FWP Ministries Blog

Not lengthy ago, author frank viola asked me if I’d ever read his book
“pagan christianity.” Well, I just did and, mercy! What an eye-opener!
I had the privilege of attending two of Viola’s sessions at a conference
last Labor Day weekend. A woman there who had read the book
quipped, “After I read it, I realized I wasn’t even a Christian!” I like
the book mainly because it\’s loaded with footnotes and is very scholarly in
its approach, yet it\’s a quite effortless read.

BE WARNED: Any objections to Viola’s facts are objections
with historical, documented information and facts. To base 1′s objections on the fact
that a lot of aspects in our every day lives have paganism at their roots
(days of the week, months of the year, holidays, for example), what
1 need to bear in mind is that what we dub a specific day of the week
has nothing to do with fulfilling the cause of Christ. Do your self a
favor and filter all such objections via that line of notion.
I utilized this as a resource book as it refers to the pagan roots of
The Sermon, The Church Building and The Pastor. You’ll be
amazed! I believe these and numerous other people topics will be of interest
to thinking Christians everywhere.

When you read the Scriptural accounts of the Book of Acts, have you
ever wondered how we ever got from groups of Christians that met
“from home to home” to what we have right now?

Are there specific verses in the Bible that do not sound anything like
church-as-we-know-it? Have you ever wondered why this is?

No matter what your denomination is, let’s take a brief look at what
Viola’s analysis has revealed on a few of our mutual “churchy” topics.
It\’s a bit lengthy. Eat it in tiny bites. Print it out, chew on it, share it,
talk about it.

Component one: THE SERMON

Whenever we read a Biblical account of either Jesus, or Paul or
anybody in Scripture teaching other people, overall, it appears to be a
dialogue really than a monologue. In other words, there was usually
some kind of interaction and not merely passive listening. Certain, there
had been discourses where Scripture reveals no verbal exchanges at all,
but time and once more we see examples of individuals speaking TO the man
of God, not being spoken AT by him. In other cases, the hearers
may perhaps have turned and questioned 1 an additional, only to have Jesus
respond as He knew their thoughts or overheard their murmurings.
Acts 17:oneone says the hearers “searched the Scriptures every day” to see
if what the apostle Paul was teaching them was even based upon fact.
Certainly, there was discussion, analysis, additional discussion the next day
and questions for Paul about the previous day’s teaching. That would
definitely have been the case had I been there. How about you?

So, from whence does the idea of 1 individual at the front of a
building talking to rows of noses originate?

Can you imagine the pressure on 1 individual to serve-up a minimum
or 52 life-changing messages and inspired prayers each week to fill the
gaping mouths of spiritually-starving church-goers? It\’s even additional
pressure-packed for those who lead Protestant churches that meet on
Wednesday nights and twice on Sundays. 1 becomes a studying,
preaching machine in those instances. A large number of ministers (trust me on this)
resort to pulling a sermon out of a book or manila folder quite than
seeking God for a “now” word for this specific congregation.

Question: With all these life-changing messages going forth, where are
all the lives that have been changed? I’m not talking about the Baptist
who becomes a Catholic or the three-year absentee darkening the door to
Sunday School. I’m talking about the disgustingly degenerated
Howard Stern-kind who changes his life and starts serving the cause
of Christ (my own testimony). I’m talking about the drug-addicted porn
star who repents and, though sometimes reading her Bible with a
glass of bourbon, eventually types her own outreach ministry to support
other people bound in that way of life (Google Shelly Lubben).

In “pagan christianity,” Viola writes: “remove the sermon and you
have eliminated the most crucial source of spiritual nourishment for
most believers (so it is notion). Yet the stunning fact is that the
sermon has no root in Scripture! Very, it was borrowed from pagan
culture, nursed and adopted into the Christian faith.”

He writes: “The earliest recorded Christian source for standard
sermonizing is discovered throughout the late second century. Clement of
Alexandria (150-215) lamented the fact that sermons did so tiny to
change Christians. Yet, despite its known failure, the sermon
became a typical practice among believers by the fourth century.”

Viola describes the wandering teachers of the 5th century known as the
Sophists “who had been credited for inventing rhetoric (the art of
persuasive speaking). They recruited disciples and demanded payment
for delivering their orations.” They had been identified by the unique
clothing they wore. Some had a fixed home where they spoke
frequently to the exact same audience. Other people traveled and made a great
living at this. Their messages would generally generate applause. Some of
them lived at the public’s expense and other people had statues erected in
their honor.

The pagan Greeks loved rhetoric. Winning an argument by means of
persuasive speech was, to them, a lot more significant than speaking the reality.
About the 3rd Century, as Christianity got organized under Constantine,
itinerant ministers traveled correct off the pages of Christian history (but
they are returning!). In came the liturgy, the pews, the hierarchical
system. Whenever these Sophists converted, they brought their gifts
appropriate along with them. As Viola writes, “Only those who had been trained
in Greco-Roman rhetoric had been allowed to address the assembly.
(Sound familiar?)… the Greco-Roman sermon replaced prophesying,
open sharing, and Spirit-inspired teaching. The sermon became the
elitist privilege of church officials…Such individuals had to be educated in
the schools of rhetoric to discover how to speak…As early as the third
century, Christians referred to as their sermons by the identical name that Greek
orators referred to as their discourses…homilies. These days, 1 can take a
seminary course referred to as homiletics to discover how to preach.”

Viola continues, “…neither homilies (sermons) nor homiletics (the art
of sermonizing) have a Christian origin. They had been stolen from the
pagans. A polluted stream made its way into the Christian faith and
poisoned its waters. And that stream flows just as strongly right now as it
did in the fourth century.”

In the section entitled, “How Sermonizing Harms the Church,” Viola
makes five very valid points:

one) It “makes the preacher the virtuoso performer, degenerating the
congregation into a group of muted spectators”; it “freezes and
imprisons the functioning Body of Christ.”

2) It “stalemates spiritual growth” and “blunts curiosity and produces
passivity.” It cripples the Body of Christ. He writes, “It smothers open
participation. This causes the spiritual growth of God’s consumers to take
a nosedive.” If you don\’t use it, you lose it, they say. If we aren’t
moving the muscles of the Body of Christ, they atrophy.

three) It “preserves the unbiblical clergy mentality…it creates an excessive
and pathological dependence on the clergy.” It turns the preacher or
priest into a “religious specialist – the only 1 having anything worthy
to say. Everybody else is treated as a second-class Christian.”

4) It “deskills” us. It fails to equip the saints to do the work of the
ministry, despite what ministers might say and certainly think. The
proof’s in the puddin’. If the New Testament Church could possibly function
with out the presence of a clergyman – relying solely upon the leading
of the Spirit, why can not we? It\’s happening all over the world and
continually has.

5) “The normal sermon is a swimming lesson on dry land! It lacks
practical value…Modern pulpiteerism fails to get beyond merely
disseminating facts to the role of equipping believers for both
experiencing and utilizing that which they have heard.” This could possibly
describe why so few ministers still think and teach on the gifts of
the Spirit as being still in existence these days. They can not teach on what
they don’t know.

Component 2: THE CHURCH BUILDING

Even among the Home Church crowd, 1 of the 1st objectives of any
group is that they ought to discover a building ASAP. Why? Rather typically, as
I talk with people today about the issues of God, I hear some thing like this,
“Oh…I go…normally…”

They ‘go’?

Go where?

I wasn’t talking about “going” anywhere; I was talking about their
relationship with King Jesus and all they can say is, “I go”? Numerous
Christians have decreased their relationship with Jesus to their attendance
at a Church building. Likewise, numerous folks really feel their attendance at
house equals a marriage or a family. Once once more, as it is in the natural
realm, so it is in the Spiritual realm. Just as 1 need to participate in
family life – simply because 1 IS Component of the family body, so all of us should
participate in BEING The Church as we are all Component of the Body of
Christ; a living organism, not an organization.

Viola asserts that, “…ancient Judaism was centered on 3 elements:
The temple, the priesthood and the sacrifice. When Jesus came, he
ended all 3, fulfilling them in Himself. He is the Temple who
embodies a new and living home made of living stones – “with out
hands.” He is the Priest who has established a new priesthood [you
and me]. And He is the ideal and finished Sacrifice. Consequently,
[these issues] all passed away with the coming of Jesus Christ.”

Didn’t the pagan Greeks and Romans also have temples, priests and
supply sacrifices? Yes, they did. The New Testament Church did away
with all these elements. The early Church was filled with former pagan
priests, temple prostitutes and the like. As Viola states, “Christianity
was the 1st non-temple based religion ever to emerge.” The Church
was and IS the individuals of God, not a building.

The 1st individual to ever use the word “ekklesia” (known as out ones) in
reference to a building was Clement of Alexandria around AD190. He
was the very first to use the phrase “go to church.” How does 1 GO to
what we ARE?

“Christians did not erect unique buildings for worship until the
Constantinian era in the fourth century,” Viola writes. As any Christian
knows, WE are now the temple of God. You Do know that, proper?
There are no sacred locations needed; no Holy Lands any holier than the
ground you’re standing on today. There are no far more sacred priests
needed as our sacred High Priest has established a Kingdom filled
with Priests and Kings…you and me. There are no a lot more sacrifices
needed as Jesus died once for all time. Nothing else is required. Ever!

Christianity conquered the Roman Empire. It was, fairly literally, a
Home to Home invasion. So committed to the cause of Christ had been
these persons that, as their groups grew, they tore out walls and
expanded rooms to accommodate them all. Obviously, these early
saints had not embraced the idea of multiplication as a core value.

The herd mentality has no place in advancing God’s kingdom. We have to
be Pioneers, not Settlers. To their credit, these early Saints never
referred to their remodeled homes as “temples,” the term that both
pagans and Jews utilized for their sacred spaces. “Christians did not
start calling their buildings “temples” until the 15th Century!” In time,
the veneration of religious relics and prayer to dead martyrs – both
straight out of paganism – began to arise. Meals in honor of the dead,
“the Christian funeral and the funeral dirge both came straight out of
paganism in the third century.” In fact, third century Christians met in
homes and in the cemetery. “They met in the cemetery since they
wished to be close to their dead brethren…simply because “holy” martyrs had been
buried there, Christian burial locations came to be viewed as “holy
spaces.” The Christians began to build tiny monuments over these
spaces – really over the graves of well-known saints. Building a shrine
over a burial place and calling it “holy” was also a pagan practice.”

He goes on to describe how the Christians decorated the catacombs
(underground burial paces) with Christian symbols. Even the cross as
a graphic element can not be discovered before Constantine. “reverence for
the dead was the most powerful community-forming force in the Roman
Empire…In the late Second century, there was a shift in how the Lord’s
Supper was viewed. The Supper had devolved from a full meal to a
stylized ceremony referred to as “Holy Communion”…the cup and bread had been
seen as producing a sense of awe, dread and mystery.”

By the third century, with relics, reverence for the dead, holy spaces
and holy people today in place – all straight out of paganism – the climate
was primed for Constantine to come onto the Christian stage with his
church buildings in an effort to legitimatize his faith. After all, the
pagans and Jews had theirs. Why not us, too? Numerous of these structures
had been erected over the tombs of martyred Christians, some thing most
Christians had been already accustomed to performing.

“In the fourth century, fountains had been erected in the courtyard so that
Christians might wash-up prior to entering,” Viola writes. Constantine’s
church buildings had been spacious and magnificent edifices…
[Constantine] profusely decorated the new church buildings with pagan
art!” The buildings had been patterned after the basilica, the standard
government building which “served significantly the identical function as a high
school auditorium…fantastic for seating passive and docile crowds
that watch a performance…basilicas had been created so that the sub fell
upon the speaker as he faced the congregation. Like the temples of the
Greeks and Romans, the Christian basilicas had been built with a facade
(front) facing east.” This Viola says, was simply because of Constantine’s
fascination with sun worship (NOT “Son” worship).

How did these new church buildings influence Christian worship?
“Due to the fact the Emperor was the number 1 “lay individual”…a effortless
ceremony was not sufficient. In order to honor him, the pomp and ritual
of the imperial court was adopted into the Christian liturgy.” The
carrying of lights on poles to the burning of incense had been customs of
the Roman Emperors. So, Constantine introduced candles and incense
to the church service. Unique garments, several gestures of respect,
choirs, processionals…all of these had been introduced by Constantine to
appease the customs of the Roman imperialism and Greek paganism.
“The upshot of all this was an immediate loss of intimacy and open
participation. The professional clergy performed the acts of worship
even though the laity looked on as spectators.” Viola concedes, “Constantine
brought peace for all Christians. Under his reign, the Christian faith
had become legitimate [as if it wasn't already - at least in God's eyes]
…for these factors, Christians saw Constantine’s rise to Emperor as
an act of God. Here was God’s instrument that had come to their rescue.
Christianity and Roman culture had been now melded together.”

The early Christians avoided any contact with paganism. Now, under
Constantine, paganism was everywhere. Christians had been becoming
numb to its effect with time and, as the years passed, much more and extra
Christians knew of nothing else but Constantine’s church. Though third
and fourth century Christians tried justifying the ornate cathedrals by
attributing their origin to the Old Testament, they had been mistaken. All
the trappings of the Mosaic laws and practices had been forever destroyed
at the cross replaced by the ekklesia, The Church, “a non-hierarchical,
non-ritualistic, non-liturgical organism,” Viola said.

For any non-Catholic readers who are smugly blaming Catholicism for
our present state, Viola does a masterful job of explaining how the
Protestants added their own fuel to the fire. Most so-known as Reformers
had been former priests and old habits died difficult, if they died at all. Where
the church building was concerned, though there had been some variations,
the greatest change they made “was the concept that individuals may perhaps not know
God nor grow spiritually unless they heard preaching.” Once more,
Christians had been to resign themselves to sitting and listening each time
the doors had been opened for as lengthy as the preacher liked.

Oy, vay! Here we go once more.

Component three: THE PASTOR

I’ve spoken in the past concerning the role of “pastor” and where he
came from. The word appears only once in Scripture and it\’s in the
plural form. If we take the Pastor OUT of the Christian equation, what
do we have? Take the Pope out of Catholicism and what do we have?
In both instances, the institution crumbles, appropriate? In both instances, to quote
Viola, they are “far better recognized, a lot more extremely praised and additional heavily
relied upon than Jesus Christ Himself.”

Viola clarifies that he is not speaking about the men and women who serve
in the role of Pastor. “By and huge, those who serve in the office of
Pastor are fantastic consumers. They are honorable, decent, and normally
gifted Christians who love God and have a zeal to serve His men and women.
But it is a role they are fulfilling that both Scripture and church history
are opposed to…”

PLEASE REQUEST THE BALANCE OF THIS Write-up BY WRITING team1min@our-town.com and typing “PASTOR” in your SUBJECT bar. Thank you!

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If you are interested in any other material by frank viola, log on at ptmin.org
and read far more! You can also read other articles and excerpts from
his books on several topics of interest as well as archived Q&A.
Very good stuff! Thanks, Frank!

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Each blessing!
Michael Tummillo
A servant of God
[http://www.YourTown4Jesus.org]

PLEASE FORWARD TO AT LEAST 5 Others!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

His mission is to bring Discipleship and Encouragement to the Body of Christ. Simply because ’99, he has broadcast almost 700 inspirational articles to his on the net subscribers and a dozen booklets on subjects Positive to interest the thinking Christian and accelerate the process of spiritual development. He is the founder of t.e.a.m. ministries. An Author, Pastoral Counselor and Teacher, his E-mail broadcasts, referred to as “Your Town for Jesus” are read around the globe. Subscribe at team1min@our-town.com.com