miss the point that new churches are started not just by existing Christians getting together for a book club, but by new converts who are meeting in a dance club or a coffeehouse! If this “revolution” becomes just another sheep trade, I want out.

He states that he’s writing this article in part because he has seen too many house churches become unwilling to accept outside aid. I know what that can look like. Too many burnt Christians think that they must put “their church” in a “reverse quarantine,” the same way we choose to drink bottled water or organic foods. If the whole world is diseased, then the healthy hole up somewhere till the whole thing passes. The problem is they quickly become insular and infighting usually destroys the group within 6 months to 1 year. Frank’s hope is that there will be healthy, itinerant church planters that can visit churches throughout a region and keep feeding healthy nutrients of teaching, exhortation, and mission to these churches.

Contrary to popular simple church beliefs, not everyone can plant a church. (There’s nothing simple about it.) Sure, anyone can hold a bible study - but it takes someone who is called, gifted, trained, and sent as a church planter (an apostle) to help center a spiritual family on Jesus Christ and the Way. It takes intense training to instill healthy DNA into a church, then to support that spiritual family - many times it takes failing and falling hard on your knees. The difficult work of inviting communities of people to die to themselves is not a role many should covet, nor are many called to. But it is a good calling.

However God arranges your spiritual family, remember that he will also arrange for cross-pollination of your family and others in the extended family of God. Keep your doors open, not just for the teacher or church planter, but especially for the stranger, the poor, and the lost - they may have even more to help us discover just want kind of person this Jesus really is.

As for Frank, I am thankful for his ministry and I hope that he continues to participate in uncovering for all of us what it means to be the body of Christ. I’m less inclined than he to think that institution is a bad thing (its actually an inevitable thing, even a group of friends choosing a movie to watch is by definition an institution). I believe that for every insular, cynical, and paranoid house church out there, there are 10 vibrant, transforming, and multiplying churches with open hearts prepared to accept whatever God gives them. May we be part of that transforming revolution of love.

(see my earlier related post here)

I just found out that there will be a sequel to the new book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna coming out this summer. I’m thrilled. From what I hear, it will focus on some of the topics discussed below. I’d love your feedback!

First off, Pagan Christianity is a bold book that uncovers the Greco-Roman influences of many of the origins of today’s current church practices and beliefs. The first edition of the book (2002) also called for a specific response - return to the original impulses of the early church.

The 2008 edition (as I understand from an interview with Viola here [props to Nick and Josh]) eases off the prescription, and instead asks the question, “Do these Greco-Roman influences hinder today’s church from being the Bride of Christ she truly is?” Another way to ask the question is:

“Must the church look/act exactly as it did when it first began, or does acculturation over the last 2,000 years also refine what it means to be God’s Church in the world?”

Is tradition okay? What impulses in the DNA of the Church are immutable?

Jarislov Pelikan: “Tradition is the living tradition of dead men, traditionalism is the dead religion of living men.”

The religious heritage I grew up in had a goal: ‘To restore the ancient order of the church to its original form.’ I am not naive enough to think that this is a obtainable goal. But like many in the Reformed Movement that helped seed the Restoration Movement,

“Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda: The church; reformed and always reforming.”

If I catch what Viola and Barna are tossing us in their book, it means that the church is an organic reality that has both adaptability and integrity in its structure. We are sinners that don’t truly understand God’s vision of what his people look like, and God throughout time is always revealing more of himself to us as his Church. With humility, we learn that there is a moldable, shapable quality to the church, no matter what the age. And there is also a core DNA that most purely points to God and his purposes in the world.
This is just another reminder that the Church is not the Kingdom. The Church, through the ages points to the Kingdom of God. It shapes and changes, and its influences must continually be discerned. Are we following the Spirit of God, or the spirit of the age?

I believe that Viola and Barna are asserting that there has long been dead traditionalism and pagan spirits leeching off of Christ’s Bride, and the authors are begging God’s people to open their eyes to it. Some of these influences are okay - I don’t want to “go back to the good ole days” of earliest Christianity, nor can we - but we can all agree that Easter has just as many connections with Pan as it does Christ. And that the term “laity” only keeps God’s people paralyzed. And that Church as described by Christ looked more like a family than an 2oth Century American business. And…the list goes on.

The million dollar question for Barna and Viola is this: will people change once they know the truth?

Reading this book was a wake up call for me. While somewhat purist in his pursuit of New Testament Christianity (I feel for the guy, me being a Restorationist and all), its an absolute gem. Piece by piece, Frank Viola uncovers the pagan roots to traditional Christianity - and asks his readers and the Church for an explanation. From choirs, to pulpits to Easter itself - Viola helps uncover the competing religious impulses that pushed the ancient (or not so ancient) church to adopt foreign tenets and practices.

But here’s a worthy question: is Christianity, if it changes gradually, or even fundamentally in content, structure and style over the course of 2,000 years, still to be considered “Christianity”? Is the Christian faith allowed pagan influence? Thoughts?

Bonus: read a sample chapter here.

Double Bonus: Read a continuation of this progressive book review here: Should we Have a Pagan Christianity?

Let me give you just a peak into my childhood.

The church I grew up in was pretty dang conservative. Without going into unnecessary ruminations over things long since gone, one particular concept in this church has sparked my interest as of late. It’s the two words that struck both anger and fear into the hearts of even the most staunch and legalistic.

“CHANGE AGENT”

Beware the accursed label for, much like a pirate’s “Black Spot”, once it has been given to you, you will wear it to your grave. Because the church brotherhood I grew up in believed that the church was perfect and fully “restored” to the pristine blueprint of the New Testament (is there only one model of church in the NT?), anyone who attempted to change the model or expression of how church was done or developed was labeled with attempting to derail the entire holy experiment. For this particular group, “be-holding the pattern” was of utmost importance, and anyone to varied from this pattern was heretical.

It is ironic how God brings people to terms with their own terms. Over the last few years, “change agent” has become a life goal of mine, and I pray regularly for “change agents” all over this continent. Not just the church needs changing either. I’m praying for change agents who change the world. For scores of people who, with eyes fixed on a completely different culture, subvert the culture they’re working undercover in.

I’m hoping to partner and network with as many change agents as I can in Chicago.  I think the church is in deep need of change; maybe the supposed “pattern” of the New Testament is about change anyway!  What I mean is - wasn’t Jesus a change agent?  Weren’t his followers agents of transformation that eventually swept across an Empire stuck in its ways?  Isn’t the Kingdom of God itself an agent of change?

Where would this world be today if more of us refused to sit back and let things rot as they are?  Why is complacency revered?  Why are whole systems built on the assumption that no one will have the gumption to do something about the wrongs they see?  When will there be justice?  When will there be creative life bubbling over into the church?  Our schools?  Our homes?  Our government?  We desperately need change agents to break the pre-conceived “blueprints” and perfect ideas of our world.

Change agents were chided and run out of town in my church growing up - but I say we kick out the squatters.  This world is a changin’.

A week and a half before school starts…for the last time. I would be in 20th grade this year if school was still counting, which is unbelievably too long. I’ve known very little about life outside of school, and its time I get to learning. (Funny…leave school to begin learning? One of life’s little ironies I suppose.) The school structures that I’ve been a part of for so long has been good ones. And I’ve enjoyed the overall trajectory that the Lord has sent me on through it all. But its definitely time to finish strong and to FINISH. It all comes down to this year.

My classes this fall are looking good. I’m taking two graduate classes; the first is Theology of Mission with Ed Matthews, and the second is Readings in Christian Spirituality with Jeff Childers. Since I have no clue (i.e. no syllabus emailed to me yet) about Matthews’ class, I’ve gotta rant and rave about my ‘Readings’ class. It’s looking really neat! Here are the 15 books (read, “ZOIKS”) I’ll be reading this semester.

What I’ve loved about my previous class with Childers is that his preference and expertise is on Christian communities not at the hub of Western examination. Christian expansion which coincided with the Western Roman Empire is only a slice of the pie, but that is all we’re ever taught. But what about the Syriac desert fathers of Edessa? What about Byzantium Christianity? Or the Celts? Or the early Anabaptists? Or the lesser known feminine mystics like Julian of Norwich? There is so much more to learn than my own little branches on the tree of God’s great family.

In a similar vein, I’ve been enjoying another Newsboys song (Newsboys? I feel like I’m back in High School again!) called ‘The Mission’: (listen here)

When the runners came from Bethlehem
All breathless with good news
They were passing a baton forward through time
The commission, from God’s lips to our ears
Carried by his saints two thousand years
Connects us all to the same lifeline
As I fix my eyes ahead
I can feel the spirit’s breath…

(AND) I CAN HEAR THE MISSION BELL RINGING OUT LOUD AND CLEAR
IT’S THE REVOLUTION JESUS STARTED, AND IT’S HERE
ECHOING ACROSS THE WORLD FROM THE SHORES OF GALILEE
I CAN HEAR THE MISSION BELL CALL FOR YOU AND ME
I WANNA RUN WITH FIRE
IT’S MY HEART’S DESIRE
LIFTING YOUR LOVE HIGHER

In the history of our faith’s arrivals
Great awakenings, Welsh revivals
Saints and martyrs, summoned by a new birth
Patrick’s save of the Irish nation
William Carey’s expectation
Lambs & lions
Called to the ends of the earth
Gotta put my hand to the plow
Not looking back, not now…

I have a feeling I’ll be exploring lots of uncharted territory this semester, and at the same time, I’ll be finding myself all over the place.