I finished Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna about a month ago.
I can see why people say it’s a controversial book, though I really wasn’t all that shocked by the content at all. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
“If the church is following the life of God who indwells it, it will never produce those nonscriptural practices this book addresses.”
“Almost everything that is done in our contemporary churches has no basis in the Bible.”
“The stunning reality is that today’s sermon has no root in Scripture. Rather, it was borrowed from pagan culture, nursed and adopted into the Christian faith.”
“There is not a single verse in the entire New Testament that supports the existence of the modern-day pastor!”
“Nothing so hinders the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose as does the present-day pastoral role.”
“Therefore, to our minds, these passages show that every Christian has the right to participate in ‘leading worship’ under Christ’s headship.”
“Giving a salary to pastors elevates them above the rest of God’s people. It creates a clerical caste that turns the living body of Christ into a business.”
“The one who plants a first-century-styled church leaves that church without a pastor, elders, a music leader, a Bible facilitator, or a Bible teacher… They will bring their own songs, they will write their own songs, they will minister out of what Christ has shown them–with no human leader present!”
I rarely went to class in university because without fail, I would fall asleep in every single one of them. I’d wake up to some strange pen trail of gibberish and wonder what on earth it was all for.
I tried sitting at the front in hopes the guilt would force me awake, but it turned out guilt just wasn’t enough.
I found that if I kept munching on snacks all through the lecture while carving “I love Lon” on the back of every seat I had a fighting chance (You’ll find hundreds of these if you look hard at McMaster university – many of them were upgraded to I love Don, or I love London, or I love Condoms over time).
Once I bought a hot dog right before class with all the works, but still managed to fall asleep midway through eating it. I woke up to find messy street meat sliding down my jacket!
I’m totally envious of kids these days who can now surf the web throughout class to stay awake.
What does all this say about our modern lectures and learning environments???
I’ve got a few ‘projects’ in the works that I can use some help with…
If you, or someone you know, can help with any of the following contact me.
- I’ve got two web startup ideas that I don’t see being done that would help advance the kingdom – I’m looking for interested individuals with web programming skills.
- I’m hoping to throw a party towards the end of summer… a little Solar Crash Bash… all proceeds going to a water-related cause. If anyone knows of good venues in Toronto or better yet has hook-ups for good deals please let me know.
- I’m also looking for artists of all kinds. I’ve got musicians to magicians lined up… but the more the merrier. Do you, or someone you know, have some latent talent you’d love to share with the world?
- General networking. right at this moment in my life, I’ve got some time for it. For those of you who know me, or follow along on the blog, is there someone you know that you think I should meet, in person or virtually? These days I’m really interested in new expressions of church, community development, the city of Toronto, simpler living and spirituality, the future of the church and planet earth… but really any good conversation will do for me these days. Pop me a message.
If The Ooze hadn’t sent a copy of My Beautiful Idol to review, I probably would not have ever bothered reading it (a 300 page book with no pictures is a bit much for me these days).
But I’m glad I did. Everyone seems to be comparing Pete Gall’s book to Blue Like Jazz since it’s in the spiritual memoir genre. No offense to Donald Miller, but I thought ‘Idol’ was a far better read.
It could just be where I’m at in life right now, but I felt that Pete was just filled with way more self-absorption, more insecurity, more ridiculous stories, and more excuses in life than I’ve ever read about. Some reason stuff like that sells with me these days.
I don’t know how many times I stopped to say to myself, I can’t believe he just wrote that. And I also don’t know how his wife let him get away with writing about all these other women the way he did. With every girl he wrote about I kept flipping to his bio wondering, so is this his wife? …nope. His wife wasn’t even mentioned until the final closing paragraphs of the book. I’m hoping this sets things up for a follow up memoir.
It’s hard to bring up quotes from the book because it’s almost one giant narrative that rarely stops to explain itself. Here’s a few random tidbits…
Things you don’t even know about today are things that I’ll make sure you won’t be able to live without tomorrow
… and idol is a god you can put in your pocket. It’s something you can control, pull out when you need a dose of insurance or magic, and then put away while things click along well. Oh, and an idol will always choose your death over it’s own.
Seminaries are full of salespeople in training
My mother mentioned that she misses being able to brag about me…
We work so overly hard to make God look good that what we say has no credibility at all; we lie about him all the time.
…I want to earn God’s love because I can’t just let it happen without taking him for granted, or maybe I’d hate him if he loved me for no reason.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be quoting anything from the book again, but it’s definitely helped me to become a more honest follower of Jesus.
Finally started going through my dreaded inbox, nothing worse than reading unopened email saying “I really need prayer for…” and “Can you help me decide if i should…” from over a year ago.
My inbox currently sits at 32,767. I’ve deleted thousands already. I gave up on clearing my inbox along time ago, but I have a respond-asap folder that was about 400 long, and I’ve gotten down to 16 at the moment.
Filtering through old email, i found one from DJ (that was starred and about six-months old) on the concept of inbox-zero. I’m convinced this time around I’m going to have a sustainable system that works.
One of the keys is responding to quick notes immediately, a principle from getting-things-done which I’ve never managed to fully adopt (it’s those next-step action items i dislike).
I like the idea of processing or responding to quick emails and getting them out of the way, but sometimes I feel like it speeds up the conversation more than I might want it to. The quicker I respond, the quicker people get back, and the qiucker I need to respond to again. That of course, must be better than completely ignoring things until it’s way too late.
Below is a video of an inbox-zero presentation at Google if you need inspiration.
She was a street kid dealing drugs by smuggling LSD in hollowed out Bibles. She ended up becoming a mother of two and a Mercedes-driving CEO. Her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident and she became an ordained minister of the united church. She’s a big advocate of poverty related issues and just introduced a bill to raise minimum wage to $11 by 2011.
The Toronto Life article closes out by stating “Her politics grow from listening to her inner child – the 15-year-old street kid hoping for a decent chance to turn her life around.”
I finished Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna about a month ago.
