Posted: 07/28/2005 at 7:50am | IP Logged

Church Planting Chat: An interview with Frank Viola

By Mike Morell
 
I recently had the chance to interview Christian author and conference speaker Frank Viola. Frank plants and assists house church communities to fulfill what he calls "God’s eternal purpose." Here's how it went...

Frank, you've been on a long and wild spiritual journey.I think you've been part of simple "home churches" for nearly 20 years now, and you've been active in working with other church communities. You're doing all of this in your "spare time," without the aid of a salary or pension. This is so "outside the box" of the comfortable callings I grew up around. It's not something I really encountered until I started living this way about six years ago. Could you elaborate on what motivates you to plant and nurture churches?

Sure. In 1988, I stepped out of the institutional church and began meeting with other believers in a very simple way. We had no clergy, no pastor, no order of worship, and no church building. In those early years we stumbled into what I will call the experience of the Body of Christ. In 1992, by God's grace, I was given an extraordinary revelation of Jesus Christ and His passion for His church that drastically changed my life. I began . . . and I stress "began" . . . to understand what Paul referred to in Ephesians and Colossians when he described the "mystery of His will" and the "purpose of the ages." I had experienced a foretaste of it with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. That revelation still burns in me today, and it is the controlling vision that drives my life.

That sounds like quite the experience. So how did you live that out with your church?

We met for eight years. We never had a pastor, and we avoided the traditional practices that mark more institutionalized forms of church today, i.e. salaried leaders, weekly sermons, church buildings, church programs, an order of worship, etc.

During those eight years, I discovered what the Headship of Jesus Christ was. I experienced the joy and awe of meeting with other believers with no leader present except the Lord Jesus Christ. I watched and participated with a group of Christians who were functioning as members of the Lord's Body under His invisible Headship. That experience was life-changing, and it set me on a course to produce this experience elsewhere.

In 1995, the church sent me out to begin the work of planting churches in other places. I have never returned to institutionalized Christianity. Instead, I have been meeting outside institutional lines with believers who have a consuming passion for Christ and His church.

Since 1997, I have been speaking on God's eternal purpose in Christ and helping God's people discover how to gather around Him alone in the US and overseas. One of the wonders of my life is to watch the Lord's people become fully liberated when they are presented with a glorious unveiling of Jesus Christ and His Body.

To see them encounter the living Lord together, fall in love with one another, and meet together under His Headship... without a clergy, a pastor, or any one directing the gathering...is one of the things for which I live.So to answer your earlier question, it is this remarkable vision of Christ and His church, made real and accessible to God's people today, that is the motivation for my ministry.

One way you describe the Divine purpose is in your book, So You Want to Start a House Church?(page 25). You write, "God's ultimate aim is to extend His Son's beauty and reign on the earth." This is a wonderful answer to the "why" of church planting. It also sounds like it could be echoed from The Divine Conspiracy or Renovation of the Heart. Have you been influenced by Dallas Willard at all?

Actually, I've never read Willard. The first people who introduced me to God's central and ultimate aim are no longer alive. But their writings are alive and well. They were Watchman Nee and T. Austin-Sparks...giants in the Christian faith, though little-known and appreciated today.

Perhaps Willard was echoing these men :-)

In your book, you affirm your belief that there are apostles today. This is a very "hot button" ministry, one that the Presbyterians I hang out with vigorously deny and the charismatics I know enthusiastically promote. In the conversation about emerging forms of church that I'm part of, "apostles" rarely come up, probably because of all the weirdness that surrounds the subject in various corners of the Body of Christ. You are of the opinion the apostles are important, but that their identity and function is something that's much-misunderstood. Can you elaborate?

I mean no offense to those who feel they are so called. But to my mind, most men who call themselves "apostles" in our day are not. According to the New Testament, an apostle is a person whom God has called and gifted to raise up churches. Apostles are "sent ones" . . . sent by God and sent by an existing church and/or church planter.

The problem we have today is two-fold. The first issue we face has to do with what we mean by "church" in the first place. The modern church as we know it bears little resemblance to the ekklesia in God's thought. In my books on radical church restoration, namely  Rethinking the Wineskin, Pagan Christianity, and From Nazareth to Patmos  I demonstrate that the institutional church of modernity does not have a Scriptural or historical basis to support its practices. To put it candidly, it is a human institution built on human traditions.

Further, from a pragmatic standpoint, the institutional church has been tried and found wanting. It has done an abysmal job of equipping God's people to function without a human leader and to know Christ deeply and significantly. It is no wonder that the number of Christians who leave the organized church increases every year. (See  A Revolution for statistics.) Consequently, men who plant institutional, clergy-led churches cannot be called "apostles" in the New Testament sense of the word.

The second problem has to do with the preparation and calling of an apostle. According to the New Testament, an apostle is a person who has had experience in an authentic expression of the Body of Christ as a non-leader. This person, by their life and gifting, has demonstrated to their fellow brethren that they have a genuine calling and that they are safe to the Lord's people. They are then sent by that church or by an older church planter who mentored them. This principle is developed in my book  So You Want to Start a House Church? . And it is drawn from both church history and the New Testament. What is more, this principle is rooted in enduring spiritual realities that are grounded in the Triune God before creation.

Some have criticized your work because you appeal to the first century as the model for how the church ought to function. There is, for instance, a lot of debate about this in the emerging church conversations I listen in on. Many impassioned leaders I know are of the opinion that the first-century church that we read about in the New Testament is great, but it represents the church at one stage of her development. It should not be taken as some sort of idyllic, timeless standard for churches today. How do you respond to that statement?

I guess I would respond by asking certain questions. Where do we find our praxis for the Christian life? Where is our model for understanding what a Christian is in the first place? Is it not found in the life of Jesus Christ as portrayed in the New Testament? Or do we borrow it from somewhere else? Perhaps a pagan philosopher?

Few Christians would attempt to argue that Jesus Christ, as He is presented in the New Testament, is not the model for the Christian life. Jesus Christ is the Christian life. In the same way, when Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended, He gave birth to His church. That church was Himself in a different form. This is the meaning of the phrase "the Body of Christ."

Consequently, the church in the first century was an organic entity. It was a living, breathing organism that possessed a certain expression. And that expression revealed Jesus Christ on this planet through His ever-member functioning Body. That expression was devoid of a clergy/laity caste. In fact, Jesus Himself taught against this caste. So did Peter and Paul in their writings. I fully develop this thought in my book  Who is Your Covering?  The first-century expression of the church had no airtight rituals. Instead, the members functioned freely to express Christ in their community-life as well as in their church meetings. There was no human headship in their meetings.

The practices of the first-century church were the natural and spontaneous expression of the Divine life that indwelt the early Christians. And those practices were solidly grounded in the teachings of the New Testament. By contrast, the majority of the practices of the modern church are in conflict with those of the first-century church. If we dig deeper, we will be compelled to ask: Where did the practices of the modern church come from? The answer is daunting: They were borrowed from pagan culture. Such a statement short-circuits the minds of many Christians when they hear it. But it is unmovable, historical fact. For this reason, I wrote a fully documented, 300-page book called  Pagan Christianity  which traces the historical origins of our modern church practices.

So I would argue that on theological grounds, on historical grounds, and on pragmatic grounds the first-century church best represents the dream of God . . . the beloved community that He intends to create and re-create in every chapter of the human story. The first-century church teaches us how the life of God is expressed when a group of people begin to live by it together.

Further, my own experience in working with organic churches confirms this finding. (An organic church is simply a church that is left on its own after it is properly planted to develop by its own life. This is in stark contrast to a clergy-led, institution-driven church.) My experience in the USA and overseas has been that when a group of Christians begins to follow the life of the Lord who indwells them together, the same outstanding features that marked the first-century church (open-participatory meetings, decision-making by consensus, the absence of a clergy and laity, the centrality of Jesus Christ, community in reality) all begin to naturally manifest.

This is because the church really is an organism. As such, it has a DNA that will always produce these features if it is allowed to grow naturally. Granted, organic churches will have their differences depending on what culture they live in. But if the church is following the life of God who indwells it, it will never produce a clergy-system, a modern pastor, a pulpit-pew-sermon-led gathering, and an individualistic lifestyle in its members. These are foreign elements that God's people picked up from their pagan neighbors mostly in the fourth and fifth centuries. They were embraced, baptized, and called "Christian." And that is why we are in the state we are in today.

The prophet Jeremiah prophesied to God's people of his day to return to the "ancient paths." I believe this word is apt for us in this hour.

You quote the late Stanley Grenz often in your book on church planting. He is much beloved by the emerging church community and his death several months back came as a saddening surprise. What influence has he had on your understanding of the church?

Grenz had an extraordinary grasp of the communitarian nature of the Godhead, the church, and the Christian life. Properly conceived, the church is an outflow of the community that exits within the Godhead. Unfortunately, this reality has been lost to us today.

The central gravity of evangelical theology today is the individual. The focus is upon what we as individual Christians must do to have a "personal" relationship with God and what we as individuals must do to be better Christians. But this is not the emphasis of the New Testament. God is after a community. For God is Community.

Among contemporary theologians, Grenz stands out as one who had incredible insight into the eternal community of the Godhead and its effect on the church and the Christian life.

Besides Grenz, Watchman Nee, and T. Austin-Sparks, are there any other scholars and theologians who have had an influence on your thoughts on the community of the Triune God?

I would not call Nee and Sparks theologians or scholars. They, along with a number of other men, have deeply influenced my thoughts on this subject. And I make mention of them in the preface of my books.

However, among theologians and scholars, I'd say that Clark Pinnock has written superbly on the fellowship of the Godhead in his volume on the Holy Spirit. Some other theological works that unfold this revelation are: What on Earth is the Church? An Exploration in NT Theology by Kevin Giles. Trinity and Society by Leonardo Boff. Narratives of a Vulnerable God by William C. Placher. The Trinity and the Kingdom by Jurgen Moltmann. The Triune Identity: God According to the Gospel by Robert W. Jenson. And in C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, his chapter entitled "Beyond Personality" contains a simple but powerful presentation of the Triune God being outside of space and time.

Other scholars who have emphasized the corporate nature of the Christian life and salvation are: Paul's Covenant Community: Jew and Gentile in Romans by R. David Kaylor. Jesus, Paul and Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians by James D.G. Dunn. Paul Among Jews and Gentiles by K. Stendahl. Paul, the Law and the Jewish People by E.P. Sanders. Robert Banks' Paul's Idea of Community is a seminal work in this area.

So themes like the collective nature of life in God, and plunging into the fellowship of the Godhead, are key considerations for you in church planting work. And they say church planters are hopelessly pragmatic.

Well, I believe that any efforts in the area of church planting must be grounded in the revelation of the communitarian nature and corporate impulse of the Godhead. This revelation is intensely spiritual as well as being practical and the stuff of every-day life. It is something, not just spoken about, but experienced and known first hand. One of my roles in working with churches is to help God's people experience this in a living way.

Someone once said that John Wimber put wheels on theologian George E. Ladd's theology of the Kingdom. I have been similarly "accused" of putting wheels on Grenz' theology of community. If that is true in any sense, I certainly am not the only one. But it is true that this work is rare today.

I am emphatic in my belief that the church in modernity has strayed from its original, spiritual roots of being a living, breathing community that reflects the community of the Triune God. One of the central features of my ministry is to restore this forgotten aspect to all who seek it to be recovered.

Every Christian has a longing for Christian community. They have an inward instinct toward being involved in the lives of their fellow Christians as well as being a functioning member of the Body of Christ. Not in an abstract, doctrinal way; but in living reality. My heart is to help Christians flesh out the community of the Body of Christ together. This is what my book  Knowing Christ Together  is all about.

I know that I had that longing, and it continued unmet through more conventional Baptist, Pentecostal, charismatic and Presbyterian churches. And now—God knows that life in my church community isn't perfect by any means—but I'm beginning to see this deeper reality play out. So what do you envision for the future of the emerging church when it comes to church planting?

As one who is perhaps on the more radical end of the emerging church conversation, I have stated both my commendation as well as my concerns regarding the phenomenon in my article,  Will the Emerging Church Fully Emerge?  I won't rehearse the burden I expressed in that article here, except to say that I believe that it is crucial for the emerging church to rethink the matter of church planting.

By my lights, the key that will determine the future of the emerging church and its relationship to church planting hangs on whether or not the leaders in the conversation are willing to work together. If the truth be told, most Christian leaders have no desire to work with other leaders in any way. The human ego is a monumental hurdle to get past on this score. Not too long ago, one emerging church leader told me straightforwardly that he and his friends would rather re-invent the wheel themselves than to learn from another person who had greater experience and success in a particular area.

This is hard for me to relate to. Forgive me for speaking personally, but I was recently in a conversation with a man who has a unique insight on the matter of spiritual fathering. His insight appears to have born good fruit in his ministry. I was eager to learn what the Lord had shown him in this area. So we set up a phone conversation and fellowshipped for over an hour about it.

I realize that despite what God has taught me and commissioned me in my own ministry, I am limited. I'm a member of a Body that is much larger than myself. I am fully committed to the course that God has set me on. And I will not bend when it comes to the matters that I have written about in my books. At the same time, it is profoundly dangerous for me to have the mindset that Paul speaks against in his letter to the Corinthians when he writes: "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you.'"

I believe that if leaders in the emerging church would get in touch with those areas where they are lacking instead of trying to "reinvent the wheel" themselves, and learn how to fellowship with others who are ahead of them in these areas, we could well see a revolution in Christian faith and practice today.

On a more positive key, I am happy that some in the emerging church phenomenon have begun to dialogue with others who are coming from a different place. And I'm thrilled whenever I find those who are willing to deconstruct traditional mindsets in order to proactively co-work with others toward a common goal. I hope that the future will yield far more men and women of this persuasion.

The Kingdom of God today is in desperate need of people who have a consuming vision of Jesus Christ and His church who are willing to abandon their egos in order to work together. I am a student of church history. And I am convinced that this is the central hindrance to the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose today: Men who have like vision and calling, refusing to work with one another.

Only when this obstacle begins to crack will we see real and enduring change in the church of Jesus Christ on a broad scale.

If someone feels a calling to be a church planter or "worker," as you call them in So You Want To Start A House Church?, what would you recommend them do about it?

I prefer "worker" or "church planter" over "apostle," simply because the latter word has been abused and perverted over the last century.

One of the points I make emphatically throughout the book is that one cannot produce that which they have never experienced. Consequently, if someone is going to plant first-century styled churches, they must first live in such a church. This is an essential spiritual principle that does not move. And it is peppered consistently all throughout the New Testament.

Regrettably, in my experience at least, I've met few who were willing to do this. Most people who want to plant churches have had little to no preparation. (Seminary and Bible school does not equip one to plant first-century styled churches.)

Thankfully, there are some who are not willing to take shortcuts. For instance, one man I know who feels such a call moved to the city where I am presently planting a church. He left professional ministry, took a secular job, and is observing as well as experiencing the raising up of a church from the beginning.

That being said, in my opinion, since there are so few churches today that gather simply, organically, and under Christ's direct leading, a person who feels called should be willing to relocate to experience a true expression of the church. And they should be willing to live in that church-life experience as a member and not as a leader. In addition, it would be very helpful to them if they would travel with such a church planter and see the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Lord's work up-close and personal.

Frank Viola http://www.ptmin.org/

Mike Morrell is a freelance editor and copywriter. He is an editor for  The Ooze  and he likes to write for  Next-Wave , when he can get himself in gear. In his spare time, Mike maintains  Sites Unseen , a haven for Christian websites along roads less traveled.