"Pagan Christianity" Intro

Becca and I have started reading Frank Viola and George Barna’s “Pagan Christianity.” I saw a guy whom I respect and converse with frequently about the state of the church and know well his tendency towards the re-defining of justification by Tom Wright and his leanings toward the “emergent” village, reading this book about a week ago. I asked him about it and he said that it basically went through the “roots” of Christianity as we know it specifically in America and how it was influenced by pagans (this is not necessarily all bad with the definition that the book uses in which “pagan” refers to “those practices and principles that are not Christian or biblical in origin…We are not using the word as a synonym for bad, evil, sinful, or wrong.’)

This book makes a distinction between the “institutional church” and what is refereed to as the “organic church” which is the true community that is really what the church is composed of.

Here is a glimpse of the chapter titles and how the book is bent…1) Have We Really Been Doing It by the Book? 2) The Church Building, 3) The Order of Worship, 4) The Sermon, 5) The Pastor, 6) Sunday Morning Costumes, 6) Ministers of Music, 8) Tithing and Clergy Salaries, 9) Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, 10) Christian Education, 11) Reapproaching the New Testament, 12) A Second Glance at the Savior.

So here is my thought and goal. I desire to question and understand why we do the things we do within the “business” “institution” of the “church” but also within my / our daily lives. I want my faith to be pure and in King Jesus alone. I want my love and devotion to be whole in Him. I want to think critically about the things I have grown up with but about these “new” “old” ways of “doing church” (which is a term I really don’t like fyi.) So over the next while intermittently I will be giving you an analysis of my thoughts and significant points from each chapter…get excited to be rocked by the questions but be grounded in Him.