rethinking the wineskin ... or church as it were

My dear friends Andrea and Tassos are challenging my thinking on how we do "church". They have sent me Frank Viola's Rethinking the Wineskin: The Practice of the New Testament Church and Pagan Christianity: The Origins of Our Modern Church Practices. Both books should be interesting but I'm in a period of "low reading". My work load is unusually high these days and fortunately I am not doing much travel right now. But the latter is where I get most of my reading done.

Anyway, I will try to blog my thoughts as I read and because of that, you might find me shifting as I work through this as well as being a bit disjointed. Feel free to comment and contribute to my growth.

I must admit that my start point for this material is a bit biased. I presume I will agree with most things Viola will critique about the Church but I will differ in that I do not consider what happens on Sunday as Church. My thinking is that what we see in the western world on Sunday mornings is one of the things that Church does but if I had to pick a meeting as representative of "church", then I'd pick the small group setting.

Even that is difficult because I would not define Church as a meeting or place but if put in a corner, it would be the weekly small group meeting. Sunday "services" then become optional - important, but optional.

I see the key issue with our meetings as one of confusing the intent. We have created the "Sunday morning culture" and in an effort to prop that up, we have lost sight of why we are together both at that time and at other times. So I'm excited to read what Viola has to say.

In his opening chapter, The Church Meeting, Viola starts by deconstructing the four "typical" reasons given for the church meeting.

1. corporate worship
2. evangelism
3. hearing sermons
4. fellowship

On worship, Viola rightly reminds us that worship extends beyond our meetings and that it is more than the singing of songs. His conclusion is therefore worship is not the chief aim of why we come together. Of course argument can be extended to say that this is the only reason we come together. That is, we come together as a response to who God is and what He is doing. Net, Viola provides a good reminder of what worship is not and thereby sets straight a large numbers of believers but he hasn't completed the conversation regarding worship in the corporate setting.

On evangelism, Viola rightly reminds us that the majority of evangelism in Scripture occurred outside of the corporate setting and that Paul teaches that the church gathering is primarily for believers. Again I say AMEN - great reminder. Too many wrongly think that the Church is the Sunday gathering and further that error by recognizing the western culture norm of non-believers showing up at those meeting. They cannot resist the opportunity to "witness" to those and in their zeal completely lose sight of what the Church needs.

The next point is on the manner of sharing the teaching of the Apostles. Viola suggests that "preaching" by a special speaker is not normative in the regular gathering but reserved for special meetings. I'm not completely convinced at that same time I completely agree that we have abdicated all teaching to the paid speaker and taken away from the believer all responsibility for learning and teaching. This is very wrong. But I'm not as concerned as Viola about the format of the experience on Sunday morning because I liken that to the special meeting and not the primary gathering that he is dealing with.

Finally comes the point regarding fellowship. As with the above points, I agree with the concern. Fellowship is a value. It is an outflow of all that we do as believers. We do not gather for fellowship but as we gather, fellowship happens. I have been part of many "committees" charged with how to increase the fellowship at the church gatherings and I am sickened by the suggestions. They ultimately evolve to abandoning the true purpose of our gathering and substituting this with potlucks, name tags, welcome centers, etc.. It's unbelievable how far a well-intentioned believer will go once they forget why they are there.

So - I'm looking forward to the challenges Viola offers. Feel free to join in my learning.

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