Reimagining Church
Having dinner with Len Sweet last month, he brought up the book Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity by Frank Viola and asked if I had read it or not. I noted that I had not, but in the midst of developing my life plan a few weeks ago I decided to order it and read it.
Here’s a partial book description from Amazon:
Viola, a leader in the house church movement, believes the church as we know it today is nothing like what God intended it to be. According to Viola, the first-century church, which should be our pattern, met in homes without any official pastor. All members of the church were involved in worship, spontaneously breaking out with teaching or song as they were moved. Decisions were not made until everyone reached consensus. There were no official leaders or elders, but there were men who served and taught and helped others, thus leading by example. Viola believes that to bring the church back on track, both clergy and denominations must be completely abolished. Churches should not have buildings nor should they worry about doctrinal statements.
Len told me that he loved reading paradigm busting books. This book is certainly a paradigm busting book! The above description is very appropriate. Frank is an all or nothing guy.
In reading this book, I came to agree with Frank in many ways on the framework. The devil, however, is in the details.
The one major issue I had regarded false teaching. Frank believes that you should accept anyone into the organic church because they have been accepted by Christ. In general, I would agree. I posed to him a question, however, that created some concern. My question was this: What if you had someone who became part of your organic church that didn’t believe in the Trinity. They believed Jesus died for their sins and that it was through him that one would spend eternity with God. But they didn’t believe in the Trinity. In fact, they had an apologetic against the trinity and got quite red-faced angry about it.
Now in a traditional church structure, that’s not a problem. In Voila’s organic church framework, everyone is able to teach and share. The danger is that this non-trinitarian person could stand and share his thoughts on the Trinity. He would have be lovingly corrected and proper teaching on the subject would have to be done, especially for those young in the faith. But what if this became a common practice? His response to me was :
I’ve met Christians who were confused or mistaught on the Trinity, but they clearly believed in Jesus Christ, followed Him, accepted his Deity, his saviorhood and Lordship, etc. They later came to believe in the Trinue God after they were patiently instructed about it. Apollos wasnt’ clear on the fundamentals of the faith too before Priscilla and Aquila instructed him. But he was received because God received him.
I would have concerns about this, quite honestly. I don’t want this one issue to define the church. I don’t constantly want to have to deal with this issue every time we meet, or on any consistent basis. We would either have to mutually decide (but can’t mutually decide in Viola’s framework because it’s a unanimous consensus) to remove him from the community or I would have to leave.
The all or nothing strategy also appears to work against him when one considers the church from 100-300 A. D. The way they socialized people and dealt with new Christ-followers is different than the details of what he is proposing based on my reading of Webber and his Ancient Future material.
Again, I think the framework is solid; some of the details are worrisome.
This paradigm rips the heart out of USAmerican Christianity, and possibly Western Christianity as well.
What this paradigm does is put me and a lot of my friends on the street looking for work. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing – we may actually begin to see transformation and revival come to our world. Of course, that also scares many pastors to death because they can’t do anything else. All they have is a Bible degree and a M.Div.
However, I would encourage you to read it even though you know you won’t agree with it all. I think in the USA there is going to be a decline of Christianity (I’ve written about the coming church transition here) and if we are going to reach people we will have to be prepared for it.
Popularity: 1% [?]
