2nd man united

The Pastor is Pagan?

Adapted from Chapter 5 of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. Prior posts follow:

Introduction to Pagan Christianity

Traditions Passed Off as "Christian"

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 1

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 2

The Church Service is Pagan? - Part 1

The Church Service is Pagan? - Part 2

The Sermon is Pagan?

As you read this, be careful not to read your modern-day concept of what a pastor is back into the Scriptures.

There is not a single verse in the entire New Testament that supports the existence of the modern-day pastor!  The word “pastors” does appear, but that word describes a particular function in the church, not an office or a title that has regrettably become the Western concept of what pastor means.  The concept that a pastor is an office or title is one that is read back into the New Testament in order to justify it.  In the New Kingdom and the New Humanity established by Jesus, there are no offices or positions to fill.  He obliterated the hierarchical form of leadership and warned us about it (Matthew 20:25, 23:8-11).  Leadership is a function that is organic, untitled, and recognized by its service through the process of time.  In the New Testament, after individuals grew into the spiritual man that functioned as such with the witness of their local church, they would be publicly acknowledged as elders through different means such as the laying on of hands.  This was the affirmation of a function, not the installment into an office or the giving of special status.  When it came to apostolic workers, the pattern throughout the entire New Testament is that they always left the church after they laid the foundation so that the members would not look for them to lead and hinder every-member functioning. 

 

So, how did this unbiblical hierarchical office make its way into the Christian faith?  The answer reaches as far back as the Fall of Man.  With the Fall came an implicit desire in people to have a physical leader to bring them to God and an obsession with the hierarchical form of leadership inherent in the systems of the Fallen World.  This theme is woven throughout the entire drama of God’s people from Genesis to Revelation.  In the late first and early second centuries, we find that the church began to drift from its organic nature toward the organizational patterns of the world found in her surrounding culture as new converts brought their worldly mindsets into the believing community.  This increased dramatically when the emperor Constantine made Christianity both recognized and honored by the state in the early fourth century.  This blurred the line between the church and the world, making Christianity fashionable and resulting in large numbers of people with questionable conversions to join and bring their wide variety of pagan ideas into the mix. 

 

A destructive step occurred in the churches when one elder started to be elevated above all the others in a position called “bishop” that resembled the worldly caste system of the political structures of the Roman Empire.  This position was created because of the belief that the church needed a more controlled-system structure to protect it from heresy and internal strife.  The bishop was seen as the spokesperson and head of the congregation who controlled all church activities.  In short, he was the forerunner of the contemporary pastor.  What was organic was becoming more and more mechanical as time went on.

 

By the mid-third century, the bishop had hardened into a fixed office and the Old Testament economy of priests, temples, altars and sacrifices that God moved on from through Jesus had begun to be resurrected.  Even the language of Old Testament priesthood started to be used to justify this practice.  By the fourth century, the church became a full-fledged, top-down, hierarchically organized society.  The graded hierarchy that involved bishops, presbyters, deacons and laymen dominated the Christian faith.  Bishops ruled over churches like Roman governors ruled over their provinces.  Even churches began to exercise authority over other churches – thus broadening the worldly hierarchical structure.  This allowed the non-New Testament concept that there exists a divinely appointed person to mediate between God and the people to be accepted.  By the fifth century, the concept of the priesthood of all believers had completely disappeared from the Christian practice.  And as time went on, proof-texting methods began to be used to make the New Testament seem like it justified the clergy/laity hierarchy. 

 

With the Reformation came a rallying cry to restore the concept of the priesthood of all believers, but the restoration was only partial; failing to recover the corporate dimension of the believing priesthood.  After the smoke cleared, we ended up with the same practices that the Catholics gave us, only clothed in new garb and new language.  In fact, Martin Luther actually denounced groups that practiced every-member functioning in the church.  He felt the church was primarily a preaching station and the pastor was the functioning head of the church.  So, just like Catholics, Protestants ended up basing their practices on human traditions rather than on the Bible. 

 

The clergy/laity distinction borrowed from the kingdom of darkness has been carried into modern-day Christianity and stolen people’s right to function as a full member of Christ’s body.  It has overthrown the main thrust of the book of Hebrews – the ending of the old priesthood, made ineffectual the teaching of I Corinthians 12-14, that every member has both the right and the privilege to minister in a church meeting, and voided the message of I Peter 2 that every brother and sister is a functioning priest.  Not only does it damage the congregation, but it damages the person in the office.  Typically, a burden too heavy for one person to bear falls on the shoulders of these individuals and results in massive stress, burnout, family neglect, loneliness, depression, etc.  Undoubtedly, this comes from the impossible task of meeting all of the unrealistic expectations that comes with the powerful influence of a worldly system that humans weren’t meant to live in.  They typically must operate outside of the realm of their giftedness, which isn’t good for them or those members for whom they are attempting to substitute for. 

 

The system of solo pastora (single pastor) has answered I Corinthians 12:19, which asks “And if they were all one member, where would the body be?”  Nothing so hinders the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose of making Christ’s headship visibly manifested in the church.  As long as the pastoral office is present, the church has a slim chance of fulfilling this purpose.  

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The Sermon is Pagan?

Adapted from Chapter 4 of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. Prior posts follow:

Introduction to Pagan Christianity

Traditions Passed Off as "Christian"

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 1

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 2

The Church Service is Pagan? - Part 1

The Church Service is Pagan? - Part 2

As you read this, be careful not to read your modern-day practices back into the Scriptures. 

 

The sermon is so central to modern Protestant church services that the entire service is often judged by the quality of the sermon.  But, the reality is that what we know of as today’s sermon has no root in Scripture.  Rather, it was borrowed from pagan culture, nursed and adopted into the Christian faith.  Not only that, but the sermon actually detracts from the very purpose for which God designed the church gathering.  NOTE: There is a world of difference between the Spirit-inspired preaching and teaching described in the Bible and the contemporary sermon.  Here are some characteristics that make a sermon distinct:

 

• It is a regular, mechanical, planned, prescribed occurrence.
• It is typically delivered by the same person religiously.
• It is delivered to a passive audience as a monologue.
• It has a specific structure, typically intro, 3 to 5 points and a conclusion.

 

Scriptural preaching and teaching has none of these characteristics.  The New Testament shows that the ministry of God’s Word comes from the entire church in regular gatherings. (Yes, there were special meetings where certain individuals would give messages).

 

The concept of the sermon was borrowed from Greek culture and became a standard practice among believers around the 4^th century.  The sermon is rhetoric (the art of persuasive speaking).  It uses emotional appeals, physical appearance and clever language to “sell” arguments.  The early adopters of this art were heavy theorists that didn’t necessarily practice the truths they spoke of in their own lives.  They also typically spoke for money and wore special clothing.  Perhaps the most famous of these orators was Aristotle, who gave rhetoric the three-point speech.  The Greeks considered orators to be similar to how Americans view movie stars and professional athletes.  Consequently, Greco-Roman culture developed an insatiable appetite for hearing someone give an eloquent oration. 

 

By the 4^th century, the pagan notion of a trained professional speaker who delivers orations for a fee moved straight into the Christian bloodstream.  And only those who were trained in it were allowed to address the assembly.  The sermon largely replaced prophesying, open sharing and Spirit-inspired teaching.  Today, even seminaries have courses in Greek rhetoric to teach their students how to preach.  Yet, most Christians never question the sermon’s origin or its effectiveness. 

 

The conventional sermon negatively impacts the church in a number of ways:

 

• The sermon makes the preacher the virtuoso performer of the regular church gathering, allowing them to dominate it week after week without interruption, questioning or correcting.  Congregational participation is turned into a group of muted spectators who watch a performance, freezing and imprisoning the functioning of the body of Christ. 
• It stalemates spiritual growth by encouraging passivity and suffocating mutual edification.  It smothers open participation and causes the spiritual growth of God’s people to take a nosedive.
• It preserves the unbiblical clergy mentality and creates an excessive and pathological dependence on the clergy.  Everyone else is treated as second-class Christians.
• It deprives the pastor from receiving from the church and the church from receiving from one another. 
• It doesn’t equip the saints; it de-skills them.  In their practice of disseminating information, many preachers speak as experts on that which they have never experienced and essentially end up giving swimming lessons on dry land. 

 

Greco-Roman rhetoric was bathed in abstraction.  It “involved forms designed to entertain and display genius rather than instruct or develop talents in others.” (Norrington, To Preach or Not)  The sermon can warm the heart, inspire the will, and stimulate the mind.  But it rarely, if ever, shows the team how to leave the huddle.  In the end, it’s a momentary stimulant that actually intensifies the impoverishment of the church. 

 

Christians who have heard sermons all their lives are typically still babes in Christ.  Transformation doesn’t come through sermons.  It comes through regular encounters with Jesus Christ.  Those who preach are called to preach Christ and not information about Him.  They are called not only to reveal Him, but show their hearers how to experience, know, follow and serve Him.  The Christian family needs a restoration of mutual exhortation and ministry.  The New Testament hinges transformation upon this. 

 

When your pastor mounts his pulpit wearing his clerical robes to deliver his sacred sermon, he is unknowingly playing out the role of the ancient Greek orator.  It has become so entrenched in the Christian mind that most Bible-believing pastors and laymen fail to see that they are affirming and perpetuating an unscriptural practice out of sheer tradition. 

 

Consider these questions: How can a man preach a sermon on being faithful to the Word of God while he is preaching a sermon? How can a Christian passively sit in a pew and affirm the priesthood of all believers when he is passively sitting in a pew?  How can you claim to uphold the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (“by the Scripture only”) and still support the pulpit sermon?

 

People preached in the New Testament to equip the church and to build the community by bringing people to Christ on special occasions.  But, the normative church gathering involved every member bringing his or her portion of Christ. (I Corinthians 14:26)

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The Church Service is Pagan? - Part 2

Adapted from Chapter 3 of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. Prior posts follow:

Introduction to Pagan Christianity

Traditions Passed Off as "Christian"

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 1

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 2

The Church Service is Pagan? - Part 1

After a full survey of the liturgical history of the church, you come to the obvious conclusion that all Protestant traditions share the same unbiblical features in their order of worship: They are officiated and directed by a clergyman, they make the sermon central, and the people are passive and not permitted to minister.  The Reformers accomplished a great deal in changing theology, but in terms of actual practice, they made only minor adjustments that did little to bring worship back to the New Testament model.  Their main contribution was in changing the central focus.  The Bible replaced the Eucharist and the pastor replaced the priest.  The result: God’s people have never broken free from the liturgical constraints they inherited and are still unsuccessful in allowing Jesus Christ to be the center and head of their gatherings. 

 

There is still a person directing God’s people, rendering them as silent spectators.  The centrality of the author of the book was never restored.  Hence, the Reformers dramatically failed to put their finger on the nerve of the original problem: a clergy-led worship service attended by a passive laity.  It is clear that the Protestant order of worship did not originate with the Lord Jesus, the apostles, or the New Testament Scriptures.  This does not mean its misguided, just that its not biblical. 

 

The fact is that we do many things in our culture that have pagan roots.  Consider our accepted calendar.  The days of our week and the months of our year are named after pagan gods.  Using the accepted calendar does not make us pagans.  But, take a look at how those things that we’ve inherited affect what is important to us.  For example, the Protestant order of worship does not lead to the spiritual growth God intended by repressing mutual participation and the growth of Christian community.  It puts a choke hold on the functioning of the body of Christ by silencing its members.  There is absolutely no room for anyone to give a word of exhortation, share an insight, start or introduce a song, or spontaneously lead a prayer.  You are forced to be a muted, staid pewholder!  You are prevented from being enriched by the other members of the body as well as being able to enrich them yourself.  These things are considered “out of order.”  You are therefore limited to the knowledge, gifting and experience of one (maybe a couple) member of the body.  Where is the freedom of the Lord Jesus to speak through his body at will?  He too is rendered a passive spectator.  The church service is one huge tongue (pastor) and many little ears (the congregation).

 

Here’s a description of the kind of Christian meeting envisioned by the New Testament:

 

About thirty people gather in a home and greet one another.  Some step into the center of the living room and start singing a capella.  Quickly, the entire church is singing in unison, arms around one another.  Someone else begins singing another song and all join in.  Between songs, prayers are uttered by different people.  Some of the songs have been written by members themselves.  Several songs are sung.  After singing, rejoicing, and spontaneously praying and exhorting one another, people begin sharing what the Lord had showed them during the week.  One by one, people share their experience of their Lord.  They exalt the Lord and edify the brothers and sisters in creative ways as the Lord leads them.  Exhortations, teaching, encouragements, poems, songs and testimonies all follow one right after the other.  The common theme of a revelation of Jesus Christ is shared.  None of it is rehearsed, prescribed or planned.  The meeting is one in which it is evident to everyone that someone was indeed leading it.  But the leader was not visible.  It is the Lord Jesus Christ!  His headship is being manifest among His people.  The church is reminded again that He is alive…alive enough to direct His church. 

 

Shall we opt for man’s tradition when it clearly runs contrary to God’s thought for His church?  Shall we continue to undermine the functioning headship of Christ for the sake of our sacrosanct liturgy?  Perhaps the only way to thaw out God’s frozen people is to make a dramatic break with the Sunday morning ritual.  May we not be found guilty of our Lord’s bone-rattling words: “Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.” (Mark 7:9, Colossians 2:8, among others).

 

So, what about Paul admonishing believers to do things in an orderly way in I Corinthians 14?  When God’s people are properly equipped to function under the headship of Jesus Christ, meetings do not become tumultuous free-for-alls.  They are marked by the direction of Jesus Christ through every-member functioning in harmony and order. 

 

The issue we are talking about is not “Is Jesus talked about and given honor in the service?”  Typically, He is.  The issue we are addressing is, “Is Jesus Christ the functional head of the gathering?”  There is a significant difference between making Jesus the invisible guest of honor and allowing Him to be the practical leader of the gathering.  

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The Church Service is Pagan? - Part 1

Adapted from Chapter 3 of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. Prior posts follow:

Introduction to Pagan Christianity

Traditions Passed Off as "Christian"

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 1

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 2

After peeling away various superficial alterations that make each church service distinct, you find from a broad perspective, the order of worship is essentially the same in virtually all Protestant churches.  The greeting, prayer, songs, announcements, offering, sermon, and benediction.  With some minor rearrangements, this is the unbroken liturgy that 345 million Protestants across the globe observe religiously week after week.  And for the last 500 years, few people have questioned it.  Why?  Because of the titanic power of tradition.  

 

Pastors that routinely tell their churches that they are “biblical” and still have mechanical meetings are not lying or being deceptive.  They are simply ignorant and misinformed.  Go ahead and scour the story of the early Christians as recorded in the New Testament and try and find a liturgy or order of worship when the early Christians met.  You can’t.  The meetings of the early church were marked by every-member functioning, spontaneity, freedom, vibrancy, and open participation.  It was fluid and unpredictable, not static. 

 

So, where did the Protestant order of worship come from?  It has its basic roots in the medieval Catholic Mass.  And this mass grew out of ancient Judaism and paganism that was influenced heavily by magical paganistic concepts.  It was a blending of pagan and Judaistic ritual sprinkled with Catholic theology and Christian vocabulary.  This mass changed little over a thousand years until Martin Luther came along (1483-1546).  As Protestant denominations were born, they reshaped the Catholic liturgy.  Luther’s main revision was to make preaching, rather than the Eucharist, the center of the gathering.  This, in turn, made the pulpit rather than the altar table the central element.  But, once again, making preaching the center of the church gathering has no biblical precedent.  Although Luther talked a lot about the “priesthood of all believers,” he never did reform the practice of it.  And this has been the case in most of the revisions of liturgy ever since then.  Therefore, services still make congregants into passive spectators with an MC or two that stands in stark contrast to church meetings led by Jesus Christ.  

 

Because of the way we meet, meetings have become a preaching station where style and pulpit personalities are the dominating attraction for church.  It is also an individualistic affair rather than a corporate one.  

 

According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the leader, director, and CEO of the church meeting.  In I Corinthians 12, Paul tells us that Christ speaks through His entire body, not just one member.  In such a meeting, His body freely functions under His headship (direct leadership) through the working of His Holy Spirit.  The goal of the early church gatherings was mutual edification and every-member functioning to corporately manifest Jesus Christ before principalities and powers.  First Corinthians 14 gives us a picture of such a gathering.  This kind of meeting is vital for the spiritual growth of God’s people and the full expression of His Son on earth.  So, why do we do it the way we do it?  Because of the power of tradition.

 

To the contemporary Protestant mind, doctrine must be vigorously checked with Scripture before it is accepted.  But when it comes to church practice, just about anything is acceptable as long as it accomplishes our goals.

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The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 2

Adapted from Chapter 2 of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna. Prior posts follow:

Introduction to Pagan Christianity

Traditions Passed Off as "Christian"

The Church Building is Pagan? - Part 1

Following the Constantinian era, church buildings passed through various stages, but little changed with the dominant architectural features that fostered a monopolizing clergy and an inert congregation.  If you follow the development of the architecture of the church building throughout church history, you see a reflection of man’s quest to sense the divine with his physical senses.  While aesthetic experiences can surely turn the heart toward God, Christianity is about connecting with God spiritually.  By the fourth century, the Christian community had lost touch with those heavenly realities and spiritual intangibles that cannot be perceived by the senses, but which can only be registered by the human spirit (see I Corinthians 2:9-16).

 

So really, who cares if we meet in these types of buildings today? What’s the big deal as long as we’re seeking God and fellowshipping together?  If you think this way, you are overlooking a basic reality of humanity.  Every building we encounter elicits a response from us.  By its interior, it shows us what the church is and how it functions.  This principle is expressed in the architectural motto, “Form follows function.”  The social setting of a church’s meeting place is a good index of that church’s understanding of God’s purpose for His body.  Church buildings are not inherently bad.  But, just like any atmosphere, they shape our understanding and functioning of the body of Christ.  At a deeper level, we have managed to orchestrate much psychological and aesthetic experience in them that should never be confused with spiritual experience that we are called to have in Christ.  

 

The next time you go into a church building, translate the architecture by asking yourself how the form affects the function.  Notice how it’s not designed for intimacy or fellowship.  Notice how open, participatory meetings where anyone is free to express Christ are virtually impossible.  Notice how the idea of a church building encourages compartmentalization of church life.  Notice how it fails to encourage natural and intimate connection with other believers.  Notice how it encourages a denial of the priesthood of all believers.  Notice how it is a contradiction of the very nature of the ekklesia – which is a countercultural community.  Notice how it impedes the understanding and experience that the church is Christ’s functioning body that lives and breathes under His direct headship.  This characterizes Western Christianity.  Worship is seen as something detached from the whole fabric of life and packaged for group consumption. 

 

The pulpit fosters a focus on preaching as the central way to know God and grow spiritually as well as elevating and placing the preacher above God’s people.  The pew is a symbol of lethargy and passivity that inhibits face-to-face fellowship and has made corporate worship a spectator sport. The steeple comes from the notion that Christians have to reach into the heavens to find God even though He is with us.  In short, Christian architecture continues to encourage the unbiblical division between clergy and laity and stalemate the functioning of God’s people.

 

So, how did the early church do it without buildings?  There were meetings in homes throughout the cities.  Each home gathering contained roughly 30 to 35 people, but did not see itself as separate from the one church in a particular city.  The entire church in a particular locality would come together for specific purposes in existing facilites by renting or borrowing large spaces to accommodate everyone.  When a gathering grew too large to gather in a single home, it would typically multiply into separate home meetings, but see itself as one church meeting in multiple locations.

 

Church leaders often quote Hebrews 10:25 (“not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together”) when telling members they should “go to church” on Sunday mornings.  But, the New Testament vision of the church meeting is one in which every member functions and participate in the gathering.  The church building defeats this purpose by its architecture. 

 

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 institutions annually.  The crazy thing is, all of the traditional reasons for “needing” a church building collapse under careful scrutiny.  The truth is, it’s nothing but overhead.  That’s quite a bit of money to sanctify brick and stone.

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