If you’ve been following my blog for any time at all, you already know that I’ve become a fan of Frank Viola’s books. Not that I’ve read that many of them, actually – the first one I read was Rethinking the Wineskin, a book that really shakes you down to your foundation in terms of the way you approach the New Testament. Earlier this year, Viola released Pagan Christianity with George Barna, his first in a series of re-releasing some of his older books, updated a little bit and with more serious publisher backing. Before Pagan, Frank Viola’s books were a little more obscure.
Pagan Christianity garnered a lot of attention, partially because it came on the heels of Barna’s Revolution. But the response was more intense, because it revealed the aspects of the modern institutional church that have no Biblical basis, and went further to discuss how they undermine Biblical principles. You can’t publicly criticize nearly all aspects of the modern institutional church – church buildings, order of worship, sermons, the clergy system, dressing up for church, music ministers, tithing and salaries, modern baptism and communion practices, and modern Christian education – without getting a lot of backlash. I participated in many a blog discussion about that book, responding to a lot of criticisms from people who had actually never read the book.
In any case, the Christian community’s reaction to Pagan (as well as to Revolution) all kind of missed the point. I think it’s important to scrutinize all of the things we find in the institutional church, and to step outside of it – but if it just stops there, you’re left with nothing. Or in some cases, just a smaller copy of the institutional church that happens to meet in a house. The question really is, if we shake off all of the institutional baggage, what do we do instead? The answer to that, thankfully, is found in the New Testament. And dealing with that is what Reimagining Church
If Pagan shed light on all of the aspects of the modern institutional church that are not Biblical, Reimagining is about shedding light on Biblical practices that the modern institutional church chooses to ignore.
While Pagan Christianity was an update of a previous Viola book with the same title, Reimagining Church is actually an update of Rethinking the Wineskin. So I don’t really have to go into too much detail about it – if you really want to know more about Reimagining, read my comments about Wineskin, which were very detailed and broken down essentially by chapter. (My comments on that one were possibly too detailed – I always fear that authors will get offended if I quote and summarize so much!)
I covered the following areas of the original book:
- Gatherings
- Common Meal
- The House
- Family/Community
- Leadership – Oversight
- Leadership – Visionary
- Purpose
- Membership
- Boundary
- Tradition
All of these elements are in the updated book, though organized a little differently, and expanded in some cases. So I’ll just give you my impression of the difference.
Overall, I’d say that this book is quite a bit better. While every bit as challenging and disturbing (in the appropriate sense), I think some of the reorganization helped the book to come across a little more clearly. Early on in the book, Viola included some specific testimonies of people who have been exposed to organic church – this was a great idea, and helped to bring the book down to a relational level early on.
One of the aspects that people struggle with the most when discussing issues of organic Christianity is the lack of official leadership. Viola includes an entirely new chapter to address specific questions people have, based on specific scriptures, as well as dealing in a general sense with the word choices used in the original Greek compared to how we translate and use those words today to justify hierarchical, authoritative church structures (any church with a “pastor”). This chapter alone is worth the new version of the book, and I’d encourage someone (perhaps even Viola) to go further and deal with this type of topic in a book all its own.
I did find it interesting that the metaphor of the “wineskin” was almost totally absent from this book. It is described once or twice, and alluded to a couple of times, but this is far different from how prominently the metaphor was featured in the original. What was really good, though, and totally new to this book, was the emphasis of the trinity as the organizing metaphor. Specifically, that the church is really supposed to reflect the image of the trinity – no hierarchical structure, mutual submission, unity, etc. This was a fundamental shift that I think had a great impact on the book. The metaphor of the trinity better reflects the nature of the church, and is a better returning point than the wineskin was.
There is one quote I wanted to share from this book. I shared a similar quote from the original, but it is important enough that it bears repeating.
Seeking to repair a house that has cracks in its foundation will never prove productive. I believe it’s time that we honestly examined the structural integrity of the modern church system. I strongly believe that the clergy system, which includes the modern pastoral office, is what needs to be abandoned. It’s the system that’s one of the main culprits, not the people, the motives, or the intentions. Experience has taught me that an institutional church will never fully embody the dream of God until it recognizes that the framework within which it operates is inadequate and self-defeating. Despite the good intentions of the persons who populate it, the interior design of the organized church sets us up for defeat.
True renewal, therefore, must be radical. That means it must go to the root.
The concept of clergy, and more important, the idea of a “pastor,” is central to the experience of Christians who have been raised up in a modern institutional church. And to those of us who have had this experience, it is the idea of stripping this away the “pastor” that is the most disturbing aspect. The pastor represents some sense of safety, in that even if I don’t know what to believe or what to do, at least the “pastor,” who is “ordained,” and is professionally committed to the church, will provide me with good leadership. Yet an honest examination of the New Testament reveals that there is nothing there that justifies the modern concept of “pastor.” And it is this single concept that most plagues the church and keeps her members silent and passive in the Christian life. The pastor stands, almost literally, between us and Christ – as long as we look to that official leadership we will never fully understand the functional headship of Christ and the mutual edification between members of Christ’s body.
In some ways, I think that Revolution, Pagan Christianity, and Reimagining Church are like a trilogy. Like any great trilogy, the first part, Revolution, introduces the players, the problems, and the concepts. While it can stand alone, it alone it does not tell the whole story. Pagan Christianity plays the role of the middle part of a trilogy – things turn dark, problems continue to rise, until you’re not sure how things can possibly get better. Then finally, like in the last part of the great trilogies, Reimagining Church reveals the way out, the way back to how things were better back back in the beginning, and redefines the way you see the entire story.
It takes radical thought to challenge the existing institutional church tradition. But it is exactly this tradition that must be scrutinized. If you’ve ever asked the question why – as in why in the world do churches do things the way they do – you owe it to yourself to read this great trilogy – but if you only read one of them, read Reimagining Church