Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

by Frank Viola

This book traces the historical roots of Protestant church practices and asks if the modern-way of doing church is a departure or a development from what Jesus and the apostles taught. A recent interview where the authors (George Barna and Frank Viola) answer objections and challenges: http://frankviola.org/2012/06/04/geor...http://frankviola.org/2012/06/04/geor...

This book isn't to be read alone, but is to be read with the constructive sequel, REIMAGINING CHURCH. The official website with author Q & A is http://www.PaganChristianity.orghttp://www.PaganChristianity.org

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Hardcover, 269 pages

Published February 1st 2008 by Tyndale Momentum (first published 2001)

tags: theology, spirituality, faith, christianity, church, religion, nonfiction, christian living, history, christian

Book Quotes

“ORGANIC CHURCH The term organic church does not refer to a particular model of church. (We believe that no perfect model exists.) Instead, we believe that the New Testament vision of church is organic. An organic church is a living, breathing, dynamic, mutually participatory, every-member-functioning, Christ-centered, communal expression of the body of Christ.”

― Frank Viola

“What history teaches us is that men have never learned anything from it.” —G. W. F. Hegel, nineteenth-century German philosopher”

― Frank Viola

“How We Approach the New Testament We Christians have been taught to approach the Bible in one of eight ways: • You look for verses that inspire you. Upon finding such verses, you either highlight, memorize, meditate upon, or put them on your refrigerator door. • You look for verses that tell you what God has promised so that you can confess it in faith and thereby obligate the Lord to do what you want. • You look for verses that tell you what God commands you to do. • You look for verses that you can quote to scare the devil out of his wits or resist him in the hour of temptation. • You look for verses that will prove your particular doctrine so that you can slice-and-dice your theological sparring partner into biblical ribbons. (Because of the proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere citation of some random, decontextualized verse of Scripture ends all discussion on virtually any subject.) • You look for verses in the Bible to control and/or correct others. • You look for verses that “preach” well and make good sermon material. (This is an ongoing addiction for many who preach and teach.) • You sometimes close your eyes, flip open the Bible randomly, stick your finger on a page, read what the text says, and then take what you have read as a personal “word” from the Lord. Now look at this list again. Which of these approaches have you used? Look again: Notice how each is highly individualistic. All of them put you, the individual Christian, at the center. Each approach ignores the fact that most of the New Testament was written to corporate bodies of people (churches), not to individuals.”

― Frank Viola

“Church planters deliberately left so that the church could function under the headship of Christ. If a church planter stays in a church, the members naturally look to him to lead. Every-member functioning is hindered. This is still true today. The pattern throughout the entire New Testament is that church planters (apostolic workers) always left the church after they laid the foundation. For more details, see The Normal Christian Church Life by Watchman Nee”

― Frank Viola

“Thus the pagan notion of a trained professional speaker who delivers orations for a fee moved straight into the Christian bloodstream. Note that the concept of the “paid teaching specialist” came from Greece, not Judaism. It was the custom of Jewish rabbis to take up a trade so as to not charge a fee for their teaching.”

― Frank Viola

“believers are discovering the experience of the body of Christ and what it means to gather under the headship of Jesus.”

― Frank Viola

“The Calf Path One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bell-wethers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made. And many men wound in and out, And dodged, and turned, and bent about And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ’twas such a crooked path.15 But still they followed—do not laugh— The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked, Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again; This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way, And lost one hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach, Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. They keep the path a sacred groove, Along which all their lives they move. But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah! Many things this tale might teach— But I am not ordained to preach. —Sam Walter Foss”

― Frank Viola

“The pew is perhaps the greatest inhibitor of face-to-face fellowship. It is a symbol of lethargy and passivity in the contemporary church and has made corporate worship a spectator sport.”

― Frank Viola

“Hence, the Reformers dramatically failed to put their finger on the nerve of the original problem: a clergy-led worship service attended by a passive laity.[157] It is not surprising, then, that the Reformers viewed themselves as reformed Catholics.”

― Frank Viola

“This disjunction between secular and spiritual is highlighted by the fact that the typical church building requires you to “process” in by walking up stairs or moving through a narthex. This adds to the sense that you are moving from everyday life to another life. Thus a transition is required. All of this flunks the Monday test. No matter how good Sunday was, Monday morning still comes to test our worship.229”

― Frank Viola

“In the minds of the early Christians, the people—not the architecture—constituted a sacred space.”

― Frank Viola

“To put a finer point on it, the church building is based on the benighted idea that worship is removed from everyday life.”

― Frank Viola

“In other words, the Reformers only recovered the priesthood of the believer (singular). They reminded us that every Christian has individual and immediate access to God. As wonderful as that is, they did not recover the priesthood of all believers (collective plural). This is the blessed truth that every Christian is part of a clan that shares God’s Word one with another. (It was the Anabaptists who recovered this practice. Regrettably, this recovery was one of the reasons why Protestant and Catholic swords were red with Anabaptist blood.)”

― Frank Viola

“In short, extensive Bible knowledge, a high-powered intellect, and razor-sharp reasoning skills do not automatically produce spiritual men and women who know Jesus Christ profoundly and who can impart a life-giving revelation of Him to others.”

― Frank Viola

“When Christianity was born, it was the only religion on the planet that had no sacred objects, no sacred persons, and no sacred spaces.'8 Although surrounded by Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, the early Christians were the only religious people on earth who did not erect sacred buildings for their worship.19 The Christian faith was born in homes, out in courtyards, and along roadsides.20”

― Frank Viola

“The pulpit elevates the clergy to a position of prominence. True to its meaning, it puts the preacher at center “stage”—separating and placing him high above God’s people.”

― Frank Viola

“Today, youth pastors are part of the professional clergy. Their position is built on the contemporary church’s misguided choice to honor a division that was born in secular culture less than a century ago—namely, the division between teenager and everyone else.”

― Frank Viola

“Custom without truth is error grown old.” —Tertullian, third-century theologian”

― Frank Viola

“Note that there is a monumental difference between well-motivated humans working for God in their own strength, wisdom, and power versus God working through humans.”

― Frank Viola

“The result: God’s people have never broken free from the liturgical constraints they inherited from Roman Catholicism.[”

― Frank Viola

Frank Viola

Frank Viola ( - )

Frank Viola author is the bestselling author of God’s Favorite Place on Earth, From Eternity to Here, Jesus Manifesto, Reimagining Church, Jesus Now, and Jesus: A Theography. Rethinking status quo Christianity, Frank Viola has helped thousands of Christians to deepen their relationship to Jesus and experience a more vibrant, authentic expression of church. His blog, Beyond Evangelical, is one of the most popular in Christian circles today, ranking in the top 10 of all Christian blogs on the Web. Viola has written a series of well-read articles called Rethinking. Frank Viola’s message has enabled God’s people to:

Frank’s public speaking covers a wide range of topics including the centrality, supremacy, and all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ, the deepening of the spiritual life, Christian community, church planting, God’s eternal purpose, mission, and church renewal and restoration. Viola has written numerous books on the deeper Christian life and radical church reform, including the bestsellers God’s Favorite Place on Earth, From Eternity to Here, Jesus Manifesto (coauthored with Len Sweet), and Pagan Christianity (co-authored with George Barna) as well as Revise Us Again, Finding Organic Church, Reimagining Church, Jesus Now, and The Untold Story of the New Testament Church.

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