Frank Viola is a respected author in the house church movement.  Rethinking the Wineskin was born of the desperate hunger he felt for New Testament style Christianity.  He studied the scriptures, left the institutional church and learned, along with others, what it means to be under the Headship of Christ, manifesting the life of His body.  Viola contends God is challenging His people to examine the context in which we experience spiritual renewal.  Recently OpenHeaven.com asked him about his insights.

             You make a powerful statement when you say, “Regrettably, many Christians today have succumbed to the intoxicating seductions of an individualistic, materialistic, business-oriented, consumer-driven, self-serving society.”  How is this demonstrated in churches and what is the alternative?

             The modern institutional church is set up along the lines of a business corporation. The pastor is the CEO. There are committees and boards. Evangelism is the manufacturing process. Westerners are captive to the notion that the church is a business, though this is rarely vocalized. The alternative is to dismantle the Greco-Roman organizational structure that Christians have embraced and labeled "church." (Hierarchy and top-down leadership were given to us by the Greco-Romans, and they took it from the Egyptians and Babylonians.) My belief is that we should start all over again, and begin gathering around Jesus Christ simply and organically as did the early Christians. I outline the first principles of how this is done in my book So You Want to Start a House Church? First-Century Styled Church Planting for Today (www.ptmin.org/start.htm).

             Today many Christians have given little regard to what God has said in His Word regarding the practice of the church. Actually, most are ill-informed as to what the New Testament actually teaches on the matter. Thus whenever they hear someone like myself challenge the institutional church, they become defensive and sometimes hostile. Let me give an illustration of this. Suppose that a father raises three sons. The sons mature, marry, and relocate. The father plans to build a summer resort home in the Florida panhandle for the entire family. He has the blueprints drawn up exactly as he desires. Work begins on the home.

             Tragically, the father suddenly passes away before the work is complete. In his will, he specifies that should he die before completion of the home, his sons are to complete it exactly according to his plan. He, of course, leaves them a rich inheritance to finance the work. It is agreed that the oldest son oversee the building. After a year, the home is complete and the other two sons and their wives drive to the panhandle to see it. They are aghast at what they discover. The home looks nothing like the blueprints that the father had drawn up! The sons challenge their older brother on it and his response is, "I liked my ideas better than Dad's!" I believe we have done the same with the Lord's house today.

             Thankfully, the problems that the man-made institutional church structure has spawned are catching up to us. For this reason, millions of Christians no longer attend the organized church. The statistics are astounding on this score. George Barna has recently documented the growing trend and has called it a "revolution" (www.ptmin.org/arevolution.htm).

             Why did the early Christians meet in homes? 

             Mostly because they viewed themselves as an extended family rather than a new religion. The Christians did not erect sacred buildings for 300 years after Pentecost. This was intentional. Unlike the Jews and the pagans, the early Christians understood that God did not dwell in sacred spaces. They understood that He lived inside of them corporately, and that they themselves were God's sacred building. Some have argued that the early Christians did not erect sacred buildings because they were persecuted for 300 years. But this argument doesn't hold water. It is refuted in my book.

             Did the first century church put the same emphasis on the Lord’s Supper as we do today, and how did the “observance” differ?

             Every community has a set of shared memories that bind it together. Typically, these shared memories are reviewed and celebrated during a meal. The Jews, for example, had many different feasts where they remembered and celebrated their rich heritage. Americans do the same when they celebrate Thanksgiving. The Lord's Supper was a covenant meal that bound the early Christians together with a common memory. In the first century, the Lord's Supper was a square meal. In fact, it was a full-blown banquet. It was a celebration taken with a spirit of joy and thanksgiving. Further, it was accompanied by the mutual sharing of the Body of Christ.

             Both the Catholic and Protestant camps have reduced the meal to a ritual presided by a clergyman. The meal aspect, the spirit of celebration, and the mutual sharing have all been evacuated out of it. In my book, Pagan Christianity, I tell the story of how this happened. As a Christian, you owe it to yourself to experience the Lord's Supper first-century style. It's a marvelous experience!

             Rethinking the Wineskin contrasts church meetings with ministry meetings.  What’s the difference in terms of objectives and locations?

             Church meetings are the regular gatherings of a Body of believers when the whole church assembles and everyone brings a part of Christ to share with the rest of the Body. (Today, we call such meetings "church services" and they do not allow for every-member participation.) 1 Corinthians 14:26 speaks of the church meeting. In the first-century, the location was the home. The objective was to manifest Christ by the every-member functioning of the Body and to build up the Body.

             Ministry meetings are those meetings where a Christian worker preaches the gospel or equips and trains members of the Body to function. When Paul rented the Hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus and preached five hours a day, he was holding a ministry meeting. In that Hall, Paul trained workers, preached the gospel, and equipped the church to know Christ and to function as members of His Body. These ministry meetings did not replace the church meetings. Rather, they trained the saints to function during the church meetings (among other things). The church in Ephesus had regularly church meetings in the homes of its members alongside of Paul's ministry meetings.

             Could you expand upon, “No human has the right to permit or prohibit the believing priesthood in the exercise of its Spirit-endowed gifts!”

             I was in a conversation with a pastor once and when I pressed him about freeing the Body of Christ to function, his reply was, "I don't allow my people to …."  Behind those words is human control. No man has the right to stop the Body of Christ from functioning. Yet every Sunday morning, 350,000 churches in the US do not allow the Body to function as it has been called to. Instead, God's people sit, watch, and listen to religious professionals.

             Could you compare the Lordship and Headship of Christ?

             Sure. The Headship of Christ refers to Christ’s relationship with His Body. The Lordship of Christ refers to His relationship with individuals. Headship is Lordship worked out in the corporate life of God’s people. Many Christians know the Lordship of Christ, but few know His Headship. I expound on this further in the book.

             In a community of believers where everyone is a priest, how should leadership be expressed?

             There are three facets of leadership in the New Testament model. Initially, leadership comes from extra-local workers who have been trained and sent. They plant the church and give it its initial equipping and training. Leadership then moves to the entire Body, where decision-making is made by the whole church. From there, the church will organically produce some who are more mature in spiritual life than others. These people function in the role of oversight. Oversight is largely a passive role, however. When a church is planted and trained properly, leadership will occur on these three levels. Leadership is always organic and based on spiritual maturity and sacrificial service. It is never official and based in titles or offices.

             You make the statement, “…if the Spirit of God were to leave an institutional church, His absence would go unnoticed.”  Is that said somewhat in jest or is it absolutely true?

             It is profoundly true. The program of the institutional church continues with or without the Spirit of God. You have professionals leading the thing no matter what happens. In most churches, it's printed in the bulletin. Like clockwork, the music minister or worship team will perform so long as there is electricity in the building. The transparency-flipper will still flip transparencies of the pre-arranged songs. The sermon will still be preached. The offering will still be taken up. And the announcements will still be made. For 345 million Protestant Christians, this liturgy continues week after week, year after year, world without end. Set that over against a group of Christians who have no liturgy, no professional ministers, no pre-planned litany of songs, and no clergy. They themselves decide on what the church will do for the next week, month, and year. They themselves, as a Body, handle the singing. They also handle the ministry. It will become painfully apparent to all if the Spirit of God is not present in a meeting. The reason?   There is no programmed ritual to cover up that somber fact.

             You identify a danger in putting the salvation of souls ahead of the building of the church.  Could you explain?

             In the thinking of the first-century Christians, the two are inseparable. If a person came to Christ, he was born into the community of believers, the ekklesia. It is for this reason that all throughout the book of Acts, Luke says that when a person was converted, he was "added to the Lord" and "added to the church." The two were synonymous to him. Further, a person's baptism, which occurred at the time they believed, was a baptism into Christ and into His Body simultaneously. Today, we separate these two things. You get saved, then you are told to be baptized some day in the future and hopefully find a church to attend.  Regrettably, what God has joined together, man has put asunder.

             What is the problem with basing a church on adherence to certain doctrines (other than the basics of salvation)?

             The problem is untold divisions in the Body of Christ. According to David A. Barrett, there are approximately 8,200 denominations in the Protestant faith and almost 3,000 denominations within the Roman Catholic faith. A good deal of this splintering is due to the fact that Christians have chosen to divide from their fellow brethren on the basis of doctrinal differences. Paul's thundering response to this tragedy is the same as it was in the first-century:  "Is Christ divided!?"   See 1 Corinthians 1-3.

             You warn readers about flocking to the latest “Christian Meccas” of revivalism sponsored by third-wave/restoration churches.  Without naming names, what is the danger there?

             It's a poor substitute for what should be happening in the local assembly. Most Christians are not being fed spiritually in their local churches, therefore, there is a vacuum that must be filled elsewhere. The reason why they aren't being fed is because the churches they attend have not been properly equipped to know and share the depths of Jesus Christ. Nor are the saints given the privilege and the responsibility to function in the meetings of the church. In a recent interview I did (www.ptmin.org/interview.htm), I made the point that the average Christian's spiritual development and education is largely based on the study and preparation of one man -- the pastor. This is profoundly abnormal. God intended His people to receive spiritual nourishment from every member of the local assembly. But this requires that the members of that assembly are properly equipped and then set free to function in church meetings.

             A person can become a conference junkie and hear the deepest truths month after month. But if that person is not connected to a living, breathing Body of believers that has a shared life, they will never live in the good of those truths. Like fine sand, those truths will slip through their fingers. They will be unable to hold them. It takes a Body to experience, remind its members, and live in the good of Divine truth. This is God's wonderful design.

             Please explain what you mean by, “Mutual ministry is the Divine antidote for preventing apostasy, the Divine requirement for ensuring perseverance and the Divine means for cultivating individual spiritual life.”

             In both Hebrews 3 and Hebrews 10, we are told that the antidote for preventing a backslidden condition is the every-member functioning of the Body of Christ. In both passages, the writer of Hebrews essentially says, "exhort one another when you gather together lest your heart turns cold toward the Lord." Our spiritual stability and growth is dependent on meetings where the Body of Christ ministers to us. The main job of Christian workers is to equip the church to function so that it will grow by the every-member functioning of the Body (Ephesians 4). The irony here is that this virtually never happens in the institutional church, even though it's often preached from the pulpit. Preaching about it doesn't make it happen. It must be fleshed out.

             Could you compare and contrast the church and the kingdom?

             The Kingdom of God is the rule of God that produces righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit and subdues the powers of darkness. The church is the community of the King. The church is made up of those who live by the life of the Kingdom and live under its reign. I've written a book that traces the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God in and through the first-century church in chronological order. It's called From Nazareth to Patmos: The Saga of the New Testament Church (www.ptmin.org/saga.htm). In it, my thoughts on the church and the Kingdom are developed through a narrative commentary of the New Testament.

             Rethinking the Wineskin uses an easily misunderstood phrase, apostolic tradition.  Can you explain what this means and why it’s important?

             Apostolic tradition includes the beliefs and practices that the apostles gave to all the churches they planted. This includes the teachings of Jesus as well as the practices of all the early churches, such as open-participatory church meetings, churches planted by itinerant church planters, the Lord's Supper, baptism, etc. It also includes how the apostles taught and fleshed out these things, which is very different from the practice of most churches today.

             If you were the pastor of a traditional charismatic or evangelical church, picked up a copy of Rethinking the Wineskin and became convinced you were wrong, what would you tell the church the following Sunday?

             I guess I would do what I've always done whenever I have read a book or listened to a message that stirred my thinking in a profound way. I would seek to make contact with the author, and I'd ask them their thoughts on how to flesh out what they have written about. I would certainly do this before I made any kind of announcement to the people who looked to me for leadership lest I confuse them and I run the risk of causing us to "both fall into a ditch."