Learning while Teaching

Book Review: Jesus Now

Title: Jesus Now

Author: Frank Viola

Publisher: David C Cook

Year: 2014

Pages: 210

Other Resources:

    The Deeper Journey

    Love Not the World

[Disclaimer: I was provided a free copy of this e-book via NetGalley. It is my duty to inform you that I was provided this resource for a short period of time in exchange for my fair review of the contents. This is yet another example of the government intruding and infringing upon the rights of citizens. Nevertheless, this is my disclaimer.]

I cannot remember how I came across the name Frank Viola. It may have been when I was reading Primal Fire by Neil Cole. It may have been chance. It may have been Twitter. At this juncture, I'm not really sure that it matters all that much because I'm just about sold on his ideas. I probably need to do some more reading, but it is probably important that I started with Jesus Now. This really is an excellent book and I highly recommend that if you are a leader in the church or someone who seeks to be a catalyst for change in an otherwise boring and stagnant vacuum of faithlessness. 

That sounds remarkably harsh, but I speak from experience. Since being evicted from the ranks of paid, professional clergy five years ago, I have had the opportunity to travel about to various churches from various denominational backgrounds and listen to a variety of preachers. It has been my experience that for the most part most churches in most parts of the world are utterly boring--and it is precisely for reasons that Viola expounds upon in this book: "One of the greatest concerns I have for the 'good news' today is that we often present a gospel that is more 'true' than 'useful.' This is never more true than when we're considering the subject and actor of our entire faith: Jesus Christ" (6).

Or maybe I should say it this way: churches are bored. Yet I can attribute the same reason for their boredom: there is simply not any significant emphasis on Jesus as the Resurrected Lord who is our power, as the Lord who has been given all authority in heaven and earth, as the King who has ascended to the Right Hand of God, as the Messiah who has exposed the powers of this earth through His death on the Cross. Frankly (no pun), I don't think the church is enamored with Jesus. Maybe the church doesn't really know Jesus well enough.

I like the idea behind the book: that we will see Jesus didn't just quit working because he ascended to the right hand of the Father, but he continues to work in us, through, and for us in a variety of ways and in a variety of capacities. Some of the important ways Jesus continues to work are as our Great High Priest, as the Chief Shepherd, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, Head of the Church, and Lord of the World. There are others too, but I think you get the idea of where Viola is going with this. He pays particular attention to the book of Hebrews which I appreciated immensely, but that's not all. The book is just filthy with Scripture references, quotes, and exegetical ideas from Scripture. This is for sure: there is no lack of Scripture in this book--in fact, take away the Scripture references and there's not much book left.

Theologically there are, of course, areas where the reader will find some disagreement with Viola. There were a few examples for me. For example, I am somewhat in disagreement with him concerning the idea of cessationism. Many competent theologians have concluded that some of the Spirit's gifts have, in fact, ceased to be fully present in the church--which is not to say that such gifts are not manifested ever. He writes, "There is no biblical merit for the cessationist idea" (65). I'm not so sure about this because there seems to be some indication that even for Paul such gifts were not perpetuated (i.e., leaving people sick at places, exhorting Timothy to drink some wine for his stomach ailments). That said, it's a disagreement that I'm not willing to die for. If the Spirit chooses to do what the Spirit chooses to do, then so be it. Maybe if the church stopped stumbling around in the darkness over silly arguments we would see an atmosphere where the Spirit is manifest more often. Maybe the Holy Spirit is waiting for us to finish with all our petty bickering and treating each other poorly. Or maybe the Holy Spirit simply refuses to show up in churches where the predetermined conclusion is that he is no longer working among his people. That is, maybe we prevent his appearance because of our disbelief. 

There are also areas where I am complete agreement with Viola. In chapter 5 he talks about Jesus the 'builder of ekklesia.' His question early on is: "So what happens when gifted Christians are reared in a human organization built on unbiblical systems rather than in an organic expression of the body of Christ?"  So what happens? Let me be honest. I am new to this whole 'organic church' movement so I remain just a tad bit skeptical when it comes to abandoning the 'old ways' of doing things. On the other hand, as someone who grew up, learned, and sought to perpetuate the 'old way' of doing things, I know how badly I was burned--strike that--how badly my faith has been wrecked by those old people doing old things the old ways. Much of the wrecking of my faith has occurred at the hands of people who simply didn't want to hear the truth about grace, Jesus, and the hard cost of following Jesus.

So I think it is true that Jesus can work through these structures and that perhaps he does; nevertheless, who is to say that the gigantic growth of a relative few churches has been the best thing for the many churches that have not experienced such growth? And who is to say that setting up the church like a multi-million dollar corporation with a CEO at the head is necessarily what Jesus had in mind? We Protestants scoff at the idea of the Papacy of the Catholic Church, but we are no better when we have one preacher set over thousands of people on several different campuses all connected via satellite and the internet. We just do it on a smaller scale than the Catholics.Viola is right: "The great need today in the body of Christ is to reinstate the headship of Christ. Tragically, all sorts of things have replaced Christ's headship. Church boards, committee meetings, church leaders, church programs, manmade rules and regulations, etc., have often supplanted the headship of Jesus Christ" (75).

As someone who has been at the mercy of these supplanters, I can only say 'amen!' and ask how many other preachers like me have suffered at the hands of these interlopers? How many of us have had our faith wrecked and turned upside down because of such ideas? I couldn't agree more that there must be something better for the church. And Viola may not come right out and say it in the book, but I have a suspicion he would agree that these things are not only killing God's prophets, apostles, and evangelists, but they are also slowly choking the church to death. When a church spends more time in committee talking about 'business' than they spend on their knees seeking the face of God there is a problem. A serious problem. "Christ alone has the right to rule his church--not any human or committee. It is His body, not ours" (76).

I could go on and on about this, but I'm writing a review of a book so I must stop. In that spirit, just a couple of final thoughts.

First, I love the few times that Viola gives us big long lists of things such as things the Holy Spirit is doing, names of the enemy, or the ways in which Jesus is exercising his authority over the church and directing the Work. I seriously believe that if the church took more time to see Jesus for who he is the church would be like Josiah whose architects found the word of God: "When the king heard the words of the book of the Law he tore his robes" (2 Kings 22:11) except that we would be tearing our robes and saying, "That is Jesus?!?!?! Woe is us!"

Second, I read the Nook version of this book (e-pub using Adobe Digital Editions) and I found the book very nicely put together (I only found one typo in the book). I always put in a plug for the Nook version of e-books since the other guys seem to get all the publicity.

I highly recommend this book. Again, it is true that not everyone is going to find agreement at all points, but that's not a bad thing. The author's enthusiasm for Jesus is what comes across in the book and is what, in my opinion, needs to come across. If you are interested in what Jesus is doing now, if you need a spark to your boring church life, or if you need your passion for Jesus reignited, this is a good place to start. And when you are finished reading it, give it to a friend or a preacher or to your entire church board. Do your best to be a catalyst to get the church's eyes turned back to Jesus.

This is an important work for the way in which it redirects our attention to Jesus and away from the wreck we have made of the church which will only be repaired when we fix our eyes on Jesus.

5/5 stars

 

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Book Review: Primal Fire

Book Review: Primal Fire

Title: Primal Fire

Author: Neil Cole

Publisher: Tyndale or TyndaleMomentum

Year: 2014

Pages: 294

Free Study Guide: BookClubHub

Neil Cole on Twitter: @Neil_Cole

Neil Cole Blogs at: Cole-Slaw

Interview with Neil Cole & Frank Viola concerning the Organic Church movement

Alan Hirsch: The Forgotten Ways

[I include this link only because Cole frequently refers to Hirsch. Those who want more information can follow the link. I make no judgments one way or the other.]

[I am required to inform you that the FCC wants you to know I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review here at my blog. I have also uploaded copies of this review to www.amazon.com & www.goodreads.com & www.shelfari.com.]

I spent the better part of 20 years of my life in the church as a 'professional' preacher. It was my life. I have lived and moved among congregations, read books & commentaries by the best scholars, and spent considerable time listening to other preachers and teachers who expounded upon the Scriptures. In short, I love the church and I love listening to those whose calling is to make sense of the church, the Scripture, and how the two relate to one another and, consequently, how the church relates and ministers to the lost and one another.

Today, April 27, 2014, I skipped church and instead stayed home and listened to a sermon by Tim Keller called Everyone with a Gift, based on Romans 12:1-8. It was unintentional. That is, it happened to be next on the list of sermons from Keller I hadn't listened to yet on my iTunes. So I listened to Keller who also announced, at some point during the sermon, that he had been at Redeemer for 22 years and had never preached on Romans 12. What intrigued me was how he began the sermon because the Lord seemed to orchestrate the hearing of this sermon with what I had just finished reading in Neil Cole's Primal Fire. Keller said:

[We are] talking about the kind of church we want to become. We are the kind of church that when you come here you get Gospel ministry. There are pastors, preachers--there are leaders that bering the Gospel to bear on your life and you change and you grow. But we want to become a church in which you don't just come to receive that from a limited number of people, but a church in which everyone is equipped and knows how to give it to one another. Every member Gospel ministry. Every member not just receiving it, but knows how to give it, and how to serve others with it. (My emphasis)

So here is a man, highly respected by all who hear and read and listen to him, who has been preaching at the same place for 22 years, who seemingly all of a sudden realized that the church needed to become something different. Frankly, it makes me respect Keller even more than I did before because within this admission that the church needed to change is an admission that perhaps they had been doing something wrong or at least that they could do things better.

Primal Fire is a strange book for me because I grew up in the church. I mean, there has hardly been a moment in my life when I have not, at some level, been involved in church: altar boy in the Methodist church, preacher in the Christian Churches, Bible College student, member in an Anglican church--and all I have ever seen is a top-down style of church organization: preacher at the top and everyone else at the bottom; scarcely even a pyramid by pyramid standards. When I think about my own time in ministry in the local church, I have no problem at all understanding why I burned out, why I am no longer in ministry. Frankly, I don't know how any man or woman stays in ministry in that sort of environment--you know, the kind where the preacher is the visionary, the preacher, the shepherd, the teacher, the custodian; an elder, a deacon, a prayer warrior, a secretary, and so on and so forth. It is brutal. It is wrong. It is unbiblical.

Yet I also think about those times in my ministries when I tried to change things-- things such as, instead of writing on the Sunday bulletin: Minister: Jerry L. Hillyer we changed it and wrote: Ministers: All the People and then actually to have the nerve to begin the process of helping all the people learn how to serve.  Or like the time when a member of my own family was dying and someone in the church had the audacity to ask me why I wasn't visiting a member of the church who was in the hospital and was going to live when no one was even attempting to minister to us. Or like the time when I thought a change to the order of worship was necessary in order to change the focus of the worship and...well, just use your imagination.

So, Primal Fire. There are points in the book when I find Cole's exegesis a little awkward and there are times when I find his exegesis absolutely brilliant. There are times when I shook my head in disbelief and other times when I shook my fist in glad triumph. There are times when I thought he was splitting a hair and other times when I thought he wasn't going deep enough. Yet, at the end of the book (which, to be sure, I thought was about 25-30 pages too long) I found myself mostly in agreement with the overall point he was attempting to make: "We have allowed [a] worldly and ungodly command-and-control system to infiltrate and dominate the church" (37). He goes on:

The devil himself wants us to remain stuck in the current quagmire of the cosmos. Imagine a Kingdom ruled by Jesus, where each person has direct contact with the King and moves at His impulse. Imagine what our loving and all-knowing Creator could do with a body so responsive to His voice. (37)

I believe Cole is correct: "Jesus didn't die and rise from the dead so that a small portion of the church could possess the authority that comes from a godly life...Jesus didn't bleed and die so that some of us can have a career" (38, 54). I agree and it is sad that in America, at least, we find this to be very much the case. And from my point of view, I'll tell you exactly what it has done: it has created a class of elitist ministers. We have not replicated servants, we have, by and large, sent some folks to the grave early: Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. In the church we talk a lot about this; we scarcely live it out on a day to day basis which is a major reason why many of us leave or are forced out of ministry in the church. On the other hand, perhaps that is entirely the point: now that we are no longer 'professionals' of the church, we can truly be servants. Imagine if that were a part of God's plan all along. So rather than lament the loss of a professional class, perhaps we ought to rejoice in the raising up of true servants who serve the church for no other reason than to equip the saints and bring glory to God--and who do not happen to collect a paycheck for their services.

There are times Cole makes some rather sweeping generalizations that are a bit unfair and might reflect his bias for his own understanding of the church rather than represent actual evidence (maybe). For example, he writes that 'as it stands now, our people are ill-equipped and our churches do not adequately reflect Christ in the world (98).' Frankly, I think this is a bit unfair. If, as Cole himself notes, we do not need to have agreement on what church model or style is appropriate (page 71), then it seems to me that we probably should not sit in judgment of those churches whose model reflects something different than ours. What is important, however, is that each church examine themselves and see if they need to change to a more biblical model. (He also wrote: "The package we call 'church' today is an artificial construct that confines, imbalances, and even ignores gifts" (246). I think this is a bit harsh and a bit too sweeping; although, in many ways it is probably true. The corporate model of church 'leadership' really does hinder the church in many ways, among the ways it does so, is that the church needs more and more and more money to exist.)

There were also times when Cole simply caught me off guard and challenged my preconceived ideas and unmasked some of my theological 'prejudice.' For example, I am rather faithful to my cessationist preconceptions. I have struggled with this aspect of Scripture more than any other (except perhaps women's roles, another aspect of the book where Cole challenged me greatly) in part because of my denominational upbringing and in other parts because I simply have not been privy to such actions on God's part (television preachers have done nothing to lessen my skepticism). It was at this crossroads of skepticism and belief that Cole caught me off guard: "Perhaps if more of us took steps of faith into dangerous places, we too would see God work miraculously" (154). I had to regroup after reading this because I think he nailed it. Maybe the sort of miracles we are looking for are simply not the kind of miracles that God thinks are necessary. Maybe we Christians need to be a lot less concerned about what we can do comfortably without miracles and more willing to do something uncomfortable that requires the God of the Cross who does miracles.

Finally, I like Cole's attention to the short letter to the Ephesians (and other Scripture too, but the book is mostly about Ephesians). I mean to say that he really plowed that letter deep and if there is anything I appreciate in a book, it's a deep plowing of Scripture. If you like such things, you will not be disappointed. I'm not saying that I always agreed with his conclusions, but I am saying that I enjoyed the fact that he kept going back to the text over and over and over again, reworking his thoughts, squeezing more life from the text, looking at it from different angles, developing different 'outlines' of the text, and helping his readers to view it more carefully and thoughtfully each time. It's impossible to come away from the book thinking about Ephesians the same way after reading Primal Fire.

Future editions of the book ought to give serious consideration to including an index and an extensive reference or resource list. I get that the book is meant for a popular audience, but even some popular audiences want to dig deeper and do more research. Also, I seriously think that several of the chapters found at the end of the book (section 3, chapters 16-18) should be their own book and eliminated from this volume (or maybe linked to at an online source) They needed to be deeper, but by the time I got to them, I had read a lot of it already and it became very repetitive.

In Tim Keller's sermon I referenced above, he tells the story about a girl who wanted to be a missionary. She prayed and said to God that she was letting go of her life, giving it to God, and 'taking her hands off her own life.' To make a long story short, she never quite got her way because she realized at some point after all her training that she had never really 'taken her hands off her life' completely. This is a difficult story to swallow because if it means anything it might mean that the church hasn't either--far from merely a personal problem, this might be a larger problem some churches are facing. Maybe Primal Fire is one way of saying to such churches: It's time to take your hands off yourself and truly, passionately, lay down your life for Jesus.

At the end of the day, our lives, are about love. I think this book is pointing us in that direction: "That love is the relational authority that opens doors in conversation and provides the relational connections necessary to the [church's] work" (186). If the church ever truly grasps the significance of the APEST gifts, and every church will have to examine itself to see if the APEST needs more application among them, we must remember to do all things in and with love.

Yeah, that. Love.

4.5/5 Stars