When I was working for a large computer manufacturer, there was a common belief in the corporate culture that small start-up companies were more innovative than venerable large ones like ours. There was some evidence to support this belief: Apple, Microsoft, SUN Microsystems. My company decided if they could find a way to return to that start-up mentality, they, too would become innovative.
The real problem with my company wasn’t that they lacked creativity, but that they were out of touch with their customers. They often produced products with innovative features their customers didn’t need, at a price they often couldn’t afford. And so my company, like much of American industry, began buying up start-up companies, and because they’d forgotten how to manage a start-up company, ultimately drove them out of business.
I couldn’t help seeing this same mindset as I read “Pagan Christianity?” Much as I appreciate the courage of Frank Viola and George Barna--whose research I’ve long respected--to openly confront the problems in American churches, I get the feeling that, like my computer company, they’re dealing with the symptoms rather than the root of the problem.
Like start-up companies, house churches are a cultural necessity that never really went away. They existed relatively recently in Communist countries and still exist in nations where Christians are persecuted for the open expression of their faith. During the Protestant Reformation, there was a proliferation of itinerant ministers who were often accused by Catholics of being heretics.
What happened in 327 AD is that, with Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Christians no longer had to hide, just as Christians no longer need to hide in Russia and never have needed to hide in America. But this doesn’t mean the house church was God’s plan for Christianity.
I’ve never had any particular regard for church hierarchy. Christ told his disciples not to let anyone call them rabbi. When we see priests withholding communion from congregants who voted for John Kerry, it’s clear church leaders are overstepping an authority Christ never conferred upon them.
But though the book addresses a lot of my gripes about feeling I’m a passive observer in what’s become little more than a family entertainment and self-help program, this isn’t the reason I stopped attending my church. As I listened to sermons week after week it became clear that, either directly or through inference, the god that was being preached in my church was utterly devoid of love. God was at best indifferent, at worst sadistic.
I left my church, not because its practices were pagan, but because I was sick of wasting my Sunday mornings worshipping an awful god. As a former charismatic, accustomed to “testing the spirits,” my biggest frustration in church was that it was inappropriate for me as an evangelical, let alone as a woman, to stand up in my church and say, “Jesus has left the building. I just don’t sense his presence here today.”
My question is whether having smaller fellowships with less hierarchy will fix this problem, or simply distribute it.
At the same time I left my church I left a women’s Bible study whose concept of God was just as awful, if not worse. Because these women judged my criticism as evidence I was “a woman with a past,” it was every bit as intimidating to express my thoughts in this small group as it was in church. Unless you address people’s negative concepts of God, as Jesus did in his Sermon on the Mount, and as Martin Luther did during the Protestant Reformation, you’re still going to have problems, albeit on a more distributed scale.
Just as most start-up companies fail, a significant number of first century fellowships also went astray. Some of these groups were so awful that Paul advised Timothy in his final letter to have nothing to do with them. I’d be open to trying a fellowship like what Viola describes here, but at this point I’m afraid to try any Christian fellowship.
Still, it made my week just knowing someone else thinks something is wrong, even if we don’t happen to agree what it is.
The real problem with my company wasn’t that they lacked creativity, but that they were out of touch with their customers. They often produced products with innovative features their customers didn’t need, at a price they often couldn’t afford. And so my company, like much of American industry, began buying up start-up companies, and because they’d forgotten how to manage a start-up company, ultimately drove them out of business.
I couldn’t help seeing this same mindset as I read “Pagan Christianity?” Much as I appreciate the courage of Frank Viola and George Barna--whose research I’ve long respected--to openly confront the problems in American churches, I get the feeling that, like my computer company, they’re dealing with the symptoms rather than the root of the problem.
Like start-up companies, house churches are a cultural necessity that never really went away. They existed relatively recently in Communist countries and still exist in nations where Christians are persecuted for the open expression of their faith. During the Protestant Reformation, there was a proliferation of itinerant ministers who were often accused by Catholics of being heretics.
What happened in 327 AD is that, with Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Christians no longer had to hide, just as Christians no longer need to hide in Russia and never have needed to hide in America. But this doesn’t mean the house church was God’s plan for Christianity.
I’ve never had any particular regard for church hierarchy. Christ told his disciples not to let anyone call them rabbi. When we see priests withholding communion from congregants who voted for John Kerry, it’s clear church leaders are overstepping an authority Christ never conferred upon them.
But though the book addresses a lot of my gripes about feeling I’m a passive observer in what’s become little more than a family entertainment and self-help program, this isn’t the reason I stopped attending my church. As I listened to sermons week after week it became clear that, either directly or through inference, the god that was being preached in my church was utterly devoid of love. God was at best indifferent, at worst sadistic.
I left my church, not because its practices were pagan, but because I was sick of wasting my Sunday mornings worshipping an awful god. As a former charismatic, accustomed to “testing the spirits,” my biggest frustration in church was that it was inappropriate for me as an evangelical, let alone as a woman, to stand up in my church and say, “Jesus has left the building. I just don’t sense his presence here today.”
My question is whether having smaller fellowships with less hierarchy will fix this problem, or simply distribute it.
At the same time I left my church I left a women’s Bible study whose concept of God was just as awful, if not worse. Because these women judged my criticism as evidence I was “a woman with a past,” it was every bit as intimidating to express my thoughts in this small group as it was in church. Unless you address people’s negative concepts of God, as Jesus did in his Sermon on the Mount, and as Martin Luther did during the Protestant Reformation, you’re still going to have problems, albeit on a more distributed scale.
Just as most start-up companies fail, a significant number of first century fellowships also went astray. Some of these groups were so awful that Paul advised Timothy in his final letter to have nothing to do with them. I’d be open to trying a fellowship like what Viola describes here, but at this point I’m afraid to try any Christian fellowship.
Still, it made my week just knowing someone else thinks something is wrong, even if we don’t happen to agree what it is.
1 comment:
Have you heard that the sequel to “Pagan Christianity?” is out now? It’s called “Reimagining Church”. It picks up where “Pagan Christianity” left off and continues the conversation. (“Pagan Christianity” was never meant to be a stand alone book; it’s part one of the conversation.) “Reimagining Church” is endorsed by Leonard Sweet, Shane Claiborne, Alan Hirsch, and many others. You can read a sample chapter at
http://www.ReimaginingChurch.org
It’s also available on Amazon.com. Frank is also blogging now at http://www.frankviola.wordpress.com.
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