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Review of Finding Organic Church, part two
Organic Church Community without God?
One of the most significant and pervasive problems in Viola’s Finding Organic Church, in my opinion, is that it portrays church as a sociological entity, not a spiritual entity. What do I mean by sociological Christianity? I mean community without God. More specifically, I mean ways of "doing Christianity" that hold true for any group of people, whether they are Christians or not, whether the Holy Spirit is at work or not. Or, to borrow from his own quotation of Ghandi on page 299, “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”
Is Ghandi right? Yes, but that’s not necessarily Christian. God said that about the disobedient human population that was building the tower of Babel. Every leader in history has succeeded, to some degree, in creating in his followers an “unquenchable faith in their mission,” but the processes involved are purely human, otherwise known as "carnal."
Viola does explicitly contradict this idea of carnal Christianity in several specific places, calling for Christocentric songs (228), noting that the Jerusalem church was “abandoned to the Holy Spirit” (85), and noting the role of the Holy Spirit in sending out apostles (48). He also speaks against it strongly in Reimagining Church. However, in Finding Organic Church, he promotes carnal Christianity much more than he contradicts it, possibly in ways that he doesn’t realize.
Let the Christians Be Themselves, Please
As an opening example, let's look at Viola's instructions for a beginning organic church. In my view, his instructions work better for some non-Christian "club" than for people whose identity is in Christ. Viola tells us to “detox” by spending several months (or as long as necessary) learning to meet together and just have fun—no prayer meetings, no scripture, no theology. He tells us to put all that stuff aside so that we can learn to have a community without religiousity.
His foundational assumption, here, seems to be that community must be based on who we “really” are when we’re not pretending to be religious, performing for the Sunday circus. He assumes that true community can be built on a purely carnal level and then be layered with prayer, scriptures, and outreach later on. However, what if I am more “myself” when I am praying than when I’m playing Scrabble with the “church”? What if my identity is fundamentally tied up in the theology of the atonement? What if I live by “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” and without the scriptures, I’m incomplete? What if I’m not performing?
The assumption of the scriptures is that, with occasional exceptions, Christians are defined as those people who are not just “performing” their religion, but living it. The problem my wife and I run into is the opposite of what Viola is diagnosing. When we see groups of Christians coming together socially, we can tell that they would like to fellowship over the scriptures, with prayer, but they’ve been socialized only to have fun and do “normal human” activities in social gatherings. They’re under the tyranny of secularity, and it takes time for them to “detox” and learn to give in to their desires for doctrine and scripture that simmer just under the surface. We can tell this is the case because we feel the tyranny of secularity, too, and because when a prayer meeting breaks out, everyone goes away encouraged and strengthened, hoping for more of the same at other social gatherings.
Viola’s prescription for “community, first, without Christ” is something I have to fully oppose in favor of “community, first and always, on Christ.” If we can keep the AC running and add an occasional game night and stay positive, all the better, but we start with unabashedly praying together, worshipping God together, and proclaiming the glorious doctrines of Christ (yes, through the scriptures) to one another.
What is the Tie That Binds?
We see carnal Christianity show up again on page 46, where Viola says, “Because our faith is inherently relational, the church was unable to successfully take root outside of urban settings. In urban areas, Christians could see one another in their day-to-day lives and easily care for one another.” As Jesus pointed out (Matt. 5), a religion that’s based only on what people do for one another is not godly. It’s “merely” human. Even sinners and tax collectors love those who love them. If the power of the gospel was limited because country people couldn't see each other ever day, then that gospel is obviously operating by the weaker bonds of human love, not by the strong bonds of God's love.
Jesus blesses his disciples because they love God, whom they have not seen, and Paul commends those Gentile Christians from Macedonia and Achaia who gave of their livelihood to help suffering Jewish Christians in Judea--largely without knowing them or having seen them. The gospel that binds people together can be aided by seeing one another often, but it doesn't depend on that circumstance for its power. Does Viola not understand this aspect of the gospel?
Similarly, Viola uses strong language to stress the need for cold AC and clean bathrooms for the house meeting (195). Now, are these things "good hospitality" (for middle-class Americans)? Yes, but for Viola, they are the difference between a church’s life and its demise. It’s also of utmost importance, for Viola, that the singing be good and that “tiresome” songs get cycled out. All of these strong admonitions point out that, for Viola, the “tie that binds” is not our shared identity in Christ or our love for one another, but instead fun stimuli and a comfortable environment.
Universities around the country have been doing this for years, creating a vision of a specific university identity that is created in some sort of first year “experience” program (see "Aggie Fish Camp") that usually involves small groups, lots of fun activities (Viola 205), little negativity (202), lots of singing, eating, group service projects, group sharing, and group support—all with a worker or two to help set the vision. However, these experience groups are not Christian—they are just taking advantage of the way that merely human groups form and thrive.
Viola, and many others, might say “since this is naturally the way that groups form and thrive, we should flow with it, not against it.” I agree that we shouldn't purposely flout these group principles, if possible, but Viola presents these carnal principles here as the deal-makers or deal-breakers. That is, Viola seems to prioritize the sociological principles over any spiritual ones. The power of persuasion over the power of the gospel. The attractiveness of social belonging over the attractiveness of the crucified Savior. The witness of the human worker over the witness of the Holy Spirit. The bread of earth over the bread which came from heaven.
None of his pronouncements and methods fit the reams of church history that saw (and see) Christians meeting in cramped, noisy rooms with no AC and no fun, only the shared poverty in body and the shared riches in Christ. To insist on creature comforts and interpersonal charisma as the chief “survival skills” of the Christ-centered church is to mock most of the history of the church (and a lot of the scriptures).
Who Witnesses to Me that My Sin Is Gone?
Some of the directives Viola gives for carnal community are not just wrong, but downright dangerous. Several times, Viola assigns the work of the Holy Spirit to a mere human. On page 57, he says that “in the first century, the Christian worker’s task was to empower God’s people by setting them free from guilt.” What Viola seems to mean by this is that 1) everyone in the church is free from sin because of the atonement of Christ, 2) because of legalistic church cultures, most Christians are still weighed down with the consciousness of sin, even though that sin is gone, 3) Christians weighed down with the false consciousness of sin are hesitant to speak up in open-participatory meetings, which keeps the meetings from working as well as they should, and 4) apostolic workers main job is to stress the Christians' positional righteousness in Christ to take away everyone's consciousness of sin.
Again, it's not that there's not some truth in what Viola is saying. In fact, we should remind each other often in the church that we are children of God, by faith, because of the atonement of Christ. However, a truth only half-told becomes a falsehood. Is it the consciousness of sin that's always the main problem? Sometimes it is, but as Paul forcefully reminds us in I Cor. 5 and 11, it’s not the consciousness of sin that “leavens the whole lump” and destroys the body of Christ, but rather the sin itself.
That leads to another question: should we always comfort every Christian with the positional righteousness of Christ? Or are there scriptural examples of other ways to deal with congregational sin? Though there are times that preaching the positional righteousness of Christ is needed and appropriate for the situation (as a friend of mine recently reminded me), it's clear that the biblical apostles did quite a bit of confrontation, warning Christians in pretty stern terms to forsake sin. Paul does tell the Corinthians that "you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified," but this is just after telling them to "put away from yourselves the evil person (i.e. sinning Christian)" and warning them that "the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God" (see I Cor. 5:9-6:11). In fact, Paul (II Cor. 13:2-6), Peter (II Peter 1:9-11), and the author of Hebrews (12:14-17) specifically question the purity (maybe the salvation) of some of their hearers, warning them to take advantage of the grace available through Christ.
So, while all apostles exalted the power of the sacrifice of Christ to cover every sin, they did not assume or act like (or preach) that everything was automatically okay with the churches under their authority. Has someone passed from death to life in Christ? The apostles tell us that it's the Holy Spirit which will “bear witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8),” not the assurance of the apostle. If I do some deed and feel convicted of it as sin, can a modern day apostle convince me that it's not a sin? Not according to Romans 14. Can he convince me that those sins shouldn't affect me because I'm covered by Christ? If that were true, why are the qualifications for ministry and leadership (in the scriptures) so focused on character (i.e. sin issues)?
Let me be clear: apostles (among others) should uphold the power of the atonement and should remind their churches that God deals with them as sons and daughters, no longer as enemies. However, that's not always the same thing as "taking away the consciousness of sin," and the scriptural evidence shows us a wide variety of apostolic ministry toward sinning people.
Giving people a blanket of divine approval, though, is very comforting to people, making them feel loved, accepted, and confident—all in the flesh. It works through positive affirmation in psychology, and it will increase the acceptance and confidence level of your organic church, just as Viola says. Unfortunately, the only voice that counts when it comes to the consciousness of sin is the voice of the Holy Spirit. People can tell you that you are forgiven and "perfectly pleasing in the sight of God," but if the Holy Spirit is saying something different, then the pastors and apostles who “take away the consciousness of sin” are fighting against God—and destroying people’s souls. Now, maybe Viola meant something different. Maybe he’s just miscommunicating. I certainly hope so.
Review of Finding Organic Church, part three