BirkeyBlog

I am just finishing reading a book that my father sent to me (Thanks, Dad!) and that has been one of the most challenging and enlightening books I’ve read in recent years. The impact it will have on me personally will take much more time to realize and digest because there are so many ways that this book speaks to me, and the timing is not coincidental. I’ll explain more on that later. The book is called Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the roots of our church practices. It seeks to answer the question: “Are We really doing church by the book?” It is authored by Frank Viola and George Barna, and published by Tyndale House.

Frank Viola is a voice in the contemporary house church movement, and has been gathering with organic house churches in the US for the last 20 years. He is actively engaged in planting New Testament styled churches. He has written 8 books on radical church restoration including God’s Ultimate Passion and The Untold Story of the New Testament Church [www.frankviola.com].

George Barna is the chairman of Good News Holdings, a multimedia firm in Los Angeles that produces movies, television programming, and other media content. He is also the founder and director of The Barna Group [www.barna.org], a research firm in Ventura, California. George has written 39 books including Revolution and Revolutionary Parenting.

The joint venture of Pagan Christianity? is sort of a twin to Barna’s 2005 book REVOLUTION: Worn out on church? Finding vibrant faith beyond the walls of the sanctuary, also published by Tyndale House.

Here’s an excerpt from the book jacket:
Many Christians take for granted that their church’s practices are rooted in Scripture. Yet those practices look very different from those of the first-century church. The New Testament is not silent on how the early church freely expressed the reality of Christ’s indwelling in ways that rocked the first-century world.Times have changed. Pagan Christianity? leads us on a fascinating tour through church history, revealing this startling and unsettling truth: Many cherished church traditions embraced today originated not out of the New Testament, but out of pagan practices. One of the most troubling outcomes has been the effect on average believers: turning them from living expressions of Christ’s glory and power to passive observers.

Like me, have you ever wondered:

• Why does the pastor preach a sermon at every service?
• Why do church services seem so similar week after week?
• Why does the congregation sit passively in pews?
• Why do we keep thinking of the church as a building?
• Why are we so fixated on the idea of a senior pastor?

If these questions have caught your attention like they did to me, then you might be interested enough to visit the paganchristianity.org website and download a free introduction chapter to read. And, if that increases your interest, you should just buy the book and read it! It’s an easy and engrossing read!

The Pagan Christianity website has other resources including a downloadable discussion guide, as well as links to other articles and resources by Frank Viola and George Barna.

After I complete the final chapter: “A Second Glance at the Savior: Jesus the Revolutionary,” I intend to reread the book, and post my thoughts here on each chapter. I would welcome your comments.

“Experience supplies painful proof that traditions once called into being are first called useful, then they become necessary. At last they are too often made idols, and all must bow down to them or be punished.” — J.C. Ryle, Nineteenth-Century English Writer and Minister

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.