Pagan Christianity review

I'm reviewing the book 'Pagan Christianity' by Frank Viola and George Barna.
The entire premise of the book is this: The 21st century Church doesn't look anything like the 1st century Church, we should stop "doing church" this way and should reconfigure our worship style (whatever that means) to the 1st century model.  This is the macro.  I won't tip my hand just yet and tell you what I think about it.  I will tell you that I think that the authors did a lot of homework to prepare to write the book.  Every chapter has at least 50 footnotes to back up their claims--so if you get jazzed about footnotes, you're in for a treat.
Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for why church as we know it isn't what God intended it to be.  Chapters 2 and 3 imply that owning property could be a waste of God's money, and that the activity of planning worship for corporate gatherings that worship pastors/teams work on each week is not only wasteful, but it robs the people (congregation) of their responsibility to bring their own songs to the group that week.
Since this is a review of the book, I'm just going to skim through what I think.  If you want to know specific details, you'll have to read the book yourself.  It IS interesting...very historical and fact laden, but interesting.
Here's what I'd like to get back from you:

1. Do you feel that we are supposed to do whatever it takes to follow the example of the 1st century church organization (not the spiritual stuff, the organizational stuff)?
2. Do you think that churches who spend money (sometimes LOTS of money) on buildings/property, would do better to dump the once a week building, and use the money instead for something else?  If so, what else?
3. How valuable are 'worship' pastors?  Do we need paid worship pastors, or is getting together on Sunday and doing a few requests enough?

I'll be anxious to hear your thoughts as we get through this together.  Our next conversation will get personal...

Book reviews

I've been asked by my good friend Bob Franz (pastor of South Broadway Nazarene Church in Boulder, CO) to read and then comment on a couple of books--since I'm not really doing anything right now.

So he sent me the books, and I'm going to take a few days and blog about what I'm reading/what I've read.

The first book is the 2008, Frank Viola/George Barna book: Pagan Christianity?

I don't know how much George Barna actually contributed to this book, but he is acclaimed to be 'the most quoted person in the Christian Church today', so we probably don't need to establish his credentials.

As far as Frank Viola is concerned, he's written several books, and is an influencial voice in the contemporary house church movement.

So let's get started...to be fair, the authors insist that a second book must be read to complete the entire picture that they are trying to create...I have not read that second book.  Therefore, my thoughts on this book are worthless.  However, I will honor my committment to do my best to give my opinion about Pagan Christianity.

The very first thing that I noticed is the standard 'get as many important, and widely known people as you can to read and endorse this book' page.  There isn't one active pastor on the list.  When I first saw this, I didn't know what that meant--now I do.

The book isn't 21st century Church friendly.  There, I said it.  As a matter of fact, it appears that Viola/Barna go out of their way to be critical of the present day Church.  And really not just critical of the present day Church, but of Church as we have come to know it down through history.

As I get into this, I'll try and break down what I'm interpretting they are saying.

See you tomorrow.