Pagan Christianity doesn’t stop with church buildings and orderly worship.  Since much of this book nauseates me so, I’m going to hurry up a bit, so I can be done with it and – hopefully having convinced a few people to spend their money on better things – get on to more encouraging posts.

What can I say?  I’m a completist.

(Edit: I tried to be brief, but I just have so much to get off my chest about this book!  I was going to try and devote one post to four chapters, but I couldn’t; sorry!)

The sermon.  Here’s the deal: they argue that Paul and Peter and all the apostles’ preaching was not the same as your pastor’s Sunday morning sermon.  They were apostolic workers.  They came, they preached, they empowered the Church, and they left.  What happens on Sunday is derived from “pagan” philosophers who peddled their thoughts and their great whit and wisdom for a buck (PC, pp.89-91).  When pagan philosophers began to get converted to Christ, they just kept using the same oratory skills they had learned, and began using them for the work of Christ.  They became expert teachers who now had captive audiences on Sunday morning.

Green Flag: I will agree with them that the sermon can often be a struggle for me, personally.  I often want to raise my hand, ask for clarification, put in a different take on a passage than that of the preacher, shout, “Preach it!” etc.  Admittedly, the modern setting for the sermon is not conducive to this.  I would love to see a change there; for the pastor to… ask questions (non-rhetorical!), give opportunity for parishioner questions, and take time to discuss the passage at the end.  Robert Webber, in Blended Worship, describes second century worship practices, which would often involve a reading of scripture, followed by the congregation: “The people then stand to comment on what they experienced in the story, together creating their own sermon.” (35).  Granted, I don’t think that our 1-hour-service-mega-churches can do this (and I have my own views on mega-churches), but most smaller congregations, church plants which are under 200-members (my idea of a large church), could easily make their sermons more interactive.  Heck, even the Puritans had this practice!

Red Flags:

1. Okay, the pagans became Christians and began using their skills and gifts for God’s kindgom.  Hmmmm… how is this bad?
2. The Greeks understood the style that was used by the philosophers; it was a language they could understand.  Therefore, it would be a way of communicating the Gospel effectively.
3. Feedback and discussion are often, but not always, warranted.  Sometimes we receive and process what is given; I don’t recall Jesus asking for commentary on the Sermon on the Mount.
4. They argue that the preacher is the star, and that everyone else is the “silent pew warmer” (PC, 98).  That makes me wonder what narrow slice of the Church he has been in in the past few years.  In the past ten years, my experiences with the Church have been with pastors whose sermons were designed to train us to follow Christ and to know how to know Him better thru His words.  I don’t feel like I have been spoon-fed.  Furthermore, the Sunday sermon is less than 1/168 of the week; that leaves the rest of the week for maturing Christians to spend gathering in homes and taking the example of the pastors and their sermons and feeding one another on the Word of Truth.

That said, while sermons can be unhealthy – if they are the only source of teaching and training in the Word available (and if that is the case with your church, you need to start a freaking community group in your home!) – they are often good training.  And, while there is no prescription for a single pastor to give a weekly teaching, there is absolutely no Biblical argument against it, as long as it is designed as part of a balanced spiritual diet, one that frees the rest of the body to encourage and build up one another.  Viola and Barna only know of one tiny slice of the Church, and yet they use that tiny slice to generalize life in the entire Body.

A few last words on Chapter 2 of PC. Then, I promise, I will be less… yeah, I guess “wordy” is the correct term!… in the rest of the posts.

I think that Viola and Barna are teetering on the edge of (or have jumped headlong into) a legalism that could really go to further splitting the Church.  This book could be a whole lot more constructive and useful, were it not written in such combative, adversarial language.  This book’s tone doesn’t invite discussion – it squashes it.

A better book for looking at the need for getting the Body of Christ out of the sanctuary to take part in home-based worship is The Second Reformation by William A. Beckham.  While not a perfect book (I’ve only read one perfect Book!) it has a great sense for the balance of whole-Church formal worship and home-based fellowship; he refers to churches that only meet in one as a “one-winged church”; the “two-winged church” sees the need for recognizing the majesty of God in formal gatherings as the local Body of Christ in public settings, and also the need (and deep desire of Christians everywhere) to really share life with a small, consistently caring home-based fellowship.

Acts 2:46 shows that the early house-church fellowships would gather together in public places very regularly, and then disperse to respective homes.  The Bible refers to the balance of “the temple” and “house to house”.  There is precedent for a balance of large and small gatherings.

The thing that’s really important to recall, however, is that the Bible never says, “Follow these laws about how to gather; wear these clothes and meet with this many people; oh, and don’t you dare meet in public too often!”  There are principles to take note of: we are all His temple; we are a priesthood of believers; we are to meet together, and everyone has something to offer.  But there are no hard and fast rules about how that is to be carried out.

As you might have guessed if you read my previous post, I don’t think Viola and Barna’s chapter (in Pagan Christianity?) on church architecture is without its problems.  Here are a few (in my mind) glaring issues:

1. Frank and George seem to denigrate the visual arts in worship (though they do not think it worth devoting a chapter to).  Their basic argument seems to be that it originated with honoring dead saints.  Two problems with that: a) what’s wrong with honoring those who have gone before us?  Honoring that “great cloud of witnesses” is far from idolatry; b) the origin of the first Christian worship art is irrelevant – the question is, how do we use the arts in our worship?  Art can be used in so many edifying and God-honoring ways!
2. In addition to many things that the Constantinian era brought from Roman culture into the new church buildings, “The Roman custom of beginning a service with processional music was adopted… Choirs were developed and brought into the Christian Church.” (25) etc. etc. etc.  All I could say to this was what Barna himself said in the introduction to the book, “we cannot avoid bringing our culture into the church”.  I have yet to see how processionals and choirs, regardless of their origins, detract from the worship of the Church.  As a former raging Petra fan (okay – I’m still a ragin Petra fan!), I’ve seen God take, redeem and use many things from the “world” for His glory!  To paraphrase Larry Norman, “Why should the devil get all the good choirs and processionals?”  Viola and Barna – as I will opine in my posts about Chapter 3 – are woefully unconvincing in their arguments that formal worship is unedifying to the Body of Christ.
3. [The Gothic cathedrals] relied heavily on the teachings of the … Greek philosopher Plato.  Plato taught that sound, color, and light have lofty mystical meanings.  They can induce moods and help bring one closer to the ‘Eternal Good’.  The Gothic designers took Plato’s teachings and set them to brick and stone.” The authors argue that the influence of a “pagan philosopher” is somehow negative and manipulative; that the use of color, awe and beauty somehow puts parishioners in the wrong frame of mind.  I would argue that art and beauty, being an inherent part of our being created in God’s creative image, belong in the Church, whether in a Gothic cathedral or an apartment living room!
4. To continue from #3, “So with its use of light, color and excessive height, the Gothic cathedral fostered a sense of mystery, transcendance and awe… borrowed from Plato and passed off as Christian.” (29)  Two thoughts: a) Is a sense of awe really so bad in the presence of God?  b) On a personal note, I recall my Chrysalis walk – a youth retreat in the tradition of the Catholic Cursillo.  I spent a three-day weekend at Greene St. United Methodist Church in Piqua, Ohio (the most beautiful, majestic church building in all of Ohio, as far as I’m concerned).  The sanctuary was big, old and beautiful.  The back of the balcony, if I recall correctly, was adorned with a large mural depicting a Bible story.  The sense of awe I had in that place had a lasting impact on me, but not in the way that the authors warn; the smells, the echos, the cold stone mixed with warm company – these set the stage for a life-changing event in my life.  The sense of awe prepared me to receive what God had for me.  I don’t see that as a negative.
5. “The main message of Gothic architecture is: ‘God is transcendant and unreachable – so be awed at His majesty.’  But such a message defies the message of the Gospel…” (30) Since when?  Emmanuel, God-with-us, the intimate Lover of our souls, is awesome and majestic.  He is the most wonderful of paradoxes!  If Viola has lost touch with God’s transcendance, then I fear for him.  And, by the way, I’ve been in some rather majestic cathedrals, and many of those times I have felt closer to God than ever; somehow acknowledging his transcendance brings us closer to Him!

They go on and on… through the evolution of the church building… some of their arguments are compelling (see yesterday’s post), and some are ridiculous (they compare the steeple to the Tower of Babel).  But the crux of the argument is: the church building is a barrier to ministry and must be done away with!

I’d say, no, they are a tool and need to be taken off the pedestal we have set up for them.  Is the church-building-versus-home-church argument really a matter of either-or?  Or is it possibly one of both-and?  In my last post, I recommended a few ways we could use our buildings in new ways, such as various parishes sharing buildings.  Of course, many who read this chapter of the book (such as church plants, and my own tradition of the Anglican Mission in America, many of whom lost their buildings as they left the fold of ECUSA) will find the question moot; they are already doing the first-century-church practice of renting spaces and meeting in homes!

I may have another post in me on this topic…

In Chapter 2 of Pagan Christianity (hereafter, PC), Viola and Barna take on both the history and value of the traditional church building. I’m going to go over some of the highlights of this chapter.

How I’d like to handle these chapters is to list what I call “Green Flags” (things that really ring true), “Red Flags” (things that don’t ring true or seem illogical) and neutral, interesting points (such as interesting facts, “so what?” statements and books cited that I just may want on my Christmas list – often from writers Viola doesn’t seem to like!).  If I get really wordy (like this post) I will divide Green and Red into two posts over two days.  Today: the Green Flags!

Green Flags:

1. “The New Testament always reserves the word church (ekklesia) for the people of God.  It never uses this word to refer to a building of any sort.” (14)  Amen to that!  The Church is the people of God.  No argument there.
2. “Meeting in homes was a conscious choice of the early Christians.” (15)  And it is a conscious choice of the organic fellowship groups we’ve been involved with for the past nine years!  Of course, this leads to a bit of a Red Flag (see below)!
3. “These homes [where the Church met] were never called temples.” (15)  Jesus is the Temple.  Amen and amen.
4. [Basilicas, the first dedicated "church" buildings, promoted by Constantine] were wonderful for seating passive and docile crowds to watch a performance.  This was one of the reasons why Constantine chose the basilica model.” (22)  This is one of the greatest arguments against church buildings as they stand today: creating the weekly “show” that has emerged in so many congregations (“The concert and the pep talk”, as I have mentioned).  While I will later argue (in the next post) that being a mere recipient is sometimes a good and godly thing, I think that this criticism of church buildings is quite legit; it calls to mind Robert Webber’s advice that we as a Church need to remove the terminology of “stage”, “audience” and “performance” from our worship vocabularies (Planning Blended Worship – sorry!  I couldn’t find the exact page yet!).
5. “… a loss of intimacy and open participation…” (25)  For the solution to this, I will refer you to the Red Flags below; however, I agree that intimacy and open participation need to be restored, and the BCB (big church building) doesn’t really lend itself to this!
6. After describing the long evolution of the church building sanctuary, the authors describe the pulpit, which “elevates the clergy to a position of prominence… it puts the preacher at center ’stage’ – separating and replacing him high above God’s people.” (34) This criticism resonates with me; as my friend/pastor Alan would say (ironically, in this case), “That’ll preach!”  I think that sanctuary designers are enslaved by certain preconceptions: elevated stage, rows of pews (or folding chairs), everything facing in one, boring direction toward the pulpit.  Why can’t we mix things up a bit?
7. “Every building we encounter… explicitly shows us what the church is and how it functions… it teaches what is important and what is not.” (37-8)  I think that to fool people into thinking that the pretty buildings on the corner are “the Church” is to rob many of what could be an invitation, to “close the doors of heaven” on many who would come over for dinner a decade before setting foot in a church narthex.  You’ll see below that I do not totally agree with a completely negative assessment of the church building, but I do intensely agree that we need to change the image that the word “church” places in people’s minds.  “[Certain] Social locations can teach good and godly people very bad lessons and choke their lives together.” (38)
8. (The BIG Green Flag) “Most contemporary Christians mistakenly view the church building as a necessary part of worship… [but] real estate owned by institutional churches today is worth over $230 billion.  Church building debt, service, and maintenance consumes about 18 percent of the $50 to $60 billion tithed to churches annually.” (41, emphasis mine)  The authors argue that a house church can use “more than 95 percent of its shared money for delivering … ministry, mission and outreach to the world.” (41)  I just kept nodding and nodding during this portion!  Owning a church building, versus the early-church habit of converting homes or renting buildings for worship and fellowship, is so often just a waste!

Okay… before going on to the Red Flags tomorrow, (believe it or not, I have mental room for some…) I will offer a few final thoughts about the merits of this chapter:

I have begun chanting (much to the irritation of a few friends), “The Church around the world need never, ever build another church building!”  Now, before you get all mad and tell me all the reasons why this is a horrible thing to say, let me suggest something: some churches are so large and could so easily share their space with smaller parishes and congregations!  What if your local megachurch (I’ll pick on Calvary Church in Charlotte, NC, for example) offered three or four smaller churches (plants, aging congregations) a very modest rent to use their space?  What if a lot of their weekday activities (Bible studies, ESL classes, knitting circles, choir practice, youth group etc.) were transfered to other locations such as parks or homes so that smaller congregations could hold their weekly services (any given day of the week or rotating churches on a given Sunday) in their sanctuary?  What if a 30-member parish met in the fellowship hall while a 90-member congregation met at the same time in the prayer-chapel?  Oh, and all that rent can help the megachurches honor God by aiding in paying off those ridiculous mortgages that waste God’s money.

I’ve been part of three churches that shared buildings.  I hear it’s rather common in other countries.  It forces congregations to acknowledge each other and to cooperate.  That can’t be a bad thing!

While we’re at it, what if we did some major redecoration, like putting the pews in a circle around the pulpit so people could see each other?  Or, like many liturgical churches, why don’t we put the pulpit off to the side?  Many churches never plan on buying a building, and I think they are happier for it!

These are just a few ideas.  I’m sure a creative Body of Christ can come up with some major great ideas!  I’d love to hear them.  Here’s my one rule: please don’t comment just to say, “Church buildings are evil!  Burn ‘em all!”  Let’s dialogue on creative, constructive things to do with the buildings already in our possession.