easy to ignore or go crazy about

This new book is a reprinting of an older book from a few years ago under the same title. Frank Viola is a dogmatic (in my opinion) promoter of the house church movement. George Barna, as some of you may be aware, came out with a rather provocative book a couple of years ago entitled Revolution (I may blog about this sometime). Pagan Christianity is Viola's work dressed up and reworked with Barna and offered as a sequel to Revolution.

Viola basically attacks every aspect of the modern institutional church: buildings, clergy/laity distinction, pastors, the sermon, church services, hierarchical leadership structures, special clothing for clergy and Christian gatherings, tithe as clergy salary, etc. He continually points back to 1st century followers of Jesus and how they appear to have functioned as a Spirit led living organic body of believers where all the members contributed to the Body through the various giftings of the Holy Spirit. He rigorously charts the development of the aforementioned aspects of modern church life over the last 2000 years pointing out how they are products of pagan/secular culture being adopted by the church. Then he points out how he believes those things cripple the Body of Christ from being what Jesus really intended His church to be.

I'm only about a 1/3 of my way between the covers and I find myself very mixed about what I'm reading. I'm enjoying the overview of church history that I'm getting. I also am very attracted to perspectives like this as I tend to agree with many of Viola's conclusions (at least to a degree) about how the things mentioned above do appear to water down the richness of life within the community of Jesus' followers. And yet, I struggle with Viola's black and white tone. He seems to paint a picture of the early church being one of perfection and that it's been a downhill slide since. I believe that neither Jesus nor His early followers abstained from using something just because "pagan" hands had touched it (a point Viola does admit to).

I'm trying to figure out how let this book impact my thinking. It's easy to either go crazy with it because of all of its good points, or to throw it out because of the tone.

The church as typically expressed today has lots of problems, but so it always has. I'm not sure if it's most helpful to attempt to tear away the problems seen with it or to seek to infuse possible solutions within it's current way of doing things?