I began blogging about the book Pagan Christianity a few weeks ago. The author, Frank Viola and I have become email friends over the years and I said I would post about this book. I have read it thoroughly 2 times and I have a "love/hate" relationship with this book (hate is too strong a word). What I love, love, love, love about this book is how it goes into the origins of why we do what we do in our churches. I believe it is very important to know origins, as we can sometimes get locked into systems or ways of doing ministry that aren't from Scripture, but were developed in a certain time period and certain culture for a certain purpose that fit that culture. But we can then not question why we do what we do and not want to change and it can hinder the mission of the church. I teach about these origins like Frank writes about in this book in seminary classes, in conferences and have taught about them in our church. So, I love, love, love this and I highly, highly recommend the book for that.
I also, love, love, love the heart of what Frank and George desire to see the church be and for Christians to experience. I couldn't agree more and I am so much in agreement with these things. I have read every single book Frank has written and I love his heart for the church and for Christians to experience what God intended for the church.
But what I don't really agree with, is the way that the book subtly and not too subtly stresses that the "pagan" things we have added or developed into church culture and practice is almost all bad. There is a subtle and not too subtle argument made for the small organic church to be the way true health can be experienced. 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).
I also don't agree that large established churches with paid staffs are bad. I think that you can have a healthy church of 5,000 and a healthy church of 15. Or you can have a unhealthy church of 5,000 or an unhealthy church of 15. I am not into numbers. We intentionally don't count the people in our worship gatherings so we don't fall into the "we had 30 more this week" or "30 less than last week" trap. We do count (so to speak) leaders and those in Community Groups as that is a more accurate way to track health (and other ways too). So, I truly am not into just asking about numbers for the sake of seeing how big or little a church is. But like any farmer checks the growth and multiplication of crops, in the church we shouldn't be afraid of asking and checking about growth and multiplication over time and in the right seasons. Jesus said to go and make disciples and the Bible records times and numbers of people putting faith in Jesus. Jesus said to be fishers of people, which means there was an expectation that new fish would be caught (so to speak). George Barna, who is the co-author of Pagan Christianity makes arguments and cases for things using lots of numbers and statistics. His last book Revolution was based on surveys and numbers. So numbers in the right motive for asking, shouldn't be bad to do.
So with Frank, I wanted to be asking how he has personally seen growth and multiplication over the many years he has been part of a house church. Not how it is going in India or China and in that different cultural context. But how about his own church? He lives in a populated area and with a healthy church of any size, over time we should see conversion growth of some kind and multiplication of new house churches since they intentionally remain small and then are to launch new ones.
So over the years, I wanted to know at least some guesses about this in terms of people who weren't Christians or disciples, how many came to faith and became part of the house church (in the right season). And how many over the years - new house churches have been launched and multiplication happening? Over a long time period, if there is 15 believers and our mandate is to make disciples and multiply in a healthy way - what has happened in Frank's church? So, I asked these questions - since co-author George Barna bases his arguments from numbers usually. And a farmer growing strawberries wants to see how many new strawberries are produced over time etc.
So with that, I will do in Scot McKnight fashion of having the entry continue on another page, have this continue with Frank's responses as you click here to go to the next part.
Dan: Can you share a little about what kind of community or town you personally live in? And what kind church are you personally part of? How often does it meet? How many people are part of it? Also out of curiosity, what are some of your favorite bands or music that you listen to?
Frank: Presently, I live in Gainesville, FL. This year, I'm concentrating on traveling to other cities and helping to plant new churches as well as encouraging existing ones. I'm also actively praying for direction regarding a new organic church plant in my town for the future.
The churches I work with and have relationships with meet all throughout the week. They are face-to-face communities, so the sisters and brothers are often gathering together and they are in one another’s lives. As far as external size, typically they run from between 12 adults (on the small side) and 60 adults (on the large side) and 10,005 children ;-) But for these people, church is not a once or twice a week event. To borrow a phrase from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it's a “life together.”
The outstanding characteristic of these churches is that Jesus Christ is central. The members pursue Him all throughout the week. They have a life together around Christ during the week. Then when they meet together corporately, there is an explosion of sharing about their amazing Lord with one another. Every one participates, everyone functions, and everyone ministers Christ in the gatherings. And it looks different from week to week. This is very different from the Protestant order of worship where a few people function each time and everyone else passively spectates.
As for music, I love most types. I have my own personal "favorite artist" or "band" of the month club. It switches every so often. For the last year, it’s been Kendall Payne. I love her song "Modern Day Moses." I find it very inspiring -- I think anyone who has a revolutionary spirit will appreciate it. You can give it a listen over at http://www.myspace.com/frankaviola
I also love movie soundtracks. My all-time favorite soundtracks are "Message in a Bottle," "Never Been Kissed," and "The Bourne Identity."
Dan: So even you aren't in a house church now, can you tell me about the one you have been in? Gainesville has a quarter of a million people in the county there, so seems a lot of potential for growth and multiplication to occur. So can you specifically let me know how many house churches has the specific house church you were in launched and how many conversions from non-Christians have you seen through your house church? Did the new believers stay in the house church?
Frank: In the book, we distinguish between a “house church” and an “organic church.” I’m not really a proponent of house churches, since most of them are quite insipid in my opinion. I am a proponent of organic church life. That’s not a particular “model” of church (as we’ve said repeatedly, we believe that no one right model of church exists). It’s a kind of expression that will differ from culture to culture, but it will have similar features . . . . just like human beings are similar but different from culture to culture. I believe the organic church (or the church as organism) is what the New Testament envisions in both its teachings and examples.
Over the last twenty years, I’ve been part of two organic churches. (I’m not speaking of churches I’ve planted, but churches in which I was a simple brother among other brothers and sisters. To use an analogy, Barnabas was a brother in the church in Jerusalem. But he was later sent out to plant churches in other places.)
Right now, I’m writing a book that releases in August which will explain in detail what organic church life sometimes looks like in 21st century America, both from my experience and from my what myself and others have discovered from the New Testament. Each chapter paints a picture of each aspect of organic church life, and then it tells stories from my own experience. I say this because there’s not enough space or room to explain it adequately in this interview.
Essentially, they were face to face communities where Jesus Christ, and not a human being, was the functional Head. We lived as a family. We pursued Christ throughout the week, we had all sorts of meetings where He was expressed, and we sought to display Him in our local communities in many different ways and according to the spiritual season we were in. There was no legalism present, but we knew Jesus Christ in freedom. It was glory and gore mixed together. We learned Christ and His cross in living color. One of those churches sent me out to plant churches in other cities.
As for Gainesville, as I said in my last answer, I’m actively praying (with others) on the timing of planting an organic church here. Organic churches aren’t like institutional churches. They can’t be started; they must be born. Hence the timing and leadership of the Lord is critical.
Now as to your specific numbers question, I have to admit that this sort of thinking is quite foreign to me since I’ve been outside the institutional church. When I was in the Pentecostal/charismatic movement, numbers were constantly being thrown around – “1,000 were healed in the crusade last week, and 568 were saved and baptized.” Forgive me for this if you’re Pentecostal/charismatic, but as I began to examine those numbers, I came to a conclusion. All I had to do was take the reported number and divide it in half then subtract 15%, and I’d be pretty close to the actual figure :)
Interestingly, the Pentecostal/charismatic movement was born with the tendency to exaggerate. (The history of the movement is well documented; I didn’t make that up.) And it’s never recovered from that tendency. A few Pentecostal leaders I know have admitted this to me which was quite refreshing.
When I made that discovery, I raised a standard in my life that I wasn’t going to measure anything by numbers. That to me was a very superficial basis for measuring that which has eternal and spiritual value. Consequently, we never counted people who were saved. So I really have no idea. I remember we baptized numerous people throughout those years; but I can’t tell you the number as we never kept track.
I know there are some people in the house church movement who do keep tabs on these kinds of figures in the United States and overseas, and the numbers I’ve seen are astronomical. But again: I’m not the guy to ask this sort of thing since my measuring stick is of a different type.
What we did see is this: We saw real and genuine transformation in the lives of people. We saw a number of demon possessed people get delivered. We saw a number of emotionally unstable people get liberated. People were encountering Jesus Christ in ways I’ve never seen in the typical institutional church. And . . . they were learning how to function in a face to face community without human headship. I’ve seen this in the churches I’ve worked with and planted as well. People begin to grow into Christ, and they do it together . . . not as individuals.
The evangelical mind has a penchant for counting souls saved. That essentially means, “How many said the prayer.” The problem is (and the Barna Group has documented this in their research) many people who are “saved” don’t continue to follow the Lord. And many people who attend an institutional church aren’t being transformed at all. (Again, Barna has documented this with solid research.) Consequently, the converts I’ve seen in my church life experience stayed and most (not all) of them experienced transformation.
So to be honest, Dan, I’m monumentally unimpressed whenever someone tells me, “Our church got 1,234 people saved last year.” That to me means very little.
Here’s my standard of testing the fruitfulness of a church. And this is a question I’ve raised to many institutional church planters as well as to many “house church” planters.
Can you (and your pastoral staff) leave your congregation right now under the Headship of Jesus Christ? Can you say goodbye to the people you’ve been preaching to every week for years, and walk out on them, not seeing them for six months to a year? And you won’t establish a surrogate clergy over them, but you will do as Paul of Tarsus did and leave them on their own totally to the Holy Spirit and to the Headship of Jesus Christ.
And if you did that … what would happen?
Will they scatter? Will they look for a substitute and erect a pastor to rule over them and do all the ministry for them in your place? Or … will they and can they … take care of one another, will they love one another as family, will they know how to have meetings where they make decisions together under the Holy Spirit’s leadership, will they be able nourish themselves spiritually, will they be able to have regular meetings where everyone participates and Jesus Christ is displayed to principalities and powers through His every-member functioning body, will they know how to experienced Jesus Christ with others during the week, and will they want to share their incredible Lord to the world around them, not out of guilt, duty, or obligation, but because they can’t help but share Him with one another and others?
Do you have a gospel that’s powerful enough to do that?
Or to put it another way: Do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive enough to be Head over His own church, and can you equip God’s people to the point where they function under His Headship instead of your own?
To my mind, a pastor or church planter will never have his gospel truly tested nor will he be able to really tell if he has truly “equipped the saints” unless he puts it to the proof like that.
When Paul of Tarsus was on this earth, he planted approximately 14 such churches. That was from the time he came to Christ to the time he died in Rome. And most of those churches were made up of no more than 40 people. (Jerusalem, Ephesus, and Antioch were exceptionally large churches in Century One. Most were quite small. Large enough to meet in a single first-century home.)
(If someone wants documentation for the above, they can read “The Untold Story of the New Testament Church” – www.ptmin.org/untold.htm )
In short, in the eyes of many contemporary Christians, Paul was a failure. But to my mind, he was one of the greatest church planters who ever lived. But his standards of success were much different than that of most Western Christians.
In short, if you want quality, it takes time and lots of breaking and building. In my opinion and experience, if a genuine church planter can leave on this earth a dozen organic churches that are truly under the Headship of Jesus Christ and they are strong, healthy, and pure, I’d tip my hat off to that person. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an incredible work for a lifetime. If someone doesn’t think so, I’d simply offer this thought to them: You don’t understand the kind of quality of church life I’m speaking of nor what it takes for it to come into existence and to be maintained.
To answer your other question, one of the churches I was part of multiplied into two churches after four or five of years. The other did not, but I wasn’t with them for that long as I relocated.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* To be continued
