Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (17)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

7

Tithing and clergy salaries: sore spots on the wallet, (Pagan Christianity, chapter 8 title)

You don’t have to be particularly clever to work out that the seven things we have covered up to this point cost swags of money.  The quote from John A. T. Robinson on page 157 of Pagan Christianity is well worth the read on this matter.

Hundreds of years of history has also shown us that vast numbers of so-called conversions – possibly even that of Constantine himself – were political, economic and social recalibrations, rather than true spiritual transformations.  If Jesus’ words are true, the kingdom of God was small and ‘few’, the road narrow, and its gate tight.

And someone had to pay for all this paraphernalia.  True to form in “empire” – in the kingdom of man – the plebs pay.  And from the start, there was a clear clash with the new covenant teaching Paul brought to the scene.  As he said to the Corinthians: “For we are not like many, peddling the word of God but as from sincerity; but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.”  [‘Peddling’ implies payment.]

The obligation to pay followed naturally from the establishment of the ‘clergy’.  But what method or system might be useful, justifiable and convenient (for all)?  The old testament already had record of a system (the Levitical system) that seemed to work OK – so long as the people were reminded often and prodded to maintain compliance.

Essentially, the tithe is another word for a ‘tenth’ (10%).  But it wasn’t originally ten percent of wages or income alone, it was ten percent of everything.  What that meant in practical terms was that every ten people from eleven of Israel’s tribes supported one person from the twelfth (priestly) tribe, the Levites, and the ongoing maintenance of the physical structures and the performance of the rites and sacrifices.  Mathematically, not such a bad idea.  Even today it could work: every eleventh person is supported by the ten with minimal disparity in earnings overall.

Viola and Barna chart the history of Christian tithing as spreading “from the state to the church.” (p. 177)  noting that:

The use of the tithe, or the tenth, was commonly used to calculate payments to landlords.  As the church increased its ownership of land across Europe, the 10 percent rent-charge shifted from secular landlords to the church.  Ecclesiastical leaders became the landlords and the tithe became the ecclesiastical tax... It was creatively applied to the Old Testament law and came to be identified with the Levitical tithe. (p. 177)

I have been involved in “church life” in one way or another since my baptism in 1968 – over 50 years now.  A lot of those years were spent in a range of leadership or oversight roles and some in venturing into self-initiated ventures and what was called at the time ‘church planting’ ventures. Looking back over those years, I assess my own journey and can make some clear assertions concerning a number of key matters to do with what we do as ‘church’ and how and why we do it.  One of those is tithing.  One thing I can say without equivocation is that I DO NOT practise or endorse the ‘tithe’.  Primarily that is because there is a “better way” – one which is consistent with the principles of the new covenant.

First, the tithe was given to Israel as part of their legal code for guiding their life as the community of God before Jesus.  It was their taxation system, if you like.  Neither Jesus nor the Apostles, nor the church in the first hundred years of its life practised the tithe.  And that entire code was made redundant when Jesus completed His work and ascended to the Father and sent His Holy Spirit into the ekklesia.

Second, the Old Testament tithe (literally, ‘the tenth’) was not ten percent as so many of us imagine, but at least 23.3% annually.  It was made up of 3 tithes: 2 at 10% annually and one at 10% every three years – coming to a total of 23.3%. 

Third, one of the main purposes of the tithe was so that the Levites – Israel’s priest-tribe – could live.  They had no inheritance to use to produce the goods they needed for daily life so it was up to the remaining 11 tribes to contribute to a storehouse for their priests.  In the New Covenant, all the people of God are priests, not one segment of them as in old Israel.

Fourth, the other use of the tithe was to have a storehouse for the poor and those unable to fend for themselves (widows and orphans, for example).  This aspect of giving is clearly visible in the life of the early believers without any reference to a tithe.  They were taught by the Spirit and encouraged by the apostles to ‘give generously’, ‘according to what you are able’ – no rules, no law except the law of love.  “As I have loved you, so you are to love one another.”

Tithing is often used as some kind of tool to measure the standard of our discipleship.  Neither Jesus, nor the apostles, nor the early believers treated the people of God with such disdain.  Furthermore, a case can be made to suggest that the tithe is, as Viola & Barna suggest (pp. 178-179), ‘good news for the rich and bad news for the poor’.  A 10% rule only works if the cost of living is graded so that everything you purchase is priced as a percentage of your income.  Think about how Australia’s GST works.  A refrigerator costs the same for a poor family as it does for a rich family (sadly, sometimes more!) – and GST is ten percent on top.  The relative total cost of the refrigerator can only be seen when it is calculated as a percentage of the families’ incomes.  Reduce the price of the refrigerator (make it a percentage of income) and you reduce the tax as well.

Tithing is also often “...presented as the equivalent of a Christian stock investment.  Pay the tithe, and God will give you more money in return.  Refuse to tithe, and God will punish you.  Such thoughts rip at the heart of the good news of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.”  (Pagan Christianity p. 180).  We DO NOT support this view or this teaching.

In God’s plan, we are all functioning priests and have a divine calling for that work.  We do not need an elevated class called the ‘clergy’; we do not need a “tithe” to pay them; we do not need offering plates/bags; and we do not need ‘ushers’ to carry them around and goad people into giving.

As Pagan Christianity points out:

Tithing is mentioned only four times in the New Testament.  But none of these instances apply to Christians.  Tithing belonged to the Old Testament era where a taxation system was needed to support the poor and a special priesthood that had been set apart to minister to the Lord.  With the coming of Jesus Christ, there has been a “change of the law” – the old has been “set aside” and rendered obsolete by the new (Hebrews 7:12-18; 8:13 NIV).  (p. 183)

The theme of this blog series is moving from old covenant to new covenant; this matter of tithing can be seen as a litmus test for whether that move is in fact being made. Viola and Barna make an interesting point on page 176: “Today, the Levitical system has been abolished.  We are all priests now.  So if a priest demands a tithe, then all Christians should tithe to each other.”  I actually support that.  It reminds me of the words in Acts 2, “all those who had believed were together and had all things in common.”  Perhaps that was their way of saying we should tithe to one another.

Note to self: Remember, the tithe died on the cross with Jesus; the new life is cheerful generosity.

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (16)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

6

Ministers of Music: clergy set to music, (Pagan Christianity, chapter 7 title)

Somewhere between 1980 and now, a strange stream of consciousness poured in and overpowered the ‘philosophy of music’ that lay at the heart of the worship of God by the people of God.

And perhaps it goes even further back – and the 1980s was an inevitable development from foundations laid much earlier.  But the thing I notice the most is a profound shift from the sound of human voices singing drowning out the music such that musicians can’t hear what their own fingers are playing to music drowning out the human voices singing such that ‘worshippers’ are most likely to lip-synch than actually sing.

And the thing I notice second-most is the vibrations of the bones in my chest as the bass player assaults everyone with his/her ‘skill’ and craft.

Not that long ago, human voices singing were the music we heard – they were the instruments we played to worship God.  And the words we used were mostly made up of adoration, praise, prayer and teaching.

In the church life-stream I grew up in, Sunday morning was for believers to come together to worship God from the heart; Sunday evenings were for inviting unbelievers in to hear of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  Songs would be used ‘ad hoc’ – for the purpose; or bespoke as we like to say today.  Organs (only) were introduced in the 1950s – I suspect partly as a result of the sky not falling in when Billy Graham visited Australia.  Other instruments followed in time, but instruments were chosen for their cultural relevance when it came to appeals to the unbelieving masses.

But, hey, I’m not a student of church music history – and that’s not really the point here.

The Minister of Music idea simply flows flawlessly from the professionalisation of all that the various church facets had become: buildings, comfort, genteel-ness, politeness, obfuscation, priests, deacons, vestments, etc. etc.

Whole tracts of christendom adapt stories from the old testament (rarely the new testament) to justify the use of “professional” musicians, singers and dancers without much thought about the meaning and purpose of them over against the fact of them.

But nothing in the old testament record of what Israel did has any automatic or uncritical adoption into the affairs of ekklesia post-Jesus.  The meaning and purpose of the musicians, singers and dancers is not an automatic carry-over into the new covenant no matter what we believe about the alleged importance of worship under the Davidic Covenant.

We are not Jews/Hebrews; Jews and non-Jews are one in Christ according to the new covenant documents we have.  What is critical for us is to understand and comprehend what God is doing today in our world – the mission Dei if you like.  The Holy spirit is God’s most powerful gift to His sons of faith and, as Paul notes a bit in Romans, our responsibility is to “live according to the Spirit”.

That means we don’t do things because that’s “the way” it ought to be done; because that’s the way we’ve always done it; because some bible verse says someone in the past has done it; because there is a right way and wrong way; because someone in a hierarchy tells us what we must do; because a visiting ‘influencer’ has a plan; because we want to showcase a talent ... you can add your own ‘because’ here.

The idea of a Minister of Music and formal choirs and ‘music teams’ and music run-sheets – all of it, is a slide away from the imminent Holy Spirit in our times together and towards removing ever more pieces of the spiritual life of a congregation from the hands of the members of that congregation.

I love this paragraph from Viola and Barna:

Perhaps you are wondering.  What’s wrong with having a choir leader, a worship leader, or a worship team to lead the church’s singing?  Nothing ...  if every member of the church is content with it.  However, many Christians feel that it robs God’s people of a vital function: to select and lead their own singing in the meetings – to have divine worship in their own hands – to allow Jesus Christ to direct the singing of His church rather than have it led by a human facilitator.  Singing in the early church was marked by these features. (p. 166)

But there is matter here worth noting: having “divine worship in their own hands ... rather than have it led by a facilitator” is precisely what popes, bishops, priests, ministers and pastors did not want in their congregations – across many years.  Congregations were blind, dumb sheep needing a shepherd’s crook – at least according to their betters.  And that attitude is still present in many places.

And just in case you’re wondering, the professional musician approach fits well with the Greco-Roman influences that have taken hold in most of the church today – at least in the West and those places where what Renée Padilla in 1975 called “American Culture Christianity” dominates.

On page 167, Frank (Viola) asks us to “imagine...”:

Every brother and sister free to lead songs under the headship of Jesus Christ – even to write his or her own songs and bring them to the meeting for all to learn.  I have met with numerous churches that have experienced this glorious dynamic.  Someone starts a song and everyone joins in.  Then someone else begins another song, and so worship continues without long pauses and with no visible leader present.

That’s what I grew up with; and I have both led and participated in groups and meetings where this is normal – surprise, surprise, even when the only music is our God-given, Spirit-led human voices.  Beats the pants off a rock concert with flashing lights and smoke every time.

There is such a thing as new covenant worship, music, singing, dancing, etc – and their is such a thing as old covenant worship, music, singing, dancing, etc.  This blog series is all about moving from the old to the new; from church to ekklesia; from hierarchy to Christ.

Note to self: Remember “when you come together, each one has a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation – just let all things be done for edification.”

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (15)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

5

Sunday Morning Costumes: covering up the problem, (Pagan Christianity, chapter 6 title)

Though it’s not widely known, the root meaning of the word invest is to get dressed; to clothe.  Small wonder clerical robes or “Sunday morning costumes” as Viola and Barna put it are sometimes more formally known as vestments.

Probably even less known is that the use of the word in its original sense is to change the appearance and/or perception of something.  In a literal sense, when I have a shower and get dressed, the getting dressed part is an investment: I invest myself; I clothe myself in my choice of attire.

Why do I clothe myself?  Most probably I do it for a range of reasons, from modesty to climate control.  Truth is though that, regardless of my motivation for getting dressed, my chief interest is to present myself or appear as something different from my naked self.  Whether I am protecting myself from the elements, trying to impress someone, or covering up my nakedness to avoid embarrassment or shame (or arrest!), I am deliberately re-presenting my body as something it is not beneath the clothes.

And that is one of the chief reasons professional ministers wear particular garb.  In ‘civilian’ clothes, I am one iteration of me; when I invest myself with other clothes, I am a different iteration of myself.  Military uniforms (including headwear) serve this particular purpose.

As a Pastor, I was deliberate in not doing the switch from one ‘me’ to another different one, so I chose to not use formal vestments.  As an Australian Baptist Pastor, that was not difficult as few wear official vestments.

As a person, I dislike suits and ties.  Why?  Because they represent, to me, the re-presentation of myself as something I am not.  It is extremely common for people to change their clothes in order to communicate a switch from one persona to another – whether that be for honourable reasons (say a Judge presiding over a Court) or for nefarious reasons (say a scammer attempting a fraud).

In our times, it is an horrific indictment on what we call the church that its ministers have been known to use their vestments as a cloak of both deception and heinous assault of trusting, perhaps gullible, members of church congregations.  It seems to escape us that every one of these causes someone somewhere to blaspheme God (see Mark 3 and Romans 2).

I think the title Viola and Barna chose for this chapter puts it well: covering up the problem.

But let’s not be quick to judge: it’s not just the ministers dressing up.  My dad was a hard, tough underground coal miner.  When he came to Christ, the local church was quick to tap him on the shoulder about wearing a suit and tie to Sunday morning services – back in the 1960s.  The fact that one of the dominant families in the church ran a local tailoring business and made and sold suits didn’t have anything to do with it I’m sure.

But I digress – turning up to church straight off the street was (and often still is) frowned upon if you’re a vagrant or just a slob.  It never seemed to matter to Jesus, but it matters to us – all too often.  But what about turning up to church in your finest looking like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth but hiding a seething anger or resentment?  What about turning up in your Sunday best making sure your clothes cover the bruises of the past week – or your smile covers the agony?  What about dressing up in style and fashion to attract someone’s attention?

Clothes hide the truth – regardless of whether the truth is good or bad, pleasant or ugly.  There is an old saying that goes, “clothes maketh the man.”  There’s more than a grain of truth in that.

Some of the North American historical anecdotes in Pagan Chrisstianity chapter 6 are well worth reading.

But I think this is the real point here (thanks Frank and George):

Let’s face it.  As fallen humans, we are seldom willing to appear to be what we really are.  We almost always rely on our performance or dress to give people a certain impression of what we want them to believe we are.  All of this differs markedly from the simplicity that marked the early church. (p. 149)

Perhaps Paul’s instructions to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2 regarding women’s dress standards could be applied across the board and be just as important for men: “... to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.”

Where did clerical vestments come from?

Most who study this agree that the wearing of “different” clothing also came about with all the flux and flurry of the Constantine era.  Furthermore, as Viola and Barna point out, “ecclesiastical vestments” do not derive from the old testament priesthood, “It rather had its origins in the secular dress of the Greco-Roman world.” (p. 150)  And this of course kind of matched the new church buildings being erected similarly along Greco-Roman lines.

Reportedly, Clement of Alexandria urged ministers to wear better clothes than those they were ministering to and they should be white and ‘simple’.

I fully agree with Viola and Barna in their assessment:

A specially attired clergy is an affront to the spiritual principles that govern the house of God.  It strikes at the heart of the church (actually ekklesia] by separating God’s people into two classes: “professional” and “nonprofessional”. (p. 154)

Note to self: Remember, as Paul wisely noted, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain” – why would I want to cover that?

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (14)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

4

The Pastor: obstacle to every-member functioning (Pagan Christianity, chapter 5 title)

As I have mentioned previously, I did a short stint as a rural Pastor.  It was while I was in that role that everything changed for me.

The area of Queensland I was in was an area of small farms that were established years earlier by German Baptists escaping the persecutions of Europe.  The oldest church in the town I moved to was the Baptist church and I was their fresh, young, enthusiastic (albeit student) Pastor.  There were two congregations separated by about 40 km.

I found the going extremely tough.  I had a wife and a baby; the local Baptist pastor by tradition had a civic responsibility as a community leader.  Then there was the requirement to do religions education in schools in the district, on top of having to attend college in Brisbane over three hours away, staying a few days in the rumpus room of the in-laws house once a month – and on other special occasions as required.

There were two ‘services’ each Sunday in each town, so I had to draw up a roster that put me alternately morning and evening in each town so the congregation got to see me every Sunday, either morning or evening.  Other congregation members did the alternate services; however, at that stage (the early 1980s) and that profoundly conservative region, women were not generally allowed to preach.

The two congregations could scarcely be more different – for a variety of reasons.  And some people rotated their attendance at the two centres to match with where I was.  For some people, I was everything they always wanted in a ‘pastor’; for others, not so much – I tended to be a disappointment to them.

My early christian history was within the Open Brethren assemblies who didn’t have ‘pastors’.  They were used to their meetings being open in terms of not having a standard order of service (although they did usually follow a certain pattern) and in terms of who delivered the teaching/message for the meeting.  The songs sung were selected and announced spontaneously, arising out of the members’ spiritual walk with God during the previous week.  Or at least that was how I understood and interpreted it.

So being on call as a rural Baptist Pastor was a load that ran counter to all that I was familiar with, although I had left the Open Brethren and attended a Baptist Church in the Redlands district some years earlier.

I felt like I was being pulled in six different directions continuously and I became ill.  I was ordered off the set and had to take three months off, during which time I worked with a mentor and opted to consider the terms under which I would return to the church after that time.  My terms and suggestions were unacceptable to the denomination and to the country church and I returned only to pack up our stuff and move back to the Redlands.

But one thing had irrevocably changed: I couldn’t ever be a ‘church pastor’ because I believed (and still do by the way) that the idea is a human creation on multiple layers and, what’s more, what the denomination and the local church saw as a pastor had virtually no cross reference back to the new testament idea of pastors in Paul’s writings.

At the critical breaking point in my role in the rural church, God said to me very clearly, ‘I want you to do what you know.’  That left but one question for me: would the denomination and the congregation allow me to ‘do what I know’?  The answer was a clear no.

I had come to the view that every member of Christ – everyone who is adopted into the Jesus family (this was, after all, the 1970s) – had both the right and the responsibility to be a functioning minister of Christ; and the Body of Christ was a “flat” coalition of brothers.

I saw – as I would discover in Viola and Barna many years later – that the Church Pastor was, with very few exceptions, an obstacle to every-member functioning.  And I made a commitment to myself, my fellowship of friends and to any christian group I might work with that I would not be such an obstacle.  I didn’t appreciate people being such an obstacle to me and I would not do that to others.

And in reading Viola and Barna, I came across the quote they put as an introduction to chapter 5 of Pagan Christianity – a quote from Richard Hanson, a twentieth-century patristic scholar – which, in my view, explains how this has come about:

It is a universal tendency in the Christian religion, as in many other religions, to give a theological interpretation to institutions which have developed gradually through a period of time for the sake of practical usefulness, and then read that interpretation back into the earliest periods and infancy of these institutions, attaching them to an age when in fact nobody imagined that they had such a meaning.

My reading of Hanson’s statement also brings into stark focus another fundamental problem.  I do not believe that what Jesus came to do – least of all what he actually did – was start a new religion, the Christian Religion.  Indeed, I am as enthusiastic about Gregory Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Religion (Zondervan 2009) as I am about Viola and Barna’s Pagan Christianity.

To my mind, if there is an institution, it is not a representation of what Jesus and the first apostles sought to build.  And that, dear reader, is one of the key reasons for this hiatus between a Church Pastor and the pastor as one of the five eldership functions of Paul’s teaching and practice.  So we have amplified reason for not reading institutional ideas back into the infancy of the new covenant people of God.

And – secondly – that is precisely why for me Church Pastor is old covenant and Paul’s idea in Ephesians chapter 4 (ekklesia) is new covenant.

Pagan Christianity makes this point in strong terms:

But here is the profound irony.  There is not a single verse in the entire New Testament that supports the existence of the modern-day pastor!  He simply did not exist in the early church. (p. 106)

Of course there are those who will retort, “So what ... we don’t need a New Testament precedent to do something we choose today based on what we think is of ‘practical usefulness’.”  That’s hubris.  That’s turning our own personal preferences into doctrine.

But, far worse, it totally negates the original reason Jesus and the apostles had no Pastor or Senior Pastor or CEO: read Matthew 23.  Furthermore, Viola and Barna got it spot on with the heading for this chapter: no-one should be in such a “position” that he/she is an obstacle to every-member ministry.  Ekklesia is a flat, single-level organism, not an hierarchical organisation/institution.  The position or role of Church Pastor flies in the face of Jesus’ and Paul’s specific instructions.

So where did our popular notion of Church Pastor come from?

In large part, it is a blend of three things: the ‘fallen’ nature of unredeemed humanity; the substance of the Mosaic covenant with Israel; and what was ‘lying around’ at the time when we faced critical questions of humanity.  There are some moments in Israel’s history recorded in the old testament that are illustrative of the precise issue that drives this human quest.

As Viola and Barna rightly point out, “With the fall came the implicit desire in people to have a physical leader to bring them to God.  For this reason, human societies throughout history have consistently created a special caste of revered religious leaders.” (p.108)

And with that comes the special training, clothes, language and different way of life.

Exodus 20 records the giving of the ten commandments to Moses.  As that concluded, the record shows “the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw that, they trembled and stood at a distance.  Then they said to Moses, ‘Speak to God yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us, or we will die.”  Despite Moses’ assurances, that’s the way they chose to live – always at arm’s length from God.

The Mosaic covenant itself was built around the notion of a mediator between God and man.  Before kings there were judges; before judges there men like Joshua and Caleb and Samuel.  And going right out to the other end, the new testament tells us that Jesus was God’s way of giving Israel a new mediator – one who would stand forever, never failing and never needing to be replaced: whom many rejected.  As mediator of the new covenant, Jesus was and is the better mediator of a better covenant (referring back to the post on the “better way” of the book of Hebrews).

Later in Israel’s history, during the time of Samuel, the people begged Samuel to ask God (there’s the mediator thing again) to give them a king so they could be like all the other nations around them (there’s the unredeemed heart thing).  This is recorded in 1 Samuel chapter 8.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah; and they said to him, ‘Behold, you have grown old, and your sons do not walk in your ways.  Now appoint a king for us to judge us like all the nations.’  But the thing was displeasing in the sight of Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ And Samuel prayed to the LORD.  The LORD said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them.  Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day—in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also.  Now then, listen to their voice; however, you shall solemnly warn them and tell them of the procedure of the king who will reign over them.’

This reference also shows up that tendency in unredeemed man to scout around one’s immediate surroundings to find something there that might be of ‘practical usefulness’.  They said they wanted a king to judge them “like all the nations”.

And they got their way, but at a considerable price.  Samuel outlined that cost:

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

If you look back over the story later in Exodus where Moses went up the mountain to meet with God (chapter 32), you will find yet another telling moment.

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’

Have a look at 2 Peter 3:  “In the last days mockers will come with mocking following after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?  For since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’”  It’s like they said, ‘Obviously, we believed in Jesus’ return in vain.  He’s not coming back, so let’s take charge of things and make the best of a bad situation.  We’ve known for centuries how to ‘do church’, so let’s do that – ‘church’ is God’s idea anyway, so He won’t mind.’

Like the Hebrews said concerning Moses: “as for this fellow Moses, we do not know what has become of him”, we are acting as if our thinking goes like this: “as for this fellow Jesus, we don’t know what has become of him.”

“Come, make us a god who will go before us”, they said – and so was created the golden calf, a god made in the image of man or beast.  But they knew that it was written in their ‘bible’ not to do that.  It’s not so different today.  Jesus is away too long, so we cobble together something out of our own imagination and using what resources we have to hand and then we worship it – and insist that all ‘our’ people worship it too, whatever it is.

In this way, we turn God’s idea of five-fold ministry into Church Pastor and Reverend this or that and Father and CEO – and continue on our way as if we have God’s imprimatur and blessing because we can show that it is “successful”.

Pagan Christianity also makes this critically important point (p. 136):

But that is not all.  The modern-day pastoral office has overthrown the main thrust of the letter to the Hebrews – the ending of the old priesthood.  It has made ineffectual the teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14, that every member has both the right and the privilege to minister in a church meeting.  It has voided the message of 1 Peter 2 that every brother and sister is a functioning priest.

There is even an interesting take on this in the work of American author David C. Korten.  His occupation listed on Wikipedia is Teacher, institutional systems analyst, environmentalist, activist, and author: absolutely brilliant work.  His book The Great Turning: From empire to Earth Community is fundamentally about a version of the shift from old covenant to new covenant I am talking about here.  For Korten, it is a “great turning”, from “Empire” to “Earth community”.  Church as we know it is just another form of empire; what Jesus came to do – and what new testament ekklesia is all about – is a kind of earth community, but led by the Holy Spirit and destined for eternity.

Note to self: Remember William Tyndale, murdered by the church for daring to challenge established church hierarchical protocols with its bishops and priests by his correct translation of key words in the new testament.

Old Covenant >>> New covenant (13)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

3

The Sermon: Protestantism’s most sacred cow (Pagan Christianity, chapter 4 title)

For a brief period of my life, I lived inside a thought bubble.  It was a thought bubble of my own making.  It was a kind of ‘imaginatarium’ where I kept my “pets” and attempted to create a model of a church that I would most love to be part of; and one which I would lead down a path of emulating the principles of the first apostles and the disciples they made – a “new testament church” if you like.

I enrolled in some classes at theological college and I was taken on as a student pastor in a rural parish church of two separate congregations.  I had previously done two years of bible college study and I had reasonable experience in street ‘preaching’ and speaking in church meetings.  To “top up” my study, there were a few subjects the ‘theo college’ reckoned I need to do to satisfy their requirements for ordination.  Despite my previous training and experience, for reasons I never quite got, I was told I had to do some Preaching subjects.  Once I got the drift of what the lecturer wanted, it was, as they say, ‘a piece of cake’.  I drafted my ‘sermons’ (I hated calling them that) to serve two purposes: for congregational instruction/teaching in my rural congregations; and to satisfy the requirements of my college study units.

I said it was a brief period; within two years, my thought bubble burst and I was flapping aimlessly through a space I never imagined I would have to navigate, let alone populate.  But I had done so well in my preaching classes that the in-coming Principal of my college asked me to consider teaching some of their preaching classes.  Of all the things I could teach at theological college, teaching preaching was the last thing I wanted to do.  One of the reasons for the bubble bursting was my rejection of the sermon as a valid and reasonable means of building a ‘new testament church’.  New Testament churches didn’t seem to have sermons.

But it was what churches do.  It was fundamentally integral to church life; it was an absolutely fixed feature of the order of worship; it was – and often still is – almost the single most important thing a pastor does by which his tenure is measured and judged.

Then I remembered a story in the new testament where apostle Paul encountered Apollos.  Apparently Apollos was an excellent orator – preacher – sermoniser.  Paul on the other hand made light of his preaching ability and was generally self-effacing.  And this is where I come back to Viola and Barna (Pagan Christianity).

They start their next chapter with this quote from Paul:

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)

Apollos was (by all accounts) a good preacher; he was popular and he made quite a few disciples.  Paul, however, detected that something was missing in the lives of Apollos’ disciples.  A little earlier, Apollos had been taken aside by Paul’s companions Aquila and Priscilla and they “explained the way of God more fully” to him.  From that point, Apollos’ preaching was different.  How different?  Good different!  Apollos had been acting like he was preaching the gospel of Jesus but in fact was preaching a deficient gospel that Paul described as preaching the baptism of John rather than the baptism of Jesus.

Now John, while truly being the forerunner and proclaimer of Christ, was actually an old testament prophet; but he fully believed in Jesus.  John himself spoke of the coming of Jesus and of the baptism of Jesus – by which all who participated would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, but John’s own message was “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4).  That’s old covenant baptism; that’s all Apollos knew; consequently, that’s the only baptism he could honestly preach and deliver.  Apollos’ baptism (and therefore his earlier preaching) was actually old covenant even though it referenced Jesus.  Paul was an absolute master of sniffing out old covenant ingredients; and he made it his business to correct that with new covenant teaching – for the sake of the hearers of the message.

That makes his words to the Corinthians (above) so much more pertinent and powerful.

Church as we know it, being largely an old covenant institution and organisation, is Apollos on steroids and in turbo mode.  I had lived in my thought bubble precisely because of the reasons we have looked at up to this point in this blog series: we are living in an old covenant fossilarium, refurbishing it to make it look, sound, taste, smell and feel like new covenant.  And until church learns the Apollos lessons of “the way of God more fully” a la Paul, Aquila and Priscilla, she cannot deliver on the promises she is making about Jesus and his new life – simply because she hasn’t lived it herself.

Central to that delusion is the sacred cow of the sermon.  Church has followed Apollos; what and where is the tradition of Paul?

Viola and Barna suggest “The sermon is the bedrock of the Protestant liturgy” (p. 85) and it has functioned as such for 500 years and more.

They go on to raise a popular retort to the questioning of the role and place of the sermon: “People preached all throughout the Bible.  Of course the sermon is scriptural.”  But those two sentences are not linked logically or even sensibly.  The second sentence is spouted as if it is proved by the first; but there is no necessary connection between the two thoughts.

Did people preach all throughout the bible?  You can make that argument but it all depends on what you call preaching.  However, the second sentence assumes that ‘the sermon’ was the method of ‘preaching’ and that aint necessarily so.  Viola and Barna make that point well:

Granted, the Scriptures do record men and women preaching.  However, there is a world of difference between the Spirit-inspired preaching and teaching described in the bible and the contemporary sermon.  The difference is virtually always overlooked because we have been unwittingly conditioned to read our modern-day practices back into the Scripture. (p, 86)

As they point out, the sermon has these features: It is a regular occurrence; it is delivered by the same person; it is delivered to a passive audience; it is a cultivated form of speech. (p. 87)

By comparison, the old testament prophets and priests apparently did not make regular speeches to the gathered people of God.  Neither did Jesus “preach a regular sermon to the same audience.  His preaching and teaching took many different forms.  And he delivered His message to many different audiences.” (Pagan Christianity p. 87)]

So where did the christian sermon come from?  Viola and Barna continue:

This raises a thorny question.  If the first-century Christians were not noted for their sermonizing, from whom did the postapostolic Christians pick it up?  The answer is telling:  The Christian sermon was borrowed from the pagan pool of Greek culture.    (p. 89)

And despite its relative failure to change christians for over 2000 years, the sermon became and remains not just standard practice but a pastoral obligation.  And why might that be?

The principle reason relates to a matter raised in an earlier post: religion. Religion as it is commonly known and practised is largely made up of a collection of rites, icons and repetitive practices which combine to pacify and satiate the soul of the participants.  In most churches, attendees would feel dudded or cheated if there was no sermon to evaluate and critique.

As Viola and Barna rightly point out, the ‘headwaters” of the great sermon stream is the band of “wandering teachers called sophists”.  Rhetoric is largely their invention; and, like Apollos after them, they were great debaters and “masters of fine phrases” as Viola and Barna say.

An essential part of this style of communication is that what is preached, while being essentially true, does not have to be the lived experience of the orator.  Hence Apollos could preach well a message/story of Jesus, but he could not pass on the living truth of the new covenant story of Jesus – at least until Aquila and Priscilla had filled in the gaps in his learning.

And the profound importance of this is drawn out in the record of Acts 18&19.  An important new covenant principle is that you can’t give away to someone else what you do not possess yourself.  Apollos did not possess either the truth or the experience of the baptism of Jesus.  Consequently the disciples he made did not either.  In their own words following a question from Paul, they were taught nothing of the Holy Spirit by Apollos – Apollos couldn’t give away what he didn’t himself have.  Paul was able to correct the fault, and when he preached the Holy Spirit to them, they received it and were baptised into Jesus and received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

When it come down to it, the sermon is about style, form and information.  On the other hand, the new covenant message is about truth, heart communication and transformation.  And the new testament knows three main ways the new covenant message is articulated: the logos, the kerygma and the herald.  The logos is the living word of God, Jesus and the story of Jesus; the kerygma is the living appeal from one human to another to be reconciled to God; and the herald is the runner with the message of freedom, victory and peace.

The sermon is a thing, about a thing; the new covenant message, in all three of its aspects, is a living person carrying and delivering life and freedom.

Note to self: Remember, words can kill as much as they can heal and bring life.

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (12)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

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The Order of Worship: Sunday mornings set in concrete (Pagan Christianity, chapter 3 title)

The Protestant ‘order of worship’ has its roots in the medieval Catholic Mass.  Schaff’s History of the Christian Church suggests that the word ‘mass’ means dismissal and refers to the dismissal of the congregation from the worship service that celebrated the Eucharist – the service of the wine and bread.

Viola and Barna (referencing Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church) make the point that “The medieval mass reflected the mind of its originator.  It was a blending of pagan and Judaistic ritual sprinkled with catholic theology and Christian vocabulary”.  Will Durant, in Caesar and Christ suggests the Mass “was deeply steeped in pagan magical thinking as well as Greek drama”.

Under Luther, preaching came to be central rather than the Eucharist; Zwingli transformed the altar into the communion table; Calvin and others created their own liturgical orders of worship; the Puritans forsook many – perhaps most – of the Reformers’ adaptations preferring what they deemed a more biblical model; a tiny few continued to meet in homes with none of these accoutrements.  And as Viola and Barna note, there were “Many adjustments, no vital change” from the institutional model once it was established.

Our study of the liturgical history of the Lutheran (sixteenth century), Reformed (sixteenth century), Puritans (sixteenth century), Methodists (eighteenth century), Frontier-Revivalists (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries), and Pentecostals (twentieth century) uncovers one inescapable point: For the last five hundred years, the Protestant order of worship has undergone minimal change.

In the end, all Protestant traditions share the same unbiblical features in their order of worship.  They are officiated and directed by a clergyman, they make the sermon central, and the people are passive and not permitted to minister. (p.73)

In 1992, I participated in a gathering of around 100 disciples of Jesus in Canberra Australia.  It was called ‘Leaders Looking to Jesus’ and was a bunch of men and women from all over Australia gathered together for a fortnight essentially to worship and listen, with no ‘conference program’ and no daily run-sheet.  Away from our ‘home churches’, with no impulse to do any particular set things and with no ‘agenda’ but to worship and listen, one would think it would be a relatively easy thing – it was a real struggle for many.

We seem to easily assume two things: that an ‘order of worship’ or run-sheet is essential if we want to achieve anything; and that, therefore, christian church meetings must always have had orders of worship and run-sheets.  For the first hundred years at least, they didn’t.

Besides, for many people, it is a moot point anyway: the mere fact that the first disciples may not have had orders of worship and run-sheets does not of itself prohibit us from using them.  After all, things change and develop; cultures are different; modern societies are strikingly different from those of two thousand years ago.

But to my mind, one thing stands out like Uluru in Central Australia: orders of worship and run-sheets are specifically designed and implemented to be restrictions on time first and foremost, followed by restrictions on participation.  Christianity has very much become a spare-time or fixed-time activity, moulded around complicated, sophisticated and ultra-busy lifestyles.  Furthermore, it has come to be critical – matching our secular lives – that everything we do “for God” must be done with “excellence and professionalism” and in the hands of suitably trained and qualified people.

So in this matter of orders of worship and run-sheets, this, to me, is the ‘gateway drug’: what we do when we come together – whenever that is – takes second or third place in our busy lives and has to have a start time and a finish time.  We have to ‘get on with our daily lives’.

To me, this is the striking difference between ourselves and the disciples of the first century following Jesus: they worked to live; they didn’t live to work.  Becoming a disciple of Jesus meant precisely that; other ‘essentials’ could and would take their place around that.  And if you believe the account in the early part of Acts about those first disciples, their priorities were pretty much inverted compared to ours today.

These days, we assume two further things: having a job or running a business is an absolute must and is our first priority; ‘spending time with family’ (usually ‘tight’ or close family groups) is critical for time-poor people and is priority number two.  ‘Worship’ often comes after that.  Jesus had a rather unusual take on both these issues and taking Jesus’ approach often brings reproach down onto one’s head.

The immediate context of the first disciple-gatherings was Jesus’ instructions available to us in what we call the “sermon on the mount” – Matthew 5, 6 and 7.  Central to that teaching is to ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and your daily needs will be taken care of.’

And at a later point in his life (and a little later in Matthew’s record), as an adult, Jesus demonstrated an interesting take on the meaning of ‘family’.  Jesus was talking to the crowds and his disciples come and interrupt him to tell him his mother and brothers are looking for him – to which he replies: “who is my mother and who are my brothers?”  As he gestures towards his disciples, he says: “Here are my mother and my brothers.  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus’ priorities were vastly different from those in the surrounding culture; and his disciples were fast learning their priorities had to adjust to the life of the kingdom of God.  What we found at our gathering in Canberra in 1992 was that being Jesus’ ‘ecclesia’ today means a switch of paradigm and a major adjustment to our life priorities.

When worship flows from these shifts in thinking and focus, orders of worship and run-sheets are, at best, trivialities and at worst, distractions from the call of the Holy Spirit to be in that space of true worship; of being in that zone where God’s mission in Christ in the world takes pride of place and we do whatever the Holy Spirit gives us to do.  And that, friends, fits well with the descriptions and teachings of the first apostles and the next generation of disciples they made, recorded for us in the New Testament.

Note to self: Remember, chairs for commoners date from the sixteenth century and carpets from the eleventh century.

Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (11)

Referencing Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

Barna, Tyndale House, 2002/8

I highly recommend the book.

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The structure of Pagan Christianity by Viola and Barna is in itself informative.

Chapter one asks and answers the question: have we really been doing it “by the book”?

As Christians, we are taught by our leaders to believe certain ideas and behave in certain ways.  We are also encouraged to read our Bibles.  But we are conditioned to read the Bible with the lens handed to us by the Christian tradition to which we belong.  We are taught to obey our denomination (or movement) and never to challenge what it teaches...

If the truth be told, we Christians never seem to ask why we do what we do.  Instead, we blithely carry out our religious traditions without asking where they came from...

Strikingly, contemporary church thought and practice have been influenced far more by postbiblical historical events than by New Testament imperatives and examples.  Yet most Christians are not conscious of this influence.  Nor are they aware that it has created a slew of cherished, calcified, humanly devised traditions - all of which are routinely passed off to us as "Christian"...

As you read through the following pages, you may be surprised to discover that a great deal of what we Christians do for Sunday morning church did not come from Jesus Christ, the apostles, or the Scriptures.  Nor did it come from Judaism...

Strikingly, much of what we do for "church" was lifted directly out of pagan culture in the postapostolic period.

Hence the title of the book: Pagan Christianity.

The next nine chapters examine, one per chapter,  nine of the central elements of the structure and form of ‘church’ as it is done all over the world: the church building; the order of worship; the sermon; the pastor; Sunday morning costumes; ministers of music; tithing and clergy salaries; baptism and the Lord’s supper; christian education.

For me, one of the most disturbing things of all is that, on some of these matters, Jesus himself had somewhat to say (if we take the gospel records as accurate recordings of the life and times and words of Jesus recorded by his peers), yet we prefer our traditions and doctrines over the actual words of Jesus.  For instance, Jesus instructed his followers to “call no man ‘father’” because, in Christ, we have one Father, God; yet we routinely and slavishly call men ‘father’.

The Church Building: inheriting the edifice complex. (Pagan Christianity, chapter 2 title)

The combined idea of temple, priests and sacrifices is carried into church life from both Ancient Judaism and from Greco-Roman paganism.  While ancient Judaism appears to be built around temple priesthood and sacrifice, as Viola and Barna point out, “When Jesus came, He ended all three, fulfilling them in Himself.  He is the temple who embodies a new and living house made of living stones – ‘without hands’.  He is the priest who has established a new priesthood.  And he is the perfect and finished sacrifice.” (Pagan Christianity, p.10)

Old covenant ‘church’ and paganism continue the tradition of temple, priest and sacrifice; whereas new covenant ecclesia lives the reality that Jesus is the fulfilment of all three and consequently has no need of constituting or instituting such things.  Furthermore, Paul teaches the people of Jesus that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 6:19.

Apostle Peter’s words – reinterpreting old testament scripture, I might add – add much to the new covenant understanding: “You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2)

Under Constantine and subsequently, ‘church fathers’ would lead congregations into buying and owning land and erecting edifices as temple meeting places.  These were largely modelled on secular and pagan buildings, mirroring those erected for kings and queens.  But it wasn’t just the buildings being so modelled; the pieces on a chess board will show you how central a figure was a bishop’ in the social and political development of humanity just a few short years after the first apostles had died.  Following the old covenant line had already led to the establishment of ranked bishops presiding over priests and congregations, mirroring king and knight etc. presiding over pawns.  And cathedral came to mirror castle; a ‘cathedral’ is literally a place to house the bishop’s throne.

In short, ‘Church’ has adopted secularism to a ‘T’; while the proper venue for the life of ecclesia is daily life and the homes the people share.  Once this door was opened, church came to adapt the concept of ‘sacred’ to spaces and objects – quite contrary to the teaching of Jesus and Paul; and, incidentally, quite contrary to the prophetic prohibitions on idolatry in Israel’s history.

Viola and Barna call Constantine the “Father of the Church Building” (Pagan Christianity, p.18) and they’re probably close to the truth.  My reading of the history is that Constantine’s so-called conversion was not a spiritual conversion but a political one.  He yielded to the insistence of some ‘church fathers’ and ended the persecution of ‘christians’, in return for the church leaders bringing those believers into check and ‘keeping the rabble in line’.  Many believers were prone to live by the creed ‘we have no king but Jesus’ and that would never do.  However, some people could be satiated with land and buildings and pomp and ceremony and status – reflecting that of the secular authorities.

And it was an easy, natural drift from building to steeple, pulpit, balcony, altar, pews, icons, artefacts and, of course, solemnity and silence; from there the rest followed, adapting the ways of king and empire, secular religions and old Judaism.

Some people oppose any easing of laws against using marijuana as they see it as ‘the gateway drug’, leading inexorably to the use of other stronger, more lethal drugs.  To me, moving away from homes to build cathedrals and their protestant equivalents is the gateway drug of the church.  Another way of seeing it might be to think criminology: committing a second and subsequent murders is easy compared to committing the first one – so I am told.

I find it very disturbing that church buildings are constructed, dedicated and occupied in a process where we dare to call on God’s blessing of something He has already said He opposes; and calling on Him to occupy or visit a structure He has already said He has no part in.  Apostle Paul – while he was still Pharisee Saul – witnessed and approved of the stoning to death of Stephen by the mob.  Part of what Stephen was stoned to death for was his assertion that “The Most High does not dwell in structures made by human hands.” (Acts 7:48)

Old covenant persists with these gargantuan travesties; new covenant has no truck with any of this; furthermore, it is utterly contrary to the light and life and freedom of life in Christ.

Note to self: Remember, God doesn’t inhabit “buildings made with hands”.