A lovely girl named Lyn did a lovely thing for me. She ordered "Pagan Christianity" and had it shipped to me as a gift! We had been chatting about the book, and other stuff through e-mail and in one of them she ended with "Keep an eye on your mail box, I’ve sent you a gift from Amazon. Love L x." I was shocked! What a sweeeeetheart!
It arrived late yesterday and I've begun reading it this morning. I'm already finding it intriguing and I've yet to leave the preface. Here's a quote that sticks out to me:
"But if the the church is following the life of God who indwells it, it will never produce those nonscriptural practices this book addresses. Such practices are foreign elements that God's people picked up from their pagan neighbours as far back as the fourth century. They were embraced, baptized, and called "Christian". And that is why the church is in the state that it is in today, hampered by endless divisions, power struggles, passivity, and lack of transformation among God's people"In this quote he cites the following essays of his in his footnote:
"The Kingdom, the Church, and Culture"
"What is an Organic Church?"
5 comments:
You're welcome Heidi!
Hi Heidi. This is a good book that Lyn and I are enjoying reading together, although I 'power read' most of it. I think it is good to read some of the critiques online as well. Frank has written a follow up book which is kind of a 'so what now' look at positively being church.
We are praying for you all a Rothesay, especially this month when you are all thinking and praying. We feel that this could be timely with our hoping to be with you all soon. But God knows what He is up to ... sometimes I wish we did too.
God bless,
Jon
Thanks for the admonition to read the critiques, I'll certainly do that. I'm also very much interested in his subsequent book.
Thanks for the prayers for RV too, and interestingly enough, I also had thought about it's timeliness in regards to you guys hopefully joining us!! I hope that day comes soon!
Thanks again for your gift of the book to us!
"Pagan" is a great book-I love the quote you highlighted. Thought you might be interested to know that the sequel to “Pagan Christianity?” is out now. It’s called “Reimagining Church”. It picks up where “Pagan Christianity” left off and continues the conversation. (“Pagan Christianity” was never meant to be a stand alone book; it’s part one of the conversation.) “Reimagining Church” is endorsed by Leonard Sweet, Shane Claiborne, Alan Hirsch, and many others. You can read a sample chapter at
http://www.ReimaginingChurch.org .
It’s also available on Amazon.com. Frank is also blogging now at http://www.frankviola.wordpress.com .
Thanks Jilliefl1, I do hope to get his follow up book after this one. The footnotes in this book are an adventure in reading in itself!
Thanks for his blog URL, I'll have to sub to it.
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