I’m a fan of Frank Viola and George Barna. I really enjoyed Pagan Christianity, the prequel to Re-imagining Church. I would highly recommend it to you. You can read my review of it here. It’s informative and very challenging…but nothing prepared me for Frank Viola’s solo tome, Re-imagining Church.
Viola’s primary premise is that “many of today’s congregations have shifted away from God’s original plan for the church.” I do not disagree with much of what the book says. However, I grew very tired of the tearing down of each facet of the church. I completely understood it in Pagan Christianity, but with a title of “Re-imagining Church,’ I set my expectations on a book full of ideas and thoughts that would challenge me, and give me ideas to transform my modern day church experiences and ministries. I had thought that Viola would spend less time tearing down other churches and building up the organic movement. To me, Re-imagining Church just became a book of “this idea is good because this thing sucks.”
That is not to say that there weren’t ideas offered. When I arrived at the last chapter, entitled “Where do we go from here?”, I was hoping for some answers to the previous chapters of church dissection. Instead, the first half of the last chapter was a complete evisceration of churches like Willowcreek, Saddleback, Vintage Faith, and Lakewood, although, he doesn’t exactly call them by name. And Viola followed that up with a challenge to do away with pastors, church leaders, and anything that even resembles modern day church services. I get it, I dig it, I even agree with most of it. What I struggled with, especially in the end section of the book, was Viola’s “almost” contradiction.
Towards the end of the chapter, Frank recounts great men of the faith who have stepped out of occupational pastoral positions and started (and led) organic churches. My question is this: so as long as the church is organic in nature, it’s OK for those guys to be pastors…but Joel Osteen is wrong? Frank suggests that elders are only needed in times of severe church need, but he mentions the leaders of these other churches and even church planters…of organic churches.
I agree that Jesus needs to be the head of the church. I agree that we need to have open dialogs and discussions within our church gatherings. I agree that the modern day church structure is not EXACTLY what God ordained in Acts, but here’s my beef – if no one person is “the leader,” who organizes the gatherings? Who makes the phone calls or sends the emails? Who makes sure that the gathering location is prepared for the gathering? I believe that Viola would say, “The Apostolic Leader,” or the community of believers would rally and do it on their own. And to that I would ask this one question:
What happens when that leader leaves? By Viola’s own definition, the Apostolic Leader is not mean to stay put, he is meant to start up, train, organize, and then leave the church. to replicate another organic church. I know that “the church” is supposed to support itself, but somebody has to to lead…objects (and people) who are at rest, tend to stay at rest, unless acted on by another force. I just don’t believe that Jesus is going to send emails and make phone calls to organize people into a church.
I also struggle with Viola’s suggestion that the organic church is meant only for believers. He spends very little time discussing the lost, while calling out other home churches and small groups as cliquish and sectarian, he paints a glorious picture of an organic church gathering. It sounds very cliquish. But who oversees that it doesn’t become a sect or cult? I know, I know, Jesus, but again, someone has to lead, even after the Apostolic Leader/Planter moves on.
There is no right or wrong in this discussion, and I believe that Frank Viola is more right, than wrong, but what finally pushed me over the edge was the fact that I spend so much time trying to convince people to accept Jesus Christ and follow “The Way”, that it becomes even more difficult to convince someone to follow Christ, and then COMPLETELY forget everything that they know about church…it’s almost too much to swallow.
The good news of witnessing and bringing people into a Christian community, is that there is some familiarity with the basic tenets of what church is and isn’t. The bad news is that there is even more familiarity with the basic tenets of what church should be, but isn’t.
If I had to choose between evangelizing Jesus Christ or organic church, I would opt for proclaiming the name of Jesus, which I am pretty sure I am called to do, more so that proclaiming the preferred Christian gathering style of the First Century Church.
If I were you, I would definitely read Re-imagining Church and decide for your own.
