I saw this a few years ago, actually, but I had forgotten about it! It’s making the rounds lately due to Steisand’s support for Obama, of course, but it’s funny no matter what your persuasion is.
Gotta love a candidate with a sense of humor!
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Starting a House Church
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!
Reimagining Church
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
Odie: The Greatest Cat in the World
Odie Mooney
1995 – June 3, 2008
Odie was, simply put, the greatest cat in the world.
He passed away last night, at home, after a couple of weeks of not eating well and losing a lot of weight. The vet visit on Sunday confirmed that all of his blood cell counts were decreasing, which indicated a bone marrow problem. We tried some prescription food with him Sunday evening and yesterday, but he wouldn’t eat anything. We even tried plain tuna last night and he completely ignored it.
Odie was a stray when we found him. Before we were married, Amy was living with some friends in an apartment, and one day as she came home there was a kitty cat outside. She called to the kitty, and he came towards her, and the cat enjoyed the attention – something very unusual for a stray. Amy also noticed that the kitty’s leg had been injured, like it had been broken. She took pity on the stray cat and started feeding him occasionally.
Before long, calling for “kitty” would result in him running towards her, meowing as he came. We took him to the vet, who told us that he was about a year old, and had FIV – the feline version of the HIV virus – and should be kept separate from cats that did not have FIV. With this condition, they said, he could live a couple of years or as many as 10.
His leg had indeed been broken, but had already set and it would be a major ordeal to re-break it and heal it correctly. He didn’t seem to have any trouble getting around, so we left things as they were.
We named him “Odie” after the dog in the Garfield comic strip, for several reasons. First, he came when you called him. He also starting responding to snapping fingers – we’d snap and he’d come running. He also tended to drool a lot. He was always looking for attention, and would let you pet him like a dog – including petting his tummy, something I do NOT recommend trying with other cats (especially if they have claws!).
I kept Odie outside at my parents house, initially, since my sister already had an indoor cat. Amy and I were married in 1997, and he became a part of our family. He was there when we moved into our apartment.
It was always apparent to us that Odie had not always been a stray. He was way too interested in human affection, but also the first time we opened a can at our apartment he went nuts. So we knew he had been fed from a can at some point.
Like a dog, Odie was an over-eater. If we filled his bowl with food, he would eat the entire bowl in one sitting, even if it meant that most of it would come back up later. So we quickly learned to feed him the “right” amount, twice a day, just like a dog.
When we had guests over, including a large party, Odie was always in the middle of it, looking for attention. The picture above was taken at McKenna’s birthday party in December. Odie was right in the middle of it, like he always was.
When McKenna was about 2 and a half years old we discovered that she was having mild allergic reactions to him. After petting him her face would have a minor rash, even if we washed her hands afterwards. So we started looking for another home for him.
After awhile, our friends Kevin and Faith took him in at their apartment, where Odie had his home away from home. Odie spent a few years there, until Kevin went to college, and married housing didn’t allow pets. Meanwhile, we were finishing our basement at our new house that would be a great place for Odie to hang out. So last fall Odie came home.
McKenna and Jeremiah had really begun to enjoy Odie again. We kept wanting to see if McKenna still had an allergy, but McKenna insisted on petting Odie only with her bare feet. Which didn’t bother Odie at all.
A couple of months ago Odie stopped eating as well as he used to. We tried to start using canned food with him, and that improved things, but soon after that he wasn’t eating that very well, either. We took him to the vet about three weeks ago, where they discovered a heart murmur, and found that all of his blood cell counts were low – which indicates that the bone marrow is not doing its job. Last Sunday’s visit confirmed that diagnosis, but we really thought we could get him eating prescription food (or plain tuna) enough to go on for a few weeks. We also thought that this process would last a little longer, but it seemed to happen so quickly.
Even up to the very end, Odie was still a sweet kitty. Last night I was downstairs with the kids playing a video game with them, and Odie came up and sat down right between us. Looking for attention. Naturally, we obliged. We tried to give him lots of extra love over the past couple of days, including a good brushing (which he always loved).
We will miss Odie. I’m really glad that he was able to be at home with us for a few months, and that the kids could get to know him again.
McKenna wants to know if Odie is in heaven. I told her that if dogs and cats go to heaven, Odie is surely there – he was such a loving, sweet, and gentle cat. If Odie is in heaven, his heaven is likely to be a place with lots of hands to pet him and lots of feet for him to rub on.
In many ways, he spoiled us, because after having the greatest cat in the world, any other cat won’t quite do.
Indiana Jones 4
Warning, there are spoilers in my rant below.
I went to see Indiana Jones 4 last week. It’s exactly what you should expect from George Lucas these days.
It’s amazing how a movie can be good and stupid at the same time.
The movie starts out well enough. Indy is captured, forced by some Russians to look for something mysterious, fights his way out, etc.
Then he finds himself in the middle of nowhere, and a town is nearby. So he takes off for the town. Only to find that it’s a nuclear test site. Then the sirens go off.
Up to this point, it’s been pretty classic Indy. It’s good. Then comes the stupid part.
He gets in a lead-lined fridge. Now this might be his best bet, but most likely you would not survive in such a small lead-lined box.
Then the fridge gets tossed all over the landscape. And Indy makes it out without a scratch.
One word: stupid.
Now the gag could have been saved pretty easily – let’s say there’s a bomb shelter in the backyard. Surely the government did some tests that included different backyard bomb shelters to test their effectiveness. It could have even been made comedic by having some monkeys in there or something. Maybe a video camera and switching to a monitoring station where somebody notices Indy in with the monkeys.
But here’s the thing: Lucas is so fascinated with technology that he’d rather consider a solution that included a fridge flying through the air and bouncing all over the place. Easy enough effect shot for the ILM’ers.
The movie was full of stupid stuff like that. As well as other dumb stuff. For instance:
Reminiscing over dear ol’ dad and Marcus Brody. Move on!
After being chased by KGB agents, Indy spends some leisurely time at his place translating a bunch of cryptic symbols. Surely the KGB would have thought to check his house?
The romance was really flat. I mean, Anakin/Padme flat. You got the feeling that Lucas directed some of it, it was so dry.
Don’t even get me started on the jungle chase scene.
Now the general idea of the movie wasn’t so bad. In fact, it had a lot of potential. A lot of people have complained about the ending, but I didn’t mind that so much. I think this movie was lost in the little moments. It moved so fast, there wasn’t much room for characters to interact, unless it was in the middle of another action moment.
All in all it was still entertaining. But stupid at the same time. Not awful, but not great.
So now Indy 4 is my new yardstick. Every movie I see from now on will either be “better than Indy 4″ or “dumber than Indy 4.” It actually works pretty well to have a mediocre film as a yardstick.
Comment Quotes #2
More vain quoting of myself. First, of course, from Josh Brown’s blog, where there’s been some complaints about the shallowness and general lack of artistic value in modern worship.
In an institutional church, the music liturgy is controlled by clergy. It has to reach a broad audience, and in today’s church environment in specializes to appeal to certain types of preferences (much like preaching style did just 20 years ago).
But in an organic worship setting, all individuals are free to contribute, and there is no controlled liturgy (music or otherwise). So people can learn, on a personal level, how people connect with the songs that they have been drawn to (or written!). They can learn the stories behind these things, on a deep and personal level.
To put it another way, the structure is far, far more important than the style or quality of the worship music on an artistic level. You could say the same thing about preaching…
I don’t know that comparisons to OT temple worship are entirely appropriate, because the idea of worship being a highly refined art isn’t really supported by NT methodology. If our gatherings are supposed to be “every-member functioning,” as Viola would say, then the idea that church worship should necessarily reflect the best of available art doesn’t match up.
Singing is not worship, but it can be a part of worship, and it can help lead people deeper into worship. It definitely should not be as professionalized as it is now. But if we are to take the route that worship should reflect “good art” and refined tastes, it can only lead to further professionalization. And a heck of a lot of disagreement about what is good and what isn’t.
At the heart of the issue is understanding that there are many different kinds of tastes, and a taste that might be sweet to one person might be bitter to another.
Setting worship music to popular styles has always been an issue. Derided by those in the church who were quite elitist and detested the idea that worship lyrics could be sung in a common, “vulgar” style. Much like how the church detested the idea of translations into common tongues for hundreds of years. (Even if the “vulgate” was the common tongue when it was produced, and the Greek was the common tongue when it was written.)
The point isn’t to make people happy with worship music. It’s to help them connect with God in an intimate way. And you can use worship music to expand people’s tastes and lead them into deeper worship, using music they would have never normally enjoyed. (I’ve done it.) But it can’t be done in a divisive way. If I just outright discount someone’s musical tastes as awful (even if they are), I’ll have little chance of helping them to explore the beauty of my musical tastes. Our relationships in the church, regarding music, should not be approached with such an attitude. And if we truly understand that what is “good” or “bad” about art is entirely subjective, then we can approach each other with love and grace and share with each other what we love about the styles that we connect so deeply with. (from Oh Happy Day at iamjoshbrown.com)
And Dan Kimball is reviewing Pagan Christianity and interviewing Frank Viola about organic church. Good stuff, actually, but of course I had to comment. First is a quote from Dan Kimball’s review (really the only negative part of it), where he shares what he sees as an issue with Frank’s approach:
What I disagree with is that if we follow this, then we should be all reading Scripture only from scrolls, as the “pagan” printing press was not around at that time and the “pagan” way we bind the Bible today and put them into pages was all developed hundreds of years later. Or that we have “pagan” forms of communicating and use laptops, blogs and the internet (I am using hyperbole to make a point, but it is this type of reaction which I feel the book consists of in how it stresses many of it’s practical conclusions).
And my response:
That completely and totally misses the point. And Viola specifically addresses this in the book. He only looks at pagan elements, that have been added to the church, that have diminished the functional headship of Christ in the church. That reduce the organic nature of the church. Using Powerpoint to display lyrics or scripture for a sermon isn’t the issue, but having a professional worship leader and preacher define the liturgy for the entire assembly is. It is not that we can’t utilize modern technologies in the church, it is that we shouldn’t allow pagan/modern practices to redefine the church. (from Pagan Christianity and Frank Viola – Part 2 at dankimball.com)
Pagan Christianity
Now that I’m done doing a thorough review of one of Viola’s books, it’s time to do a more concise review of his latest book: Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
This is actually a revision of Pagan Christianity, which was first released by Viola several years ago, and has apparently been out of print. With this revision, he’s partnered with George Barna. I’ve not read the original version of Pagan Christianity, but I’ve heard that this revision is much better on several levels.
While Rethinking the Wineskin actually focuses on church practices and principles described in the New Testament, Pagan Christianity focuses much more on the church practices (and their underlying principles) that have been added to the church since the New Testament era. It is really an impressive history book, detailing how certain practices were first introduced in the church. But it is also a criticism, for the practices Viola mentions have had detrimental effects on the functioning of the church:
- Church buildings: this idea is simply not found in Scripture, and Viola explains how the church building as a sacred space was connected to the use of relics (usually bones of dead saints) to create sacred, holy spaces as the only “appropriate” place to worship. Early Christianity intentionally stayed away from the “holy space” concept prevalent in every other religion. The financial overhead of a building is only one of the problems it creates. (As opposed the house.)
- Order of worship: the order of worship has remained essentially unchanged for hundreds of years. The problem with a set, unalterable liturgy (whether spoken or set to song) is that it prevents the practical functioning of the body of Christ within church gatherings. Not only is it not found in scripture, it is directly at odds with descriptions found in scripture of early church gatherings as well as inconsistent with the theology of the body of Christ.
- Sermon: like the order of worship, the sermon takes control away from the body and places it in the hands of the individual. But sermons also were borrowed directly from pagan philosophy styles of the Greek sophists (the inventors of rhetoric) who were more interested in oratorical skill than in any kind of accuracy. The idea of a “trained speaker,” turned into “religious specialist” was taken from this tradition. This does not call teaching or preaching into question, but it certainly calls into question the regularly styled oratory and professional approach to preaching. Preaching as found in the New Testament was sporadic, spontaneous, dealt with an immediate situation, and lacked rhetorical structure. It also usually took on some form of dialogue rather than simply being an oratory.
- Pastor: The pastor is at the heart of preventing the body of Christ from functioning in the way demanded by New Testament theology. Pastoring is a spiritual gift, but the idea of the modern “pastor” is completely unbiblical. Its introduction to the church first began with Ignatius, who believed that “a bishop stood in the place of God while the presbyters, or elders, stood in the place of the twelve apostles.” Eventually these ideas morphed into the priest system. But it was always about separating God from man, establishing man-made structures and hierarchies to take the place of the organic leadership that Christ worked through in the early church.
- Sunday morning dress: “Dressing up for church” is a more recent issue, brought on about 150 years ago with the introduction of a middle class who could afford some nice clothes, and wanted to identify themselves with their more wealthy neighbors. But the idea of special clergy robes was integrated from the Roman court systems, and over time became yet another symbol of the separation of the clergy from the laity.
- Music ministers: the choir was borrowed from Roman imperial procedures for processional music, eventually leading to a specialization of singing by the choir alone. Similar to how preaching was viewed as requiring training in the methods and practices of oratory and was reserved for only professionals, the singing was reserved for the trained, professional members of the choir, creating a spirit of spectatorship that survives to this day.
- Tithing and salaries: the modern idea of a tithe has no basis in the New Testament, which calls believers to give according to their ability, and to give as they feel led to give, out of joy. The modern idea of the tithe exists as a result of the combination of the church with secular authority, which used the “tithe” as a way to forcibly fund church operations. Viola explains how tithing in the Old Testament was designed to help the poor, but in the modern understanding of a tithe, the church expects even the poor to give 10%, and makes them feel guilty if they are unable to do so. The tithe becomes a cop-out for those with a lot of money (because they can easily give the “required” 10% and ease their conscience), while becoming a burden of guilt on the poor. All to fund further religious specialization of the clergy, separating these same poor people from God and preventing the full functioning o the body of Christ.
- Baptism and communion: Baptism became a part of a larger religious ritual rather than the simple practical expression of faith as described in the New Testament. Many began to view the act of baptism as providing the forgiveness of sins – Constantine himself waited until his deathbed to be baptized for this reason. Communion in the New Testament was a full meal, with remembrance, celebration, and discipleship, as a center of the gathering community. It later became infused with ritualistic undertones, taking on elements of pagan mysticism to eventually become the Eucharist in the Catholic mass. The reformation changed the theology behind communion but it did little to change the practice itself, which still commonly has heavy ritualistic undertones.
- Christian education: After the institutionalization of Christianity, Christian education always followed the prevailing education methods of the day. With a focus on knowledge, Christian education has little in common with the methods Christ employed in discipleship. Christian education is at the heart of the “specialization” of Christian ministry to the select few, being a basis upon which a person is “called” to professional ministry. This concept has nothing in common with New Testament Christianity and is based completely in secular systems of training and credentials.
The reality is that all of these elements were absent from the early church. All of them were borrowed and adopted from pagan and religious systems. Few people will disagree with that. What people will disagree with is whether or not they hinder the proper functioning of the body of Christ.
Wineskin talked a lot about these issues as well, but didn’t go into nearly the same level of detail about them. Likewise, Pagan Christianity deals somewhat with the New Testament church practices and principles, but doesn’t go into nearly the same detail as Wineskin. But I think to truly understand how these issues hinder the proper functioning of the body of Christ, you have to look very closely at how God instructs the Church to be. And since today’s institutional church doesn’t take scripture very seriously in this regard, of course they will disagree with Viola’s style, tone, and conclusions.
Even still, those who agree with Viola are sometimes at a loss to put it all together. Viola also puts a lot of plugs in for a book coming out this summer, called Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity
But I’m not sure that we should get too caught up looking for “practical” tips to implementing an organic church. Part of the point in things being organic is that they don’t look exactly the same everywhere. But every practical thing we try to do should be examined against the principles of the church, as described in the New Testament, and those following the path of organic church welcome others who can help guide them along the way.
I also don’t think it’s wrong to adopt styles and practices from surrounding culture, as long as they don’t redefine what it means to be the church, and as long as we don’t form some kind of new tradition around them. For instance, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hosting a concert-style worship event or a seminar-style teaching series, but I don’t think that these should become the defining characteristics of our church gatherings — which are more appropriately modeled after the relational form of discipleship that Christ employed. Keeping things organic helps to ensure that my “great idea” doesn’t obstruct how the church is supposed to function, and also helps to ensure that my idea doesn’t outlive its usefulness.
I think that the story of the church over the past 1700 years, most of all, has been one of religious leaders redefining church to be less and less organic and more and more institutional. We are beginning to see a paradigm shift back to an organic view of church. It started decades ago and is still growing. It might not really explode for decades more, but those of us whom God has called out of the institutional church to follow His call to a return to organic communities are glad to see authors like Viola and Barna put a voice to what God has been laying on our hearts. Some in the institutional church will respond as God puts in on their hearts as well, and others will lash out because it is too much of a challenge to their institutional worldview. If they had the power to silence it, many of them would try. This has always been the case when God speaks through His prophets, and we should expect no different today.
If you’ve not read this book, and issues of this nature are at all an interest to you, I highly recommend reading it. It will give you a very different perspective on the Sunday morning experience, and at a minimum, will help you to understand the perspective of your “organic church” contemporaries.
New FairTax Book
Boortz and Linder recently came out with another FairTax book, called FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics
It’s been billed as their effort to “answer the outspoken and misinformed critics” of the FairTax. The main disappointment I have with the book is that it really only does that for about two chapters.
The book is still good, though, including more history about how the FairTax developed. The book does a good job of dealing with criticisms, even if it’s a little short on explanations here and there. It does not assume that you’ve read their first FairTax book
Perhaps the best stuff in the book is towards the end, though. There’s a great section where they describe what it would be like to have lived under the FairTax all of your life – receiving your entire paycheck. No payroll taxes. Knowing exactly what government is costing. Not having to base business or investment decisions on their tax consequences. And then they describe a politician trying to come and sell the current system as an improvement. Taxing your income. Taxing business profits, so there’s a hidden tax cost in everything you buy. Taxing investments. Even taxing death.
It’s a very interesting way to look at it, and it really helps to make it clear how much simpler the FairTax is, and how it removes government from more day-to-day business and personal decisions.
If you’ve been suspicious of the FairTax, I highly encourage you to pick this book up. It’s less technical than the first one, in some ways, and more visionary in tone. And many of your questions and concerns about the FairTax are probably dealt with in this book.
One criticism I felt like they should have dealt with better is the progressive nature of the FairTax. They explain the prebate well, and how that prevents anyone from paying taxes on the basic necessities of life (defined by the poverty level), and they explained how this makes the FairTax progressive. They also talked a good bit about net effective tax rates under the current tax system. But I think they could have talked more about net effective tax rates under the FairTax. I’ve left comments about this over at FairTaxBlog.Com, and I’ll probably work on a post about this particular issue in the future. It’s really important to consider net effective rates when people initially react to the idea of a 23% inclusive consumption tax.
(Actually, if you have serious questions or concerns about the FairTax, check out FairTaxBlog.Com. There are a lot of supporters and critics that can support their points very well there.)
I think this quote does a good job of describing the overall goals of tax reform, and what the FairTax will enable.
Under the FairTax Vision for Tomorrow, every time an American buys a loaf of bread or a new car, he’ll know, to the penny, how much of that money is going to the federal government.
Our vision for tomorrow sees a government that’s a partner with the business community and the people, not an adversary; a government with a tax system that encourages economic development and the creation of the new business, rather than a government and a tax system that chases valued businesses to foreign shores.
Our vision for tomorrow is one where governance returns to the local level; were communities are allowed to make the important decisions regarding their government and their schools. No longer will politicians be able to hide regulations and programs that control every aspect of our lives in 9 million words of confusing and draconian codes and regulation. The FairTax will demand political honesty…
Our vision for tomorrow sees an America where jobs are insourced, not outsourced… sees America becoming the safest and most secure tax haven for trillions of dollars currently languishing offshore… sees an America that will enjoy a virtual $400-billion-per-year tax cut… an exporting powerhouse, selling goods and services into a global economy unburdened by the 22 percent tax component now burdening our price system…
People see all of this and say, “how can a different tax system do that?” One point that I haven’t seen made clearly enough, is that the FairTax wouldn’t be responsible for any of this. The truth is that these “benefits” would not be due to enacting the FairTax, they would be due to completely getting rid of all of the oppression of the current tax structure on our economic decisions, while still funding our government. It is not the FairTax that would produce such wonderful results – it would be the American people, unencumbered by an oppressive tax system. How can you disagree with that?
New Wineskin – Conclusion
This is the conclusion to the series reviewing Rethinking The Wineskin
By the way: I know that Amazon lists a really high price for this book. It’s actually kind of hard to get, but ChristianBook.Com (where I bought it from) still lists Rethinking the Wineskin for only $11.99. It currently shows it shipping in a couple of weeks.
It’s taken me some time to wrap this series up. I don’t usually go into as much detail with a “review.” But this book has really pushed me, as well as really voicing a lot of the things God has been pushing me (as well as my siblings) towards. This kind of detailed review is as much for me as it is for anyone who reads my blog. When something this important comes along, it helps me a lot to be able to capture a lot of quotes and my thoughts about them.
But I hope this has been challenging for you as well. And if you’re intrigued by my summaries, I highly recommend trying to pick up a copy. Viola is actually in the process of repackaging several of his books, and I suspect that this one will end up being repackaged as well. Hopefully even better.
There are so many things that we’ve touched on while examining what the “new wineskin” really is:
- Gatherings
- Common Meal
- The House
- Family/Community
- Leadership – Oversight
- Leadership – Visionary
- Purpose
- Membership
- Boundary
- Tradition
Viola finishes up the book dealing with a couple of topics, including looking at what other reform movements have done in the past couple of decades. Viola spends some time in the final chapter analyzing the shortcomings of several modern church movements, including the megachurch, the third wave and restoration movements, and cell churches, and has some things to say about how they really haven’t reformed very much. Viola is also highly critical of “house churches” that haven’t really adopted organic principles and practices.
That’s not to say that Viola feels that institutional churches can’t be used by God.
It is a fact that God has used and is using the institutional church. Because of His mercy, the Lord will work through any structure as long as He can find hearts that are truly open to Him.
But Viola is clear that the institutions themselves are more of a hindrance than people realize.
He spends most of his last chapter on what to do next. His assumption is that many people who read this book, currently in the institutional church, will wonder where to go from here and how to implement the principles he’s laid out in their current church.
Some have championed the idea of renewing the institutional church from the inside out. But those who have sought to revamp the established church have met serious resistance and frustration.
I’ve read similar quotes from other authors. I would say that most people who have gone down this path have entertained similar ideas, and I’ve personally put a lot of thought into what an existing institutional church could do to move toward the original wineskin described in the New Testament. As I’ve told some friends of mine who are pastors, I’ve love to see someone really try it. But I’ve become more and more skeptical about the possibilities. The most likely thing that would happen to an existing church, given that kind of pressure, is that it would be torn apart. You’ll never get dozens, hundreds, and especially thousands of people to have that kind of paradigm shift together. The early Christians did not “reform” Judaism by improving the institutional system, but instead created a completely new, organic church that defied all logic of worldly leadership and religion. We are faced with a similar task today in trying to rediscover the new wineskin.
It is the clergy/sectarian system that inhibits the rediscovery of face-to-face community, supplants the functional Headship of Christ, and stifles the full ministry of every believer. Consequently, all attempts at renewal will be short-sighted until the clergy structure and denominational system are dismantled in a local fellowship…
In sum, the modern church will never be renewed until it recognizes that the framework with which it operates is inadequate and self-defeating. Despite the good intentions of the persons that populate it, the interior design of the institutional church sets us up for defeat.
True renewal, therefore, must be radical. That means it must go to the root! Recovering the Lord’s testimony necessitates that we forsake our ecclesiastical patches and band-aids!
Again, this comes down to a paradigm shift. Those can happen radically within a generation, but it is usually a new generation that embraces such a shift. I believe this is one of the reasons why the average age of clergy is climbing rapidly. As described in Barna’s Revolution, this paradigm shift is beginning.
But people who have not made this shift cannot understand why those of us who have are so restless.
Those who have not had a paradigm shift regarding the church will either ignore or oppose those churches that have.
In the eyes of those who see the world through institutional glasses, unless a church meets in the “right” place (a building), has the “proper” leadership (an ordained pastor or priest), and bears the “correct” name (one that indicates a “covering”), it is not an authentic church! Instead, it is dubbed with innovative terms like “para-church.”
For those who have not yet grown weary of running on the program-driven treadmill of institutional “churchianity,” that which is abnormal is considered normal. And that which is normal is regarded as abnormal. This is the unhappy result of not basing our faith and practice upon Scripture.
Viola quotes Jon Zens to further emphasize how we have twisted scripture to support the existing institutional system:
It seems to me that we have made normative that for which there is no Scriptural warrant (emphasis on one man’s ministry), and we have omitted that for which there is ample Scriptural support (emphasis on one another).
On a final note, look again at Christ’s parable of the wineskins:
No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth over a hole in an old coat. Otherwise, the patch will shrink and pull away — the new patch will pull away from the old coat. Then the hole will be worse. Also, no one ever pours new wine into old leather bags. Otherwise, the new wine will break the bags, and the wine will be ruined along with the bags. But new wine should be put into new leather bags.(Mark 2:21-22, NCV)
The context of this statement is clearly comparing Christ’s ministry with the traditional Jewish system. He’s saying something very clear here – don’t mix what I’m doing with something that is not compatible! He’s still telling us that today. Christ modeled for His followers, on a daily basis, what it meant to follow Him, and what it meant to be the church. What it looked like to be the new wineskin. But we keep trying to put the new wine (Christ) into an old wineskin (religious institutions). God is challenging us to rediscover the wineskin Christ began, with the joy, peace, and fullness that comes along with it. May we be faithful to the task he left us:
Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave his charge: “God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, The Message)
May we be always reminded what the context of Christ’s command really is. They didn’t view this command as some kind of directive to do something completely different from the kind of leadership Christ modeled for them. They viewed this as a command to continue on in the practices and principles that Christ trained them in.
New Wineskin – Tradition
This series is reviewing Rethinking The Wineskin
In Christianity, we have nearly 2,000 years of tradition behind us. How much of this helps us? How much of this hinders us?
I’m actually not going to focus much, right now, on the traditions of the last 1,900 years. Primarily because that’s a different book (one that I’ll do a short review of soon), but also because over the past couple of years I’ve made it my goal to tease out the tradition of men from my thinking. It’s an ongoing struggle, and will likely always be a struggle.
But the NT does talk about tradition – specifically, about apostolic tradition. The apostolic tradition is not a set liturgy or detailed description of worship gatherings. It is not a detailed description of how to organize churches geographically. It is not about obedience to some kind of new law of church practice. If it was, we would not need the guidance of the Spirit in our churches.
The apostolic tradition is all about the principles of following Christ in an organic way.
The apostolic tradition is the embodiment of those spiritual principles and organic practices that the apostles modeled in every church during the first century. It is the principles, methods, and lines of working that constitute the wineskin that God has formed to preserve His new wine.
In other words, Christ brought the new wine of the new covenant, and the apostles created the new wineskin of the church to contain the new covenant. Christ specifically said that the new wine could not be contained in the old wineskin. Therefore the apostolic tradition is essential if we with to truly reflect Christ in the church.
The NT presents the church in its purest form. It shows us what the church was like before it was tainted by the defiling hand of man… if we ignore Scripture on these points, we will make the perilous mistake of creating a church after our image.
I’ve been saying for awhile that I’m starting to take the NT more seriously. It is exactly because of this that the apostolic tradition becomes more important. For as much as the NT has to say about individual salvation and personal holiness, it has more to say about corporate holiness, our responsibilities to each other, and how we corporately interact with God. Viola quotes Stephen Kaung:
People believe that the Word of God shows them how to live individually before God, but they think that insofar as their corporate life is concerned, God says, ‘It’s up to you; do whatever you like.’ And that’s what we find today in Christianity; there is no guiding principle as to our corporate life – everyone does what is right in his own eyes. But dear brothers and sisters, we are saved individually, but we are called corporately… there is as much teaching and example in the Word of God that governs our corporate life as there is our personal life.
The apostolic tradition is the new wineskin. But we have held on to so much more that is either glaringly absent from the apostolic tradition, or even specifically forbidden. Professional clergy are never mentioned in the tradition. (Helping traveling ministers is mentioned, but Paul dislikes taking payment for ministry!) Single-leader and presentational systems are not mentioned, instead each member ministers to the entire body. In a time when religion was always combined with a “holy space,” Christians specifically refrained from building temples are basilicas for worship, instead intentionally choosing the simple relational format of the home. Denominations and church splits are specifically warned against. Unity was of the utmost importance.
Observing apostolic traditions means following what was theologically and spiritually significant in the experience of the early church. The apostolic tradition represents the balance between reenacting the specific actions of the first-century church and ignoring them… Multitudes of church leaders today have opted to regard their own ideas of “doing church” as wiser, more expedient, and more successful than what is found in the NT. The tragedy of this mistaken conclusion is manifold. When Divine tendencies are replaced with man-officiated programs and schemes, God’s ordained purpose for the ekklesia is crippled at best. It is crushed at worst.
I believe that the heart of the modern church’s problem in this area is pragmatism. The idea is that we are after tangible results. God will not be pleased unless we reach as many people as we can. A church building is necessary to reach the unsaved in suburban cultures. That paid pastoral staff serve a need in the church community. Et cetera.
But I believe that the Bible shows, time and time again, that it is not results from pragmatic approaches that God desires from us. God’s desire of us is simply to be obedient.
The tragic story of King David’s presumptuous act of placing the ark of the Lord upon a wooden cart is the summary witness that God’s work must be done His way (2 Sam. 6:1-7). The humanly-devised scheme of placing the holy ark upon a cart appeals to modern pragmatic ears. Yet the idea was borrowed from the heathen Philistines. And it violated the plain instruction of Jehovah.
There is simply nothing we can add to church practice that can be of any lasting value if we are not first and foremost obedient to the direct and obvious descriptions of church life, principle, and practice as described in the NT. This is the apostolic tradition. We would be very wise to compare our modern churches to it, and make any and all adjustments that we need to make in order to follow what has been handed down to us. Not what has been handed down to us through 1,900 years of human improvements. But what has been handed down to us directly from the apostles themselves, in the form of NT scripture. It is this, and only this measurement, with the guidance of the Spirit, that we have been given to adhere to. Pragmatism should be viewed as our enemy if it distracts us from obedience.
I’ll finish with a quote from A. W. Tozer about pragmatism:
What shall we do to break its power over us? The answer is simple. Acknowledge the right of Jesus Christ to control the activities of His church. The NT contains full instructions, not only about what we are to believe but what we are to do and how we are to go about doing it. Any deviation from those instructions is a denial of the Lordship of Christ. I say the answer is simple, but it is not easy for it requires that we obey God rather than man, and that brings down the wrath of the religious majority. It is not a question of knowing what to do; we can easily learn that from the Scriptures. It is a question of whether or not we have the courage to do it.