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Filling Up The House

December 11, 2008 in Church, Life with Comments Off

In my last post, I made reference to the fact that God just put something right in front of us that we had been seeking for some time.

To put it simply, we’re making the move into intentional community, and we have invited our good friends Kevin and Faith Blackwell to come and live with us. They are excited about it, and will be moving in this Friday.

When we bought our current home, we were looking for a house that fit a lot of criteria. But two of the things we were looking for was a place that would be ideal for hosting a house church, and a place where we could pursue community in a more direct way. We had two options in that regard. The fourth bedroom in our house is off of the kitchen and has its own private bath. We also have a huge basement that is still mostly unfinished and has lots of windows – there is plenty of space that is ideal for an apartment.

We learned a couple of weeks ago that Kevin and Faith were going to be moving back up this way, and into a less than desirable situation. Amy and I were already making plans to move the kids’ bedrooms around and free up the fourth bedroom. So we brought up the conversation, and Kevin and Faith were very excited about the opportunity. We laid out two options – we could work towards finishing out an apartment where they’d have their own space, or we could have them move into the main level and share the kitchen and living spaces with us.

Without really any question, all of us were in agreement that we wanted to share the space. Our house is really too big for just one family, anyway.

This is really exciting to us for several reasons. First of all, Kevin and Faith are very good friends of ours. I first met Kevin nearly eight years ago, at Faith Community Church, where he stepped up as our main drummer there. We played together there for five years or so, but more than that, we shared a lot in planning, dreaming, and working in ministry.

Kevin and Faith have always been great with our kids, and our kids have always loved Kevin and Faith, as well. For those keeping track, Odie spent some time with Kevin and Faith, too.

There are some practical reasons why sharing a house with others make sense. Sharing groceries, utilities, appliances, etc., makes the cost of living a little less for us all. Sharing the tasks of cooking, cleaning, etc., means less work for any one person overall.

More than that, though, are the spiritual and relational benefits of being more connected in day-to-day life. We have seen, through other members of my family who are doing similar things, the joys and struggles that accompany this kind of living. In marriage, your closeness reveals flaws in your character and is supposed to sharpen you and move your further towards righteousness. We all fully expect to experience each other’s good and bad times, and we feel that we already have the strong friendship in place to help us weather the storms that will come.

We are blessed to know others living this way who can help us navigate the options of how to share groceries, how to handle rent, how to deal with noise, kids, etc. Each situation is different, though, so we have to rely on God to connect us and lead the way. We would appreciate your prayers as we begin this.

Of course, many people simply won’t understand why we would choose to do this. Many assume that it is simply to help some friends out, as a temporary situation – Kevin lost his job at Circuit City, and is looking for a job, by the way. While we would have been willing to help out friends on a short-term basis, that’s not an accurate summary of what this is about. We are setting this up, quite intentionally, to last beyond just the “helping a friend out” stage. I think for many people it is very difficult to understand why we would be willing to give up our “private” spaces and share it with another family. Simply put – I believe God is glorified when we seek to form deeper communities with each other, and deeper commitment to each other. We are also very excited to see how God will shape us through this phase of our lives.

House Church on Hold

December 3, 2008 in Church, House Church, Open Formats with Comments Off

As I shared on this blog a couple of months ago, we recently tried to start hosting a house church in our home. At the time, a previous house church that we were a part of was dissolving because the leader of it was moving away. Amy and I decided that we should try to start hosting one ourselves, and pull from the people who had been a part of that house church as well as try to get others involved who we thought might be interested.

Our previous “house church” was pretty much just that – a church that met in a house. It’s not like there was a “sermon,” but in reality it didn’t move beyond the concept of clergy any more than a traditional church would. Most people called the leader the pastor (though I specifically did not refer to him as such), and looked to him as that kind of a role. He led it more like a bible study/discussion time, so it was in reality more open than a typical church would be. It was a good step for Amy and I when we joined that group, but I felt, over time, more and more God’s leaning to do things differently.

Then the leader of that group moved away, and we were faced with whether or not to try hosting a house church ourselves. But without someone filling the pastor/clergy role, we did not really know if it would stick with a group that had been, for the most part, been passive in gatherings. But we felt called to give it a try. My brother, who leads a fully organic meeting at his house, agreed to help us get started.

In the end, it really came down to not having people who were really interested in doing something different. I’m not upset about it, as I didn’t want to have any regrets about not trying it. We also learned a lot through the process, and will be better prepared next time God calls us to do this – and we are confident that there will be a next time. The main thing we’ve learned is that in order to try hosting an organic meeting, you need to do it with a least a couple of people who totally “get it” and are committed to church gatherings led by the Spirit alone. While my brother was helping us, he and his wife were still hosting their own meeting and I didn’t feel right relying on them for that role indefinitely.

So Amy and I will be doing some exploring and asking God what He would really like for us to be doing right now. We have some schedule concerns with the other house church groups that we’ve been networking with – it’s not easy to do late evenings with young kids, especially when they get up really early for school and get very cranky early in the evening. (That’s one of the reasons we really liked Sunday afternoons.)

There’s also a “traditional” church that I’ve been somewhat connected with over the last couple of years (I’ve led worship there a few times and played guitar/bass a few times also), that we’re considering checking out some of their smaller groups and see how open they are and how their small groups currently function.

So pray for us in this regard. We might not get totally settled until March or so — I’m having a major jaw surgery in January and it’ll be a few weeks before I’m really up for much, anyway. (I’ll post more about that later.) I may have a difficult time compromising my ecclesiology, but I’m willing to do that if God is calling us somewhere and wants to use my restlessness to stir things up there.

The interesting thing is, literally a day after we made this decision God placed something into our laps that our hearts have longed for, something actually a little more extreme than organic house church (in many people’s opinions, anyway). That deserves its own post, so stay tuned.

"Spread the Wealth Around" – Wealth Redistribution is Neither Neighborly Nor Christian

October 14, 2008 in Church, Politics with Comments Off

Yesterday, Obama spoke plainly about his agenda – “spread the wealth around.” Watch it here.

Even just a few years ago, this kind of talk would have been front page news. And it would have been a major turn-off for the majority of voters. Today, though, our public is ready to accept socialism, even if they don’t want to call it such.

Last night my dad sent out an e-mail titled “Wealth Redistribution is Neither Neighborly Nor Christian.” It was a very simple and straightforward comparison of private charity to government redistribution. I’ll let his e-mail speak for itself as a response to Obama’s desire to “spread the wealth around.”

It’s time the prevarication of referring to a progressive tax structure (or other wealth redistribution scheme) as “neighborly” or “Christian” is addressed with some clarity and truth.

Let us assume two families, the Smith family and the Jones family, live in adjacent houses in Anywhere, USA, and are thus literally neighbors. Further, they are on good terms and have a long-standing friendly relationship. Their children play together, they get each other’s mail during vacations, and they exhibit many other typical American neighborly behaviors. We would say, without question, these two families are neighbors.

Now, let’s suppose that the Smith family falls on hard times. Mrs. Smith loses her job due to circumstances beyond her control, and Mr. Smith alone cannot support the family on his elementary school teacher’s salary. Her car has mechanical problems, and they don’t have the money to have it repaired. Fortuitously, the Jones family next door has a third (spare) vehicle.

Of their own free choice, Mr. and Mrs. Jones offer to loan (or give) their extra vehicle to their neighbors, so that Mrs. Smith can seek employment or “whatever you need,” until “things get better.” Note the government isn’t involved in any way. This is an example of true neighborly acts (or acts of Christian kindness), initiated in the hearts of the givers, and which happen all over this nation on a daily basis.

In contrast, suppose the Jones family owns a small business that has proven very successful due to their hard work and endless hours. The government decides to further increase their income taxes “to help the less fortunate,” in keeping with principles of “fairness,” etc. The neighboring Smith family (or others in similar circumstances) may receive some of the money the government takes from the Jones family, by force of law (coercion). There is less money available to help the Smith family and others, after handling costs and paying salaries and expenses of the beaurocrats collecting and managing the money. And the government decides how to spend the money.

In this latter case, it’s unavoidably true that the Jones family has less money available to help others or give to the charities of their choice. Maybe they even have to sell one of their vehicles to pay the extra taxes, so it’s not available to help the Smith family. Secondly, there is no decision in the heart of the Jones family to help others – more likely they resent the government taking even more of their hard-earned income. Third, they may rationalize, “There’s no need for us to help others out; let the government do it.” Finally, there is no human connection between the actual neighbors or others who may benefit from the subsequent government spending. But the central actor is the nameless, faceless “government,” except of course for the politicians who endlessly take credit for proposing the program, or supporting, co-sponsoring, or voting for it (often even when they didn’t). An added benefit to them is that they get to buy votes with someone else’s money (ours).

Who makes the decision makes all the difference. Only individuals can make neighborly or Christian decisions. There is nothing whatsoever that is neighborly or Christian about the government taking from some by force and giving to others. Make no mistake about it, and don’t be misled. The only honest and objective term to describe this behavior by government is socialism.

Moreover, the politicians know it. But they will never say it. So one part of the big lie is that they have to find something else to call it. They also know that neighborly or even Christian principles are core values for most Americans. So another part of the big lie is to mask a heavy graduated income tax, not coincidentally one of the major planks of the Communist Manifesto, in neighborly or Christian terms. Perhaps you can recognize real “lipstick on a pig” when you see it.

The only thing I would add is the difference these two scenarios have in the Smith family.

As recipients of their neighbors’ kindness, they are motivated to improve their situation, because they do not want to be a long-term burden on their friends. They are also touched by the kindness they have received, and are much more likely to help someone else in the future when they see someone else in need.

Compare that to receiving your rightful statutory assistance from the government. They would not feel as if they are imposing on anyone, because after all they are getting what is “rightfully” theirs, by law – they would even be able to sue the government for it if they did not receive it. Because they had never been truly touched by the kindness and generosity of others, they are that much less likely to respond with kindness and generosity in the future when they see someone in need – an extension of the “let the government do it” argument (which is exactly why liberals like Barack Obama and Joe Biden give very, very little to charity).

Socialist wealth redistribution may indeed, temporarily, assist someone economically. But it also results in a moral cancer, increasing our isolation from each other, bitterness, selfishness, and envy of others’ success and accomplishments.

Remember Matthew 6. Those who blow trumpets to call attention to their righteous acts receive all the reward they will ever get here on earth. This would include those who favor socialist acts of wealth redistribution.

Pro-Life Obama?

October 1, 2008 in Church, Politics with 2 Comments

The Matthew 25 Network has already revealed itself to be totally pro-Obama, “defending” him based on his statements alone and refusing to consider his record. In any case, they’ve gone and completely discredited themselves, by putting up this site:

http://www.prolifeproobama.com/

Huh? Obama is pro-life?

Well, I suppose if you think the answer to the question “when does life begin” is above your pay grade, then you can say you’re pro-life, because you don’t really know if there’s life there or not.

In any case, they’re not really trying to say that Obama favors restrictions on abortion, but the domain name and title of the site alone is extremely misleading, and a mischaracterization of Obama’s entire record on abortion.

The idea of the site is actually to try to convince pro-life voters to vote for Obama. But by refusing to admit that he has voted against protections for babies born alive from botched abortions, that he wants to put justices on the Supreme Court who believe an abortion is a Constitutional right (I’ll give $10,000 to the person who can find “abortion” in the Constitution), and who felt that the partial-birth abortion ban was “unconstitutional,” we now have a group of well-respected Christians engaging in behavior that is downright misleading and deceptive.

(Actually, they were already characterizing Obama this way. Now they’re just making their hypocrisy more explicit.)

All liberals want regarding abortion is to keep it from any kind of democratic debate. All the Matthew 25 Network wants to do is help the liberal media pull the wool over Christians’ eyes as they work to elect the most liberal senator, one who has never, ever, not once in his entire political career, believed that any abortion restriction was appropriate. Even to the point of sucking a baby’s brains out while they’re halfway delivered. A brutality his wife called “a legitimate medical procedure.”

Whatever you think, that is most certainly not a “culture of life.”

And if you disagree with my assessment of Obama, I challenge you – show me one vote that contradicts me. You won’t find it.

Think about that when you get ready to pull the lever for Obama in November.

Getting Started with House Church

September 29, 2008 in House Church with 1 Comment

We had our first house church gathering here yesterday. We tried to do a couple of things a little differently, and overall it went well. My brother and his family are joining us for a while as we get started, which is great as he’s had experience introducing open formats to different groups, which is something that will be new to just about everyone who will be a part of our group.

First of all, we shared a meal together, but rather than just dig in and eat, we tried to set up a new rule – nobody can serve themselves. If you need something, someone else has to get it for you. This didn’t work out quite as smoothly as we had hoped, but in hindsight I think it went rather well for the first time. We didn’t have too many people (8 adults, 11 children), but we’re anticipating a few more next week so things might get hairier.

Overall, we’re trying to think of ways to turn the meal into something more than just an opportunity to eat. Our idea was to figuratively add in a bit of the washing of feet into the mix. Everyone liked the idea of it, but we’ll probably tweak the execution as we go along. Kids always make things like that interesting and more complicated.

After we ate and cleaned up a little, we moved into the den for worship. We spent 25 minutes or so with the kids, but it was a little disjointed. Britt brought some instruments for the kids to play, but it turned out the instruments were WAY too loud for kids to use. Give a kid a stick and a drum and all they want to do is bang it! So this week I’m on the hunt for some good kid-friendly percussion that isn’t too loud.

We then sent the kids down to the basement. We have a great person to help with the kids down there – she’s 13, lives in a nearby neighborhood, and is phenomenal with the little kids. Her dad works with youth camps and orphanages in Russia and Ukraine, and she’s spent many summers working with youth camps in Russia. She’s worked with kids for our larger house church gatherings that we’ve held here, and we’re extremely blessed to have her helping us out.

While the kids were learning some Bible stories, playing games, and singing songs, we continued upstairs, thankful for the relative quiet. I informed everybody that there was no plan. I printed out a sheet with a list of songs on it, all of the songs I had ready to go in my worship lyric software (more on that in a future post), and let them know that if there was a song they wanted to sing, to say so. I led some songs, some folks read some scripture that was on their heart, and some others requested some songs. From what I remember, we sang “So Good to Me,” “Today,” “Your Love is Deep”, and “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” (kid songs), followed by “Praise the King,” “Glorious One,” “Restore to Me,” “How Great is Our God,” “We Fall Down,” and “Come Fall on Us.”

As we wrapped up that phase, Britt talked about commitment to the cause of Christ. He noted that Jesus wasn’t terribly interested in the disciples knowing everything perfectly – but that it was their commitment to him that had to come first. Likewise, when the church first began in Acts 2, you didn’t see much in the way of “right doctrine” before people began joining the church. It began with an acceptance of the gospel followed by commitment to the church, and discipleship naturally followed.

I had wanted to start in with a reading of 1st Corinthians 12, but felt that chapter 11 was a better start. We ended up talking a lot about communion as a meal, and that led to a good discussion of rituals. I’ll blog about that later, because I have too many thoughts on that to summarize quickly. I decided to save chapter 12 for later.

After that, we talked some about logistics and how we might handle things from week to week. With the exception of Britt and his wife Becca, everyone we had yesterday was from our previous house church. While it would have been awesome to have more folks show up, I think it was actually perfect for us to do this and talk some things through, because it was different from how we’ve had house church together in the past. What we’re doing now is more open, and the goal is for others to be contributing more directly. That will come with time, but I think we set a good starting point of not having things too structured.

We’ve had some more people tell us that they’ll be coming next week, and we’re looking forward to it. It was a good bit of work preparing to host it here, but I imagine that will get easier as we go.

Obama and Abortion

September 15, 2008 in Church, Politics with Comments Off

V-A-4-guns-black.gifObama has been trying to soften his stance on abortion by trying to talk about reducing the number of them. But he can’t hide from his record.

Since Roe v. Wade, nearly 50 million babies have been murdered in the womb. Abortion is awful in general, but partial-birth abortion represents humanity at it’s worst. In this “procedure,” a baby is brought a out of the birth canal, except for the head, and then the “doctor” sucks that baby’s brains out while their arms and legs are wiggling, so that they are dead before they are “born.”

The idea of partial-birth abortion reminds me of capital punishment by having someone drawn and quartered, which was the most likely influence of the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” found in the bill of rights. It is reminiscent of the kind of techniques used by Vlad the Impaler in the 15th century, who enjoyed coming up with more and more brutal ways of slow, torturous ways of killing people.

Bill Clinton vetoed a federal partial-birth abortion ban, twice. Bush signed one into law in 2003. It was upheld by the conservative wing of the Supreme Court in 2007, very narrowly. Guess which type of justices Obama would nominate, and which type of justices a Democrat senate would confirm – those who would uphold such a ban, or those who would strike it down as “unconstitutional,” even though no “right to abortion” exists anywhere in the constitution?

Beyond just his support for relativist judges, Obama’s record of support for abortion is on the extreme liberal side of politics. Obama voted against an Illinois partial-birth abortion ban in 1997. He voted to preserve state-funded abortions in 2000. He voted against parental notification when taking teenagers across state lines in 2006. He has received a 100% rating from NARAL, indicating that his voting record is completely consistent with someone who supports unrestricted, government-funded access to abortion, INCLUDING for teenagers.

Michelle Obama once described partial-birth abortion as a “legitimate medical procedure.” Their support for and defense of abortion has few equals in the history of presidential candidates.

To make matters worse, Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Act in Illinois, which would have required doctors to provide medical care to babies who survived an abortion. Today he tries to spin this and make it sound respectable, but the reality is he voted to kill the bill in committee and spoke against it on the senate floor. His claims today that he supported the federal version of the bill are provably false.

I understand why someone wouldn’t vote on abortion alone. But we’re not talking about voting for someone who supports abortion in a *moderate* sense. We’re talking about someone who has, 100% of the time, voted against any abortion restrictions, who has indicated his support for Supreme Court justices who take a dynamic, relativist view of the Constitution (which is required to support the continued existence of the Roe v. Wade decision), and, in particular, who has defended the most brutal, violent practice ever devised by mankind against a child.

If you can, in good conscience, vote for someone who supports a mother’s right to bring a baby out of the birth canal, except for the head, and then suck that baby’s brains out while their arms and legs are wiggling, so that they are dead before they are “born”, or worse, to deny that child medical care if they happen to survive an abortion, then so be it. Personally, if a candidate can’t even find these two things so heinous, so brutal, and so depraved as to say that they should be illegal in any and all circumstances, then that candidate will never, EVER get my vote. And they (including Obama) shouldn’t get yours, either.

Starting a House Church

September 8, 2008 in Church, House Church, Life, Open Formats with 1 Comment

Amy and I are going to begin hosting a church in our home, and we would love for you to join us.

When we left our church home in 2006, where I was a worship leader, we felt God leading us to pursue a more authentic form of church. We did not know at the time what that would look like. We visited several churches, but when we visited a house church we were amazed at the difference. We began to feel a calling to eventually host a house church, when God opened up the opportunity for us to do so. Since that time we have been further challenged to rethink what it means to “be the church.” While we did not know exactly when God would set this task in front of us, it is unmistakable that the time for us to do this is right now.

You may have never been to a house church before, and possibly you’ve never heard of one, either. So a brief description may be helpful. We are seeking to build a community:

• That seeks, first and foremost, to see Christ revealed through His body of believers (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-27);
• That thirsts for a church family based on the love of Christ;
• Where communion is a full meal, shared regularly;
• Where gatherings are controlled by Christ through the Spirit, and where each person can contribute;
• Where leadership is built from within, based on maturity and gifting;
• Whose resources are used to help those in need – in the church, the local community, and throughout the world;
• Where membership is defined only by belonging to Christ.

We are not seeking to build a community based on how other churches do things wrong. We are seeking to build a community based on the principles and commandments given to us by Christ and His apostles. We want to build a church family that is focused on Christ, without the overhead of buildings, budgets, or unnecessary traditions.

Gatherings of the church will not be based on coming to listen to someone else speak. Gatherings of the church will be based on coming to hear Christ speak through each of us. (See 1 Corinthians 14:20-31.) Gatherings of the church will be designed to have time to be together, to love each other, to help each other, and to grow together. Exactly how that will work will vary from week to week, depending on who joins us, and depending on how the Spirit leads.

Over the past year, we have also been a part of a network of house churches. This larger group currently gathers once a month, on Saturday evenings. Sometimes these larger gatherings are focused on worship, sometimes on discussion, sometimes on fellowship. We are blessed have the support, guidance, and participation of others who have been down this path.

One of the main questions people ask is: what is your plan for kids? Different house churches handle kids differently. Our current plan is to keep children in with the initial part of the gathering, and to practice engaging with our children through song, Bible readings, discussion, and prayer. After a while, we’ll have someone take the children downstairs for more activities and playtime while the adults continue meeting. We are looking for people for this role – if you know someone you would recommend, please contact us!

Based on our experience, we feel that this is a good balance between learning our spiritual responsibilities as parents, and having time without kids to really focus on what God has to say through each of us.

We will have our first gathering on Sunday, September 28th. We will join together for a full meal, as communion, around 1pm, followed by a time of worship, discussion, and prayer. There will not be an official start time or end time, so feel free to come when you can get here and leave when you need to.

If you are planning on sharing a meal with us, or will be bringing children with you, please contact us to let us know you will be coming so we can make sure we have enough food and enough supervision set up for the kids.

If you live in or near the East Lawrenceville, Grayson, Loganville, or Dacula areas, and any of this resonates with you at all, even if you are just curious, we invite you to come and join us. If you know anyone who would be interested who lives near us, please pass this along to them as well. To all of you, we ask specifically for your prayer and support as we enter this new phase of our lives and ministry.

If you are interested or have any questions at all, please contact us! We’d be more than happy to tell you more about all of this. We hope to see you here on September 28th!

Maybe We Should Start the Matthew 6 Network

September 7, 2008 in Church, House Church, Politics with Comments Off

Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, because then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. When you give a gift to someone in need, don’t shout about it as the hypocrites do – blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I assure you, they have received all the reward they will ever get. But when you give to someone, don’t tell your left hand what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.

And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I assure you, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father secretly. Then your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you. When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered only by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him! (Matthew 6:1-8, NLT)

Kind of puts Matthew 25 into a different perspective, doesn’t it? I ask you – how does campaigning for public charity fit with the private, secret approach to charity commanded us in Matthew 6?

Reimagining Church

August 12, 2008 in Books, Church, House Church, Reviews with Comments Off

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 is all about. It’s not about creating some new church, really – it’s about reimagining in light of a true apostolic tradition – the apostolic tradition that has been passed down to us as scripture.

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:

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. But be warned: it just might make you question everything about the modern institutional church.

Chronological Reading Guide

April 6, 2008 in Church with 1 Comment

Britt posted the other day about reading through the Bible. I’ve been thinking for awhile about reading through the entire Bible. I’ve attempted this in the past, always to get bogged down in some of the tougher Old Testament parts. I’ve read nearly all of the Bible at one time or another (taking Old Testament and New Testament classes in college certainly helped me complete that back then), but I haven’t made it a part of my discipline to read through the entire thing regularly. Heck, I don’t even read it regular enough as it is. So now I’m going to try to accomplish both.

One of the things that I’ve been encouraged with lately is to try to do it in a chronological order. This comes from discussions with people in our expanded house church community as well as comments Frank Viola has made in his books about it.

So I went looking on the web trying to find a simple downloadable PDF. At first I couldn’t find any – everyone wants you to visit their site regularly to figure out what to read next. But what I really wanted was something I could print out all on one sheet.

At first I couldn’t find anything, but I did find a place online that had everything listed out on one page. So I made my own PDF, which I’m now sharing with you:

ChronologicalReadingGuide.pdf

I make no claim on this, I didn’t come up with the plan, I just formatted the Word file and saved it as a PDF. Print out page 1, turn the page over and reinsert it into your printer, then print out page 2. Now you have a nice one page chronological reading plan you can keep with your Bible.

For what it’s worth, I’m not going to try to do this in a year, much less two or three times in a year. Maybe I’ll get it done this year, maybe not. I’m encouraged by those who have those kinds of goals, but like many spiritual disciplines, it’s best to start out simple and figure out what kind of pace you can manage. Especially with three small kids in the house.

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