Continuing in Chapter 3 of Pagan Christianity?, writers Viola and Barna next tackle how the changes in early church buildings affected worship. Because Emperor Constantine was the #1 “lay person” in the church, a simple style worship service would simply not do. To honor him, much of the pomp and ritual of the imperial Roman court was integrated into Christian worship.
These pagan cultural imports included:
- Lights and aromatic spices carried before important people in public
- Candles and incense burning
- The clergy dressing in special garments
- Gestures of respect toward the clergy
- Beginning a service with a processional and music accompaniment
- Choirs and instruments to make the processional more dramatic, professional and ceremonial
The outcome of these and more cultural imports was a “loss of intimacy and open participation. The professional clergy performed the acts of worship while the laity looked on as spectators.”
A Catholic scholar is quoted as writing that “even the ceremonies involved in the ancient worship of the emperor as a deity found [its] way into the church’s worship, only in their secularized form.”
4th century Christians came to view Constantine’s rise as an act of God, and divine provision for their rescue. He even instituted the “tax-exempt” status idea for these churches. This is in contract to 1st century Christians who were taught to avoid pagan culture and its futility, and to be living counter-cultural examples through their new life and community found in Christ.
To see Christians slowly blinded and overcome by the world system is a sad story. Buildings made with hands become holy shrines. Pagan ceremonies and objects become “holy” traditions of the church. They even began to attribute all of these things to principles and ideas found in the Old Testament. “Dignified and sacramental ritual had entered the church services by way of the mysteries [the pagan cults]. and was justified, like so many other things, by reference to the Old Testament.”
But this idea is self-defeating. We know from the New Testament that on the cross Jesus Christ destroyed the old wine skins [forms and structures] of sacred priests, sacred buildings, sacred rituals and objects. He replaced it all with the new wine skins of a nonhierarchical, nonritualistic, nonliturgical organism called the ecclesia.
REFLECTION
I do not personally come from a high-church tradition with lots of liturgy and ceremony. I can appreciate some of the beauty and wonder of these forms of worship, but it really doesn’t help me connect with God. Even within the Protestant traditions that I am more familiar with, I am growing tired and weary of some of the outcomes we see outlined in this book.
How many “churches” have spent years of time, and millions of dollars on their buildings? Buildings require upkeep, maintenance, expansion, heating and cooling, parking and all the rest. They can become a huge weight around the neck of a local congregation. How many have floundered and failed because of a building? How many other needy people were not ministered to because a “church” was focused and sidetracked on their building?
Buildings tend to become a huge distraction to people being a church, and doing the work of ministry and service that it is supposed to be about. Instead of investing in people, the community and outreach, we spend most of our time and money on the physical needs of the building and the programs in it.
Given this background and cultural conditioning, when it comes to worship, we feel we need sound systems, comfortable seatings, projection systems, technology, nice decorating, stained glass, beautiful objects, and all the rest… or “we can’t have a good worship experience.”
I don’t see any of this in the New Testament descriptions of the church. I see simplicity, mobility, agility, and more of a “freedom from,” rather than a “bondage to.” Perhaps the early believers we so thrilled with their new freedom in Christ that the old patterns, forms and structures didn’t have much appeal. Why have a building when you can worship from house to house and enjoy fellowship out in the neighborhoods, courtyards and places where the people are?
I think the 21st century world and culture is moving back toward these early NT church patterns. We have experienced spiritual life with the weight of programs, budgets, staffing, annual reports, fund raising, boards, buildings and committees, and found it wanting. We are yearning for a simpler and more basic spiritual experience with fewer encumbrances. We would rather invest a greater part of our time, money and talents in people, relationships, discipleship, ministry, service and outreach.
Does the community I live in need something like this? Do I need this? I think so. How do I make it happen? What are the steps? Where do I go from here? That is the question and the process of discovery I find myself in.
