Church Gatherings And Leadership Study

Church Gatherings and Leadership Study

Website: Studying the Word of God

Authors: Brian K. McPherson and Scott McPherson

Web Address (URL): biblestudying.net

I. Introduction to the Issues of Church Gatherings and Leadership

Connection to Other Studies
The Church Ethic section clarifies and contrasts New Testament church practices with modern church practices. There we learned that:
the early church met in their homes and did not have church buildings or the rent, mortgage payments, utility bills, and maintenance costs that go with them (see our article entitled, “The Church and Going to Church.”)
early church meetings involved the ability for questions to be asked during the teaching portions of the gatherings (see “Reason and Learning through Questions.”)
in the early church, music did not dominate worship as it does in our church services today (see “The Importance of Music in Worship.”)
scripturally speaking there is no such thing as a specially “call” to be “in the ministry” that is given by God to some believers (see “Ministers, Pastors, and the Calling.”)
in the New Testament church communities pastors, elders, bishops, and overseers were different terms used to describe the same role.
while apostles and evangelists were often fully supported by church communities, local leaders were not fully supported financially.
local elders could take a portion of a weekly distribution, which was taken to support the needs of the whole community (see “Financial Support for Ministers.”)
The purpose of this study
To take a more focused look at the nature of the New Testament church meeting and inherently linked issue of church leadership.
The immediate motivation for this study comes from several books, Pagan Christianity, authored by Frank Viola and George Barna and Reimagining Church also by Frank Viola.

Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices. Copyright 2002, 2008 by Frank Viola and George Barna. All rights reserved. First printing by Present Testimony Ministry in 2002. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Upon reading the work of these authors we decided that a more thorough scriptural analysis and presentation would be helpful to address and correct the inaccurate models put forward in these books.
At the time of the writing of this article, we ourselves have been involved in a home church for more than seven years.
On Frank Viola
Viola’s background and work in the home church movement spans over several decades and includes both charismatic and non-charismatic experiences.
We do not disagree with everything that Viola (and Barna) put forward in their writings.
General Agreement
Pagan Christianity does a proficient job of documenting the historical facts and origins of many modern church deviations from New Testament practice.
This work is valuable for informing modern Christians where we get our modern church customs.
Viola’s (and Barna’s) use quotations from Christian historians who track the development and changes in church practice over the course of church history.
Specific Agreement
First, for the first three centuries of church history, Christians met in homes and not in buildings called “churches.”

That the Christians in the apostolic age erected special houses of worship is out of the question…As the Saviour of the world was born in a stable, and ascended to heaven from a mountain, so his apostles and their successors down to the third century, preached in the streets, the markets, on mountains, in ships, sepulchres, eaves, and deserts, and in the homes of the their converts. But how many thousands of costly churches and chapels have since been built in all parts of the world to the honor of the crucified Redeemer, who in the days of his humiliation had no place of his own to rest his head! – Philip Schaff, Nineteenth-Century American Church Historian and Theologian quoted by Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity, Chapter 2, The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex, page 9

Footnote 48: A Historical Approach to Evangelic Worship(New York: Abingdon Press, 1954), 103; Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 3:542. Schaff’s opening words are telling: “After Christianity was acknowledged by the state and empowered to hold property it raised houses of worship in all parts of the Roman Empire. There was probably more building of this kind in the fourth century than there has been in any period, excepting perhaps the nineteenth century in the United States.” Norrington points out that as the bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries grew in wealth, they funneled it into elaborate church building programs (To Preach or Not, 29). Ferguson writes, “Not until the Constantinian age do we find specially constructed buildings, at first simple halls and then the Constantinian basilicas.” Before Constantine, all structures used for church gatherings were “houses or commercial buildings modified for church use” (Early Christians Speak, 74). – quoted by Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity, Chapter 2, The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex, page 18

Footnote 22: Robert and Julia Banks, The Church Comes Home (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998), p. 49-50. The house at Dura-Europos was destroyed in AD 256. According to Frank Senn, “Christians of the first several centuries lacked the publicity of the pagan cults. They had no shrines, temples, statues, or sacrifices. They staged no public festivals, dances, musical performances, or pilgrimages. Their central ritual involved a meal that had a domestic origin and setting inherited from Judaism. Indeed, Christians of the first three centuries usually met in private residences that had been converted into suitable gathering spaces for the Christian community…This indicates that the ritual bareness of the early Christian worship should not be taken as a sign of primitiveness, but rather as a way of emphasizing the spiritual character of Christian worship.” Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelic (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 53. – quoted by Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity, Chapter 2, The Church Building: Inheriting the Edifice Complex, page 14

Second, for the first three centuries, Christians had no public festivals (like Christmas).
Third, the early Christians did not have musical performances for the first several centuries AD.
Fourth, these authors note that the communal meal was “domestic” and “inherited from Judaism.” (We will discuss this later in our study.)
Note that the quote above states that it isn’t due to primitiveness that the early church had such different practices than we do today, as if they lacked the resources or the awareness to do them.
Instead, the early church had no church buildings, lacked musical performance, celebrated no public festivals, and had a domestic communion meal because they felt that doing so was contrary to the “spiritual character” or nature of Christian worship as established by the New Testament.
In Pagan Christianity, Viola provides a deserving critique and expose of:
the financial drain of church buildings versus meeting one another’s needs,
the isolation of modern Christians from real, shared community living,
the unchallengeable, authoritarian concept of having a single church pastor.
the error of the modern church service in being structured to be prohibitive of interaction during the teaching.
the origin of the modern motivational sermon from the pagan orators of Roman and Greek society through the homiletics courses of seminaries designed to train new pastors how to compose a sermon.
the inadequacy of reducing the full New Testament communion meal to a small bite of bread (or cracker) and a tiny swallow of wine (or juice).
Conclusions we can agree with
Viola appropriately draws the conclusion that the modern institutional-corporation model of church life is not the New Testament model of church life.
Through the research of authors in this field, we can be confident that there is good reason to re-examine the New Testament in search for understanding about how the early church met together.
In response to the dilemma of deviant modern practice, Viola offers his own model for church gatherings and church leadership.
Pagan Christianity serves primarily to chronicle the historical trends and origins of the modern church, but it also contains provisions from Viola for what he believes to be the correct approach.
Viola’s concept for church gatherings and leadership is more centrally focused on in his more recent work Reimagining Church, which provides 306 pages on the subject.
Our disagreements with Viola include the areas of:
Local church leadership,
The format and features of church gatherings,
The importance and role of elders and overseers,
The participation of women in church meetings,
The value of informed and reasoned scriptural analysis.
Why take time to assess and examine Viola’s model?
The reason that we will give priority to expressing and detailing our disagreements with Viola rather than affirming the areas of our agreement stems from the challenging nature of participating in home church Christianity in the modern world.
While Viola must be recognized for his contributions in bringing home church Christianity into the larger Christian discussion, it is also for this reason that his views must be scrutinized.
As a spokesman and one of the few known home church proponents to make it in the public forum, Viola’s perspectives and errors will be taken by those who oppose and resist home church Christianity as representative of all home church groups everywhere.
As one of those home church communities, we feel it is necessary to proclaim our disagreements with what we feel are some serious misunderstandings offered by Viola in his writings on the subject of New Testament church gatherings and leadership.
Our hope is that by taking the time to thoroughly present our points of view in the light of a tedious scriptural examination we will:
Responsibly demonstrate the capability of the home church approach to both competently handle scripture in a logically sound, biblically informed, and historically consistent manner.
Offer a more accurate biblical model for Christians to practice today in fulfillment of New Testament protocol.
Our Course of Study
To define the various models that may be available for church gatherings and leadership
To identify these models and distinguish one from another,
Examining some additional support that Frank Viola makes for the model he puts forward in his books.
A discussion of the relevance, nature, and use of the New Testament as an information source for determining the manner of church gatherings and leadership.
Survey the New Testament in the context of a historical narrative of the early church in order to determine which model fits the biblical picture.

II. Three Models of Church Gatherings and Leadership:
Introduction and the Pseudo-Traditional Model

There are three basic models for conducting church service
The Psuedo-traditional church model
Why the name?
We attach the prefix “pseudo” to this model in order to be clear that by “traditional” we do not mean to imply a model that has actually been handed down since the very earliest church period.
We are referring to the modern norm for church services, which has only been in effect since about the fourth century AD, so we will add this prefix.
The name Pseudo-traditional then acknowledges
That this model has a very long-standing acceptance over the lengthy course of church history.
This longevity does not reach all the way back to the New Testament period.
Features of the Psuedo-traditional model
Whether Roman Catholic or some brand of Protestant, all modern church services are very alike in their key aspects. Most church services:
Begin with a segment of time for musical worship led by a music minister or worship team
An uninterruptable monologue from the pastor called a sermon. Characterized by:
Its lack of real and serious biblical instruction replaced
Motivational speeches and formulas for successful living in modern society.
(Other common features of the modern church service are noted by Frank Viola in his book Pagan Christianity.)
Leadership: The Head Pastor
When it comes to authority the senior pastor is without peer in the congregation, operating as the president or CEO of the church just as if it were a corporation.
This concept of church leadership, vested so extensively in the senior pastor, organizes the church gathering around his uninterruptable monologue and prevents interaction from the rest of the church body.
Summary of the defining characteristics of the Pseudo-traditional model.
The concept of church leadership is chiefly limited to a single individual.
The church gathering is formatted so that speaking and teaching are exclusively reserved for the pastor while participation by anyone else is entirely restricted.
The Viola Model
Basic Notes
In many ways, the model presented by Frank Viola in his books Pagan Christianity and Reimagining Church are the complete opposite of those exemplified by the Pseudo-traditional model.
Naming this model
Viola himself refers to the model he offers as “the organic church model.”
However, the term “organic” may validly be applied to whichever model best follows the biblical mandates for the gatherings of the body of Christ.
In addition, the term “organic” doesn’t immediately present a clear definition of Viola’s approach.
For these reasons, we will instead call his model “the Viola model.”
Viola on the features of his model
According to Viola it is not correct to have our regular church services be lead by only one or two individuals.
(We stipulate regular church services specifically in order to be fair to Viola who does recognize other types of church services, which he says are legitimately lead by a singular individual and where all do not participate equally. We will examine his views on this further as we proceed.)
Viola criticizes limiting leadership in church gatherings to a single person and emphasizes the necessity of all persons being able to speak and share.

Second, the Protestant order of worship strangles the headship of Jesus Christ. The entire service is directed by one person. You are limited to the knowledge, gifting, and experience of one member of the body – the pastor. Where is the freedom for our Lord Jesus to speak through His body at will? Where in the liturgy may God give a brother or sister a word to share with the whole congregation? The order of worship allows for no such thing. Jesus Christ has no freedom to express Himself through His body at His discretion. He too is rendered a passive spectator. Granted, Christ may be able to express Himself through one or two members of the church – usually the pastor and the music leader. But this is a very limited expression. The Lord is stifled from manifesting Himself through the other members of the body. Consequently, the Protestant liturgy cripples the body of Christ. It turns it into one huge tongue (the pastor) and many little ears (the congregation). This does violence to Paul’s vision of the body of Christ, where every member functions in the church meeting for the common good (see 1 Corinthians 12). – Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity, Chapter 3, The Order of Worship: Sunday Mornings Set in Concrete, page 76