House Churches and "Pagan Christianity" - Part 1

I read the book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola when it first came out in 2002 or 2003. I think I have read all of Frank Viola's books and appreciate greatly what he writes. I have become email friends with Frank over the past couple of years too. So I do truly appreciate his passion for seeing the church function in a biblical and healthy way. The book Pagan Christianity goes into all the background of why we do what we do in most church worship gatherings. Where did pews come from? Where did the pulpit come from? The way we have sermons, the title of "pastor", the way churches pay their staff, and all kinds of things are explored in this book. An argument is given that these things are "pagan" and not from the Bible, but because we have done them for so long, no one questions them.

Recently, a revised edition of Pagan Christianity was released and George Barna was added as a co-author. I re-read the entire book again. The book was cleaned up a lot, some further notes and comments have been added. I have been in touch with Frank about the book and even asked him some questions about it which I will post in Part 2 of this. (You can go to Frank's web site and order the book here).

I am not going to give a full review of the book, as there are many web sites that have been doing that such as here and here and here and here is a compiled listing of many reviews. If you read these you will see this book does stir up some controversy. Frank has been responding to some of the controversy here on his web site.

Everyone writes coming from a particular culture and background which does influence their opinions and what they write. Both Frank and George are writing from the context of being very strong house church/organic church advocates. This book does argue that almost anything but the house church/organic church model is not healthy or biblical.

If you know me and if you are part of Vintage Faith Church - you would hear pretty constantly that we don't believe the larger Sunday worship gatherings represents what the early church meetings were like. For the first 300 years of the church, the early church did primarily meet in homes in smaller settings and not in buildings with several hundred people and worship bands etc.  But even though the larger worship gatherings are not formatted like the early church meetings, we still have larger meetings (3 currently) and strongly believe that larger worship gatherings have purpose and are used by the Spirit in peoples lives and in someone's spiritual formation and in the rhythm and flow of someone's week in part of a church community.

However, you would also hear us constantly promote mid-week Community Groups as where true community can develop and relationships deepen in ways that they can't in larger meetings.  We try to communicate that we see these more than "small groups" which usually just last a short time - but we try to structure Community Groups to function in ways that empower leaders to shepherd, study Scripture, make decisions for their groups etc.  So I believe that the house church or Community Group (or some sort of regular smaller meeting) format is very, very important. I can't imagine being a church without them and other mid-week meetings such as what we have for Soul Kitchen (for women of our church) etc. We also have taught in our church about the title "pastor" and how it was not originally a title as we use it today, but it was a spritual gift (shepherding) and that many people have pastoral/shepehrding gifts to be used in the church. We communicate that much "pastoring" happens in Community Groups and that the leaders of Community Groups and other smaller groups truly do biblically "pastor" people.

So looking into all the origins of what we do in churches and titles that Frank and George raise in Pagan Christianity, I love, love, love reading that. None of it surprises me or makes me upset that these origins are being written about. I wish every Christian would know the origins of why we do what what we do in our churches. For the past several years, both in our church and when I speak at conferences I also have been stressing that most of what we do in most church's formal meetings on Sundays is not based from the Bible. How preachers preach, pulpits, suits, robes, the design of the buildings we meet in, pews, the title of "pastor", the order of a worship gathering, bands etc. all were not practiced in the early church. I wish all Christians would know the origins of these things. If we all did, then we wouldn't feel so restricted to "this is what church is supposed to look like" and fight about things, when we realize most of what we do  (and normally fight about) is no where to be found in the Scriptures. I will comment more on this in the next post.

So, reading Pagan Christianity and what it brings out about origins of what we do - is something I love reading. But where I differ from the argument the book makes, is that I don't feel that the independent house church or organic church is the only answer to solving the issues of unhealth in a church. I have been in correspondence with Frank and I had some questions that he answered for me to post in Part 2. I am not against house churches or organic churches - I am against saying that you cannot function as a missional and healthy church unless you reject all forms of contemporary churches and go back to a house church/organic church model. I have heard often stories of people getting understandably disillusioned with the larger church. They then form a house church as a result of their disillusionment.  I posted once about a pattern I have seen (this example was based on a real situation) about the disillusionment with larger churches.   

I am not against house churches or organic churches. But, I do have some questions about those who see the house church as the one true and only biblical approach for what church should be like. And I have many questions about house churches and their sustainability as well as their evangelistic and missional fruit. What I did, was that I asked Frank some of the questions I have and I will post his answers in the next post.

Some of the questions I had for Frank were:

• I fully do understand that you have uncovered a lot of things that established churches do that isn't biblically based but developed through culture or are of "pagan" origin. But things like the printing press for publishing books, the internet, computers, cars for transportation, CD's, MP3's etc. were also not around in the early church. Yet we depend on them for getting to church meetings, we use these formats for teaching, reading, communicating, and writing books like Pagan Christianity. So just because something was not happening or formats used in the early church, I don't see it necessarily as wrong for the church to use as we morph and change the change the format and ways we go about things as culture changes and time passes. However- this is provided we are watching for how the Spirit is changing people and disciples are being made and evangelism is happening as a result of whatever forms and structures we use - whether in a large church of 1,000 or with 10 people in a house church. I say this as a hyperbole and hyper-exaggeration to raise a point here, but why then in your house church do you not really go back and really model what the early church was like format wise? Why do you allow things with "pagan" origin to be part of your meetings and use electricity and have running water in the homes your church meets in when they didn't have those in the early church? Why do you use Bibles that are formatted like "pagan" books that are paginated and bound with leather covers and have page numbers and verses and chapters (which weren't in the original)? Why aren't you using scrolls for reading Scripture like they had in the early church? Why are you using Bibles translated into into the "pagan" language of English - instead of in your church only reading the New Testament (from scrolls) written in Greek like in the early church? Why do you use the internet to communicate and share about your writings when that format was not in the early church? Does your church (or family) celebrate Christmas in any form - or do you follow through like Jehovah Witnesses totally ignore the practice of celebrating the birthday of Jesus' birth and the date of December 25 since that date is of "pagan" origin and the early church did not celebrate Christmas in any form whatsoever? (Again, I am not serious about the specifics of these questions. I am trying to have some fun and play out the the logic of saying that forms and practices of a church that aren't in the Bible or practiced in the early church are then not healthy or should not be used in today's church).

• I agree there are many churches who do what you say in terms of the paid staff and pastors and doing all the work and the people of the church then become dependent on pastors and don't exercise their gifts and then grow in healthy ways. But there are also many churches who do have paid pastors and do have buildings etc. - yet do empower and train people to be the "ministers" and shpeherds/pastors - not just in theory but in reality.  Do you feel that a church can have paid pastors and staff and have sermons and large meeting and be healthy if paying attention to the priesthood of all believers and the church intentionally breaks the larger church into smaller meetings? Do you believe that a church can exist of 300 or 3,000 people with paid pastors, sermons, a pulpit (or music stand) and have a missional emphasis and seeing believers living out the priesthood of all believers? Or does it always have to be a small group of 10 or 20 like you personally practice in a house church?

• When I hear stories of how a lot of house churches were formed, a pattern seems to exist. They originally all met each other in a larger church, got dissatisfied with the larger church and left to form a house church.  But then after they leave the larger church, their relational network dries up, because the primary way they originally developed relationships with the other Christians who joined their new house church came from when they met each other in the larger organized church. So as time goes by, most don't grow with new people apart from those who were also formerly part of their former larger church (or another larger church). So those in the house church wouldn't have even met or known each other if it wasn't for the larger organized church, with paid pastors and buildings that they end up criticizing (many do) after they leave - and then they don't really grow because their primary source of people was from the larger church that they left. Any response to this?

• Do house churches really see conversion growth?  Not in theory, but multiplying from new believers?  Would you say that the established organized church with paid pastors, buildings etc. see more or less conversion growth than house churches? Is there any data about conversion growth in house churches and that compares with the larger structured churches? Or to be specific, how about in your own house church? How many were already Christians, how many conversions have you seen? Has your house church multiplied and launched new house churches over the many years you have been part of one as new disciples are made and conversion growth occurs? How many times? (I ask numbers here only to just to try and really grasp tangible understanding of this. I understand numbers aren't reflective of health by any means).

Again, I highly, highly recommend this book to read and actually loved the primary content of the book and the history and origins taught in the book. As you can tell, I disagree with the application and premise of what to do with knowing the origins of things. I also believe that you can't have a church of 500 or 5,000 and be just as healthy and functioning biblically as a house church of 15 people. I also know house churches of 15 people who have leadership power and control issues and all the same weird things that can happen in a church of 1,000. We can be unhealthy in a church of 15 or in a church of 1,500. Yet I also believe we can be in a healthy in a church of 15 or a church of 1,500. I personally prefer and believe in the larger growing church (for reasons I will explain in a future post) provided that there is examination of health and the very things Frank rasies in his book are regularly examined (as should be examined in a house church too). So I have questions I asked Frank and he responded and I will post Frank's answers to these questions in a future blog post.

To me, it is important to know why we do the things we do. That's why I loved reading Pagan Christianity both times I have read it. I love reading origin books. Especially in church leadership, to me a critical thing is to know origins of why we do what we do in our churches. So we can evaluate them to see if they are hindering the mission we are on. Tradition should not hinder the mission and often we do things (like Pagan Christianity shows) which to me, do hinder the mission. So knowing what is biblically based and what is human origin does matter for having the confidence to make change.  More on this with Frank's responses in a future post......