I’ve been receiving a fair amount of emails about my next book release.

Some of you have already heard, but for those who haven’t, on Tuesday June 1st, my next book releases. It’s called Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

Leonard Sweet is my co-author for this volume.

Usually when people hear about a new book that they are interested in, they pre-order it from Amazon or some other online bookstore.

I’d like to request that if you are inclined to buy this book, please do not pre-order it. Instead, consider picking it up on Tuesday, June 1st from Amazon.com.

The reason:

1. it will be on discount from Amazon that day,

2. it will help the book get more visibility and exposure by buying it that day, and

3. it will arrive at your doorstep just as quickly

I’ll be sharing more about the book and the “back story” of how it came to be written in the coming days on my blog - www.frankviola.wordpress.com - along with sample chapters, etc. And of course I’ll remind you of the release date as it gets closer.

Right now an iPhone app is being created for the book along with some other interesting projects.

Thanks so much to all of you who keep up with this blog and who are interested in my work. I’m deeply appreciative.

CHRIST IS ALL.

Last year, I delivered one of the most important talks I’ve ever spoken.

The message is in two parts. Part I lays the foundation; Part II builds the superstructure. They go together, making up one full message.

I’ve entitled the message “Vantage Point: The Story We Haven’t Heard.”

You can listen to both parts here: http://www.ptmin.org/audio-mp3s

I wish all who are interested in mission, missional church, or organic church would take a listen.

You can also download both parts from iTunes. Just search my name on the iTunes store and look at Podcasts. See the image below.

If you find this 2-part message helpful, feel free to spread it to your friends.

Addictions to the flesh are rather common today, even among believers.

Over the years, I’ve been asked by people if I knew anything about breaking them. Some of these folks were addicted to cigarettes, others to illegal drugs, others to pornography, and still others to unhealthy eating patterns (e.g., uncontrollable “binge” eating).

I firmly believe what Paul said in Romans 6. Jesus Christ broke the power of the flesh in order that “sin shall not have dominion” over the believer.

Salvation in itself is not a cure all. But it provides you with the graces of Jesus Christ to break any and all fleshly addictions.

Regarding addictions, a believer can position themselves to receive the power of the cross and the resurrection life of Christ in breaking the back of a particular addiction.

My hope is that the following exercise will spread to any and every Christian who is struggling under the power of an addiction. And I trust that the Lord will use it in their lives to “purge themselves” from a stronghold.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Feel free to pass the above link on to anyone who is struggling with an addiction.

Yesterday, Christianity Today published my response to Mark Galli’s article Long Live Organic Church. For those of you who have been following the dialogue, this article is where I fall out on it. It can also be read as a stand-alone piece. There’s a PDF link at the bottom should you want to pass it along to others.

I hope it clears some of the fog that surrounds this issue.

Why the Organic Church Is Not Exactly a Movement

If the driving force of any movement or phenomenon is not Jesus Christ, we are building castles in the air. A response to “Long Live the Organic Church” by Mark Galli.

Words are funny things. Sometimes a word can get into the drinking water of a subculture and morph into clay. A word becomes clay when it loses its universal meaning and becomes molded and shaped to mean different things to different people.

Enter the phrase organic church.

Organic church, or “organic expression of the church,” or “organic church life” are terms that owe a debt to one man who’s rarely mentioned in these discussions—British author and teacher T. Austin Sparks. As far as I know, he is the first person to use this term, and he used it often.

When T. Austin Sparks employed the word organic to refer to church, he was not speaking of a system, a method, a technique, or even a movement. Instead, he was speaking of the particular expression a church takes when she is living according to her God-given nature as a living organism.

Note his words:

God’s way and law of fullness is that of organic life. In the Divine order, life produces its own organism, whether it be vegetable, animal, human, or spiritual. This means that everything comes from the inside. Function, order, and fruit issue from this law of life within. It was solely on this principle that what we have in the New Testament came into being. Organized Christianity has entirely reversed this order.

Taking my cue from Sparks, I’ve been using the terms organic church and organic expression of the church since 1993.

For Sparks, myself, and many others, organic church refers to a body of believers who are learning to live by the indwelling life of Christ together. And out of that living, the church takes on a certain expression. That expression is marked by some of the following features: the every-member functioning of the body, the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ, consensual decision making, open-participatory gatherings, and passing through seasons (meaning the church is not tied down to ritual, but moves according to the season she finds herself in).

Today the phrase organic church is in vogue, but it has been converted to clay.

Some mold it as a method of church to win souls and change the world for Christ, a sentiment that harkens back to D. L. Moody and J. R. Mott. These advocates see the church as a soul-winning station. Its chief mission is the evangelization of the world.

Others mold it as a synonym for house church. A house church is simply a group of Christians that meets in a home for their corporate worship. That can take countless forms and expressions. House churches can range from institutional services in a living room with pews firmly bolted to the floor, to glorified Bible studies, supper-fests, “bless-me” clubs, healthy Christian communities, or first-rate cults.

As I’ve often said, meeting in a home doesn’t make you a church any more than sitting in a donut shop makes you a police officer (no offense to police officers; the better part of my family is in law enforcement!). There’s nothing magical about meeting in a home. And the living room, while a great place to gather, should never be the Christian’s passion.

Consequently, those who are regarded as voices of what some are calling the organic church movement do not all agree on what the church is, nor how she expresses herself on the earth. Nor do they see eye to eye on God’s ultimate intention.

That said, organic church is not a monolith, and therefore, it cannot rightly be called a movement.

I believe it would be more accurate to say that there is a phenomenon today where countless Christians are leaving institutional forms of church and exploring non-traditional forms of church in pursuit of authentic, shared-life community.

I’ve been gathering in organic expressions of the church (as defined above) for the last 21 years. And from my observations, many of the people who are leaving the institutional form of church presently are leaving because they are following a spiritual instinct. They are saying and thinking, “There has got to be more to Jesus Christ and his body than this.” Or as Reggie McNeal once put it, “A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost their faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith.”

Some are calling this a move of God. Others see it as a departure from God’s will (for them, leaving the institutional form of church means leaving church itself). And of course others are calling it a movement.

Nevertheless, here are a few observations regarding the drive to experience organic church life. Note that this is how the terrain looks from my hill. I’m looking at the backs of the rocks while others may see their fronts:

1. The return to more organic forms of church (church as organism rather than church as institution) is nothing new. The U.S. has had two such phenomena already. One occurred in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Many young people in America were coming to Christ and finding authentic community. It was later hijacked by an authoritarian movement that smothered and killed it. The other occurred in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

2. The impulse to return to organic church life has happened historically in other times and places. You can find it among the Radical Reformers, the Anabaptists in particular. It had a beautiful start in Plymouth, England, with what later became known as the Plymouth Brethren, and still later in China among those who were tagged the Little Flock. (Each ended up in a different place from where they began, but that’s another discussion.)

3. All of the above streams of the Christian faith didn’t set out to change the world. That wasn’t their governing motive. They instead consecrated themselves to please the Lord and to make a home for him on this earth. They sought to return to the centrality of Jesus Christ and the living experience of his body. As a result of that, some of them had a profound influence on their surrounding societies. But that wasn’t their goal.

4. Movement mentality always seems to seep into any genuine move of God. I’m defining movement here as the idea that big is better and numbers mean success. Historically, the church of Jesus Christ passes through seasons. Some of those seasons are marked by revivals where many souls are brought into the kingdom of God. At such times, it’s almost effortless to lead people to Christ. But while revivals produce numerical growth, they do not produce depth. We are wise to observe that Paul planted approximately 13 churches in his lifetime. The apostle was far more concerned with building quality—”gold, silver, and precious stone”—than he was with amassing big numbers (see 1 Cor. 3).

5. Historically, movements become monuments (or they go off the rails) when Jesus Christ is not front and center, the beating heart and foundation. When some other thing—even a good thing like trying to change the world, saving souls, or multiplying churches—replaces the pursuit of Christ, we lose our way.

All told: There is a phenomenon going on today. Perhaps a move of God’s Spirit (?). But it’s nothing new. It’s simply a repeat of past currents. What will determine its success, longevity, and quality is not any human technique or method. The cutting-edge must be Jesus Christ as the only foundation, the centrality, and the supremacy. I am keenly aware that virtually every Christian bulbously claims that Jesus is the center of what they’re doing. But listen to the rhetoric carefully, and you’ll discover if it’s Christ or some other thing that’s being pushed and promoted.

So many things can replace our Lord. But God’s eternal purpose—that which has been in his heart since before time—will never be fulfilled if our first rattle out of the box is a new way of doing church, a method for multiplying churches, or a technique to change the world. God’s purpose will only be restored if we blindly and singularly make Christ our pursuit, our life, and our motive. Everything else will flow out of that.

—-

Frank Viola is the author of a series of books on radical church restoration, including Reimagining Church, From Eternity to Here, Finding Organic Church, and Pagan Christianity (co-authored with George Barna).

PDF file of this article

Confusion over the term “organic church” continues.

As I’ve pointed out numerous times in the recent past, I’ve been using the term “organic church” since 1993. In my book “Reimagining Church,” I point out that T. Austin-Sparks is the man who deserves credit for coining this term. Austin-Sparks ministered in the 1920s until his passing in 1971.

When I began using the term “organic church” some 16 years ago, very few people were using it. (The exception would be those who were familiar with the work of T. Austin-Sparks.)

Today, the phrase has become a fad. It’s become a clay word, molded and shaped to mean very different things by many different people.

Consequently, one must now carefully define what they mean by “organic church” when they use the term.

I’ve often said that an organic expression of the church is one in which the members are learning to live by Divine LIFE together. They are learning how to live by the indwelling Christ. And out of that living emerges a particular expression. That expression, because it’s derived from LIFE, is “organic.” When the church is living true to herself … as an organism … her expression is organic. The means and end: Jesus Christ is known deeply by a group of people who are discovering His infinite riches together and are making Him visible on the planet again.

The New Testament knows no other kind of church. This is what ekklesia is.

Some, wrongly, have used the term “organic church” as a synonym for Christians who meet in a house (a “home church”) or a “simple church.” I’ve spent a lot of time discussing the differences between an authentic organic expression of the church and a house church/simple church (see “Reimagining Church,” “A Sober Word to the Simple Church Movement”, “Challenging the Simple Church Movement” – Series of 16 messages – and even my recent interview with Alex McManus.

Several statements:

1. I wouldn’t give 2 cents for most “house churches” today. Most of them are far from organic. For that reason, I don’t endorse “house church” as a model. And I never have. The living room is not my passion. Most house churches, in my experience, have no concept of how to live by an indwelling Lord, nor are they consumed with Jesus Christ. He’s but a footnote to some other “thing” or “it,” as is the case with much of contemporary Christianity (just count how many times He’s mentioned in the typical sermon or gathering). Few know what it means to pursue the Lord Jesus with one another. I’ve maintained this observation for the last 13 years. Thankfully, more and more Christians outside the institutional church today are beginning to understand that ekklesia is all about discovering and displaying Christ together and that the engine, drive, and motive is to fulfill God’s eternal purpose – which is not centered on human needs.
2. The impulse to start a “movement” is something I’ve never endorsed. As a student of church history, “movement mentality” is very common. Paul of Tarsus didn’t try to start a movement. He planted between 13 and 14 churches in his entire lifetime. (Read that again, folks.) Paul was interested in quality far more than quantity. (Building with gold, silver and precious stone was his concern – see 1 Cor. 3). I have a lot to say about “movements” and the fruit they produce. I’ve discussed it a good bit in my latest book “Finding Organic Church.” But I plan to address it more extensively in an online article at another time with my friend Milt Rodriguez.
3. The goal of experiencing organic church life should never be the transformation of the world. Nor should it be world evangelization or church multiplication. The goal is the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose in Christ – a purpose that is by Him, through Him, and to Him. A purpose where “the fullness of Christ” is the warp and woof. God’s purpose is something very different from the above (see “From Eternity to Here” for an unveiling of the eternal purpose of God). Those who would stress the former as goals have adopted the mindset of D.L. Moody and J.R. Mott. I took dead aim at this mindset in my talk at George Fox Seminary last year.
4. While some are trying to build movements (as many men have in the past), the movements surrounding house church/simple church today by and large are profondly shallow and posses little depth or stability. There is, however, a genuine move of God happening right now containing 8 characteristics. This “move” or “current” is centered on restoring God’s eternal purpose, His grand mission from forever to forever. That which has beat in His own heart from before time.
5. There is a lot of confusion within the missional church movement right now on the subjects of church, mission, and discipleship as well. As I see it, there are two major streams for each that do not map to each other. This has also has added further confusion to the Body of Christ.

What follows is an article I wrote some time ago answering the question: What is an Organic Church? I hope it adds some clarity in an area where massive confusion abounds. My hope is that this blog post would spread to those who would benefit from hearing it . . .  especially those who are using these terms without understanding the history behind them . . . and that it would produce further examination into these matters.

—

Since I left institutional Christianity twenty years ago, I have groped for language to communicate the kind of church experience I have lived in since that time. About fifteen years ago, I began using the term “organic church.” Interesting, this word has recently become somewhat of a clay word, being molded and shaped to mean a variety of different things by a variety of different people.

T. Austin-Sparks is the man who deserves credit for this term. Here’s his definition:

God’s way and law of fullness is that of organic life. In the Divine order, life produces its own organism, whether it be a vegetable, animal, human or spiritual. This means that everything comes from the inside. Function, order and fruit issue from this law of life within. It was solely on this principle that what we have in the New Testament came into being. Organized Christianity has entirely reversed this order.

The phrase, “the organic expression of the church” was a favorite of Sparks’. I’ve yet to find a better phrase to improve upon it.

By “organic church,” I mean a non-traditional church that is born out of spiritual life instead of constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grass roots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every-member functioning, open-participatory meetings (opposed to pastor-to-pew services), non-hierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gathering.

Put another way, organic church life is the “experience” of the Body of Christ. In its purest form, it’s the fellowship of the Triune God brought to earth and experienced by human beings.

To use an illustration, if I try to create an orange in a laboratory by employing human ingenuity and organizational skills, the lab-created orange would not be organic. But if I plant an orange seed into the ground and it produces an orange tree, the tree is organic.

In the same way, whenever we sin-scarred mortals try to create a church the same way we would start a business corporation, we are defying the organic principle of church life. An organic church is one that is naturally produced when a group of people have encountered Jesus Christ in reality (external ecclesiastical props being unnecessary) and the DNA of the church is free to work without hindrance. In short, “organic church” describes a kind of church life that embodies the biblical teaching that the church is a spiritual organism and not an institutional organization.

To put it in sentence, organic church is not a theater with a script. It’s a lifestyle-a spontaneous journey with the Lord Jesus and His disciples in close-knit community.

An organic church can be contrasted with “institutional church.” By “institutional church,” I mean a church that is created by human organization, chain-of-command styled leadership, and institutional programs. It’s marked by a weekly order of worship (or mass) officiated by a pastor or priest. It’s controlled by a top-down hierarchical organization and human social conventions (called “offices”) that people fill. The institutional church has often been called “the traditional church,” “the organized church,” and “the audience church.” Congregants watch a religious performance once or twice a week, and then retreat home to live their individual Christian lives.

Leadership is hierarchical in the institutional church, and Christians are divided into “clergy” and “laity” (or their equivalent-”pastors” and “laymen”). Granted, some institutional churches have small group meetings outside of weekly church services where members get a taste of community life. But this community life is not the driving force of the church. And a hierarchical leadership structure is in place in the small group gatherings. Someone is always “in charge,” and the group is ultimately under the authority and restrictions of the pastor or priest.

We can think of the difference between organic churches and institutional churches this way. When God’s people assemble together on the basis of the organizational principles that run General Motors and Microsoft, we call it an institutional church. But when God’s people assemble together on the basis of the life of God, we call it an organic church.

One of the common mistakes that is made today is to confuse all house churches with organic churches. The reason is simple. Not all house churches are organic. Some are quite institutional.

I have often been asked: “How does a house church operate?” That’s impossible to answer because the term “house church” is about as wide an umbrella as the word “plant.” To my mind, asking how a house church operates is like asking, “What does a plant look like?” There are countless kinds of plants — weeds, shrubs, trees, bushes, vines, etc. In the same way, there are countless kinds of house churches. I’ve seen so many types and varieties over the years that it seems that the only thing they all have in common is that they meet in a home.

“Organic church,” therefore, best describes the kinds of churches that I and many other Christians around the world have experienced, lived in, and enjoyed. And it’s the kind of church that I believe the Lord is raising up in this hour. Add to that, the church that we find in the New Testament was above all things . . . organic. So it seems to me anyway.

Related:

Organic Church Described Part 1: Testimonies

Organic Church Described Part 2: Testimonies

Reframing Discipleship

ReChurch Series