John Piper answers that question here.  It’s a great reminder of what ought to motivate us as worship leaders.

Jim and Casper Go To Church is another iconoclastic book from the Barna Group (What’s with the scary red covers?)  The book details the journeys of Jim (a longtime Christian) and Casper (a longtime atheist) on a Homeric odyssey through several different churches – from mega to mini, from emergent to mainline.  It chronicles Casper’s reactions to each of these different experiences.  It is essential reading for the church leader who cares about how church is perceived by those outside of the North American church sub-culture.  Here are my quick hit thoughts:

• Casper responds very positively to when the church is involved in the community or working for justice in the world.  I think it belies an assumption on Casper’s part that churches are more interested in helping themselves than in helping others.  As church leaders we need to be constantly asking ourselves who we’re interested in helping
• Casper is only one guy with one opinion.  I’d love to see a sequel to this book that took a busload of atheists around to different churches and surveyed their opinions
• I experience church differently now.  I hear Casper in the back of my mind asking “Is this really what Jesus wanted you to do?” It’s a sobering question
• Casper saw through anything that was fake.  I also suspect he saw some things as fake that were actually quite sincere.
• Biggest surprise of the book?  Saddleback and Willow both get pretty low marks from Casper.  Makes you go “Hmmm” doesn’t it?

Well, that’s it for now kids.  See you in church!

Have you stopped laughing yet?  Now the question is… is it for real?

I don’t think it is.  It’s just a little too funny, if you know what I mean.  Some of the double entendre are a little too rich to be unintentional in my opinion.  So… It’s a fake.  But what an exquisite forgery!

The songs on “Jesus Only” are now officially registered with CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing Incorporated).  If you’re using any of the songs at church you can search the CCLI database for the song number, or download an updated chart of the song from here.

Let me begin on this (the first day of school) by making a typical bloggy self-referential comment:  I can’t believe that I’m doing a book report for fun.  I used to hate these things!  OK – on to the book report:

Frank Viola has teamed up with George Barna (czar of evangelical statistics) to write a scathing polemic against the modern institutional church.  “Pagan Christianity” is a summary of all the ways that our modern churches have departed from the New Testament church.  Viola argues forcefully that all the ways in which we have altered the idea of “church” since the first centure have pagan roots and that we ought to get back to the purity of the first century.  Viola’s ideal of church is what he calls the “organic” church – which meets in homes with no paid clergy, not permanent building, no set order of worship, etc – just as the NT church was.  In each chapter he takes an element of modern church life (paid clergy, church buildings, etc) and explains when and where the innovation came from and how these things are harmful to the church.  What I liked most about the book was the historical data on the origins of many church practices.  These are laid out in an easily digestible format and are meticulously footnoted for those who want to dig deeper.  It is eye opening to see the origins of many our our church practices.

However, Viola is consistently unsympathetic in his explanations of why these innovations occurred.  For example, when writing about baptism he excoriates the 2nd century church for creating a 2 to 3 year catechetical process which was required before baptism.  Viola doesn’t tell us why this was done, other than that it was to transform conversion into a salvation-by-works scheme.  I certainly don’t think we ought to put barriers down for people to become baptized, I am sympathetic with the reasons the 2nd century church did this.  They were under intense persecution.  Christians were being brutally executed and tortured by the Roman government.  One motive for a long and thorough catechetical process was self preservation.  The church was very wary of allowing Roman spies into the fellowship who could then inform on all the church members and their activities.  A long and strenuous initiation process ensured that converts were genuine and wouldn’t inform on church members and activities.  I don’t know that those early church leaders made the right choice, but I’m sympathetic to their situation for sure.  Those early church leaders also worked without the benefit of the canonized New Testament.

Viola also speaks little about the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding the church through the centuries.  He seems to paint a picture of the early church as the perfect ideal and all innovations in church life since the first century simply pollute the purity of that ideal.  Surely innovations in church praxis have been guided by the Holy Spirit to adapt to a changing world.  Viola argues otherwise.

I found that part of me was tempted by the thought of going “off the grid” and joining a simple “organic church” that Frank espouses.  However, I find that I still believe in the church, in my church (I suppose that now is a good time for full disclosure – my church pays my salary!) and in the way we do a lot of the things we do.  I certainly think there are lots of problems, but they come from sinful, fallen people (more disclosure – I’m sinful and fallen too) and not from the fact that we own a building or have paid clergy.

Perhaps I simply can’t be objective because I’m too much a part of the problem that Viola describes, but I won’t be giving up on the “institutional” church just yet.