By LeRoy Lawson
Frank Viola and George Barna, Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices (Carol Stream: BarnaBooks, 2008).
Jim Henderson and Matt Casper, Jim and Casper Go to Church: Frank Conversations About Faith, Churches, and Well-Meaning Christians (Carol Stream: BarnaBooks, 2007); also available on Kindle.
Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009).
This column isn”t going to be easy reading. Well-intentioned friends recommended all three books. Maybe they felt I needed to squirm, undoubtedly thinking I”m a little too much at ease in Zion, too comfortable in my suburban church life. Well, I read and I squirmed.
CHRISTIANITY SCOLDED
When George Barna attaches his name to a book, you can bet the church is in for a spanking. Pagan Christianity delivers. Here he teams up with Frank Viola to scold Christianity for being so unconsciously pagan. Evidence? Consider such things as
“¢ Church buildings
“¢ Prepared order of worship
“¢ Formal sermons
“¢ Employed pastor
“¢ Sunday morning “costumes”
“¢ Employed minister of music
“¢ Teaching on tithing
“¢ Certain baptism and Communion teachings
“¢ Christian education programs
Rooted in paganism, the authors believe. Every one of them.
You might think Frank Viola does not like the institutional church. Right. He prefers “gathering with Christians in an organic way.” In a nutshell, “Contemporary Christianity has fallen into the errors of both the Pharisees and the Sadducees”: of the Pharisees, because it has added a raft of humanly devised traditions (basically pagan) “that have suppressed the living, breathing, functional headship of Jesus Christ in his church,” and of the Sadducees because “the great bulk of New Testament practices have been removed from the Christian landscape” and been replaced by pagan ones.
Viola gives thanks that some bands of believers are restoring on a small scale orthodox New Testament practices. He calls these believers “daring souls who have taken the terrifying step of leaving the safe camp of institutional Christianity.” He speaks as a leader of the “daring souls.”
While seeing so much wrong with today”s church, the authors seem to think everything was right in the churches of the New Testament: “The first-century churches were an oddity indeed. They were religious groups without priest, temple, or sacrifice. The Christians themselves led the church under Christ”s direct headship. Leaders were organic, untitled, and were recognized by their service and spiritual maturity rather than by a title or an office.”
Were there no problems? What about Corinth, Rome, Thessalonica? (Or the seven churches of Revelation?) If they did everything right, why did Paul feel the need to write those letters of his to teach, to correct, to chastise? And do the authors really believe if we do away with the objectionable trappings of the modern church that the proposed “organic” bodies will never develop pagan problems or cultural practices of their own?
Yet . . .
While I can”t agree with Viola and Barna in their wholesale condemnation of modern Christianity, I did experience a little dyspepsia as I read. Their idealistic take on the early church is too simplistic, but as one committed to New Testament Christianity I had to agree with them more often than I wanted to.
That”s what I mean by squirming.
CHURCHES CRITICIZED AND QUESTIONED
Jim and Casper Go to Church is as critical of us churchy types as Pagan Christianity, but is more enjoyable to read. George Barna wrote the foreword, so I was forewarned. The book describes the adventures of a Christian pastor (Jim Henderson) and his hired atheist (Matt Casper) as they check out America”s churches at worship.
What they find often does indeed look pretty pagan.
You”ll recognize the churches: Rick Warren”s Saddleback, Matt Barnett”s Dream Center, Bill Hybels”s Willow Creek, Joel Osteen”s Lakewood, and the emerging churches Imago and Mars Hill, among others. Twenty-five in all.
You may recognize but you may not be prepared for the atheist”s skewering of them. Most of them look pretty shallow to Casper, who sounds a lot like some of my atheist friends.
He is especially hard on the purveyors of the prosperity gospel: “Joel Osteen and other TV preachers are not making appeals to the worst people, but to the worst in people,” he says. “They make appeals to people”s greed, selfishness, envy, pride: “˜You”re gonna get rich, you deserve abundance, you”re better than nonbelievers.” To me, it”s not much different than what the worst of our political leaders do. Instead of talking honestly to people, they appeal to people”s basest natures: greed, fear, prejudice. . . . “
Henderson”s conclusion? “Every Christian should be required to bring one cynic/atheist/unbeliever to church at least once a year (even if it means spending $25 once in a while like I did). Doing so would allow Christians to see their churches through the eyes of outsiders.”
Reading this book did open my eyes. The most lasting impression of Jim and Casper Go to Church is a simple but piercing question. As Henderson says, “Casper had a number of questions for me before, during, and after each church we visited. But the one question that was far and away the most difficult for me to hear was this one: “˜Jim, is this what Jesus told you guys to do?”” After seeing the American church in action, “Casper simply could not imagine Jesus telling his followers that the most important thing they should be doing is holding church services. And yet this was the only logical conclusion he was able to come to based upon what he”d observed.”
CONVICTION KINDLED
Of the three, Richard Stearns”s The Hole in Our Gospel is the most provocative. Not the most irritating, although Stearns does irritate, but the most motivating. The man will not leave well enough alone. He is not pleased that American Christians give only a little over 2 percent of our income to the Lord, and that only 2 percent of that 2 percent goes to the rest of the world. We can do more. I can do more.
He also is unimpressed by churches” constant carping about sins of commission: “murder, violence, theft, adultery, profanity, gossip, sexual promiscuity, exploiting the poor, among others.” He feels “God seems to get angrier about those things that he has commanded us but we have failed to do,” things like working for justice, helping the down-and-out, standing up for the homeless, and going to bat for the defenseless. And he peppers his arguments with Scripture, his two-edged sword piercing our excuses.
Every day 26,500 children die in poverty”s grip. Every day. And we don”t feel their pain. Yet these are among Jesus” “least of these.” To ignore them is to ignore him.
By Stearns”s own account he is a most unlikely spokesman for the poor. Having worked his way up from his birth family”s destitution and dysfunction over the rungs of America”s corporate ladder, he was securely perched atop Lenox, the luxury china company, when World Vision called him as CEO. After resisting the call, he hesitantly, fearfully yielded. This book is the story of his first conversion””to Christ””and his second one””to compassion.
Perhaps Stearns”s most provoking statistic is this one: The average income in America is about $105 per day. Compare that to the world”s poorest 2 billion: less than $2 a day. Is that fair? Or is it fair that the richest countries are 75 times wealthier than the poorest?
There”s more, disturbingly much more. Then comes the final section, “What Are You Going to Do About It?” We Christians have the time, Stearns is convinced, and the treasure and the talents to change this inexcusable disparity. But do we have the will?
This reader, for one, wants to will.
LeRoy Lawson, international consultant with Christian Missionary Fellowship International, is a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and a member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee. His column appears at least monthly.
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