Tell us a bit about yourselves … How did you end up where you are, serving God and bearing fruit for Him?

George: I began by managing political campaigns for people running for Congress and other elective offices. I enjoyed the speech writing and survey research most, so I returned to grad school to get more degrees in research, then began working for a large marketing research firm. One of our clients was a Christian media management company, which eventually hired me to run their research and marketing operations. After several years, my wife and I felt called to begin a company that provided strategic information for ministry leaders. Consequently, we returned to California to start The Barna Research Group in an effort to provide current, accurate and reliable information in bite-sized pieces, at affordable costs, to ministries so that they could make better strategic decisions. Along the way I’ve had the privilege of writing books that allow us to disseminate the information to a wider audience, along with all the articles and other free information we post on our website (www.barna.org). I’ve also been able to serve various roles in churches, from teaching pastor at a megachurch to founding elder in a church plant, and currently, as the leader and teacher in a house church.

Frank: After I retired from Major League pitching, I quickly became bored. So I started writing controversial Christian books J. Just kidding. Ever since I’ve been a Christian, I’ve questioned the things we do and sought to evaluate them by the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. This has led me on an interesting journey, one that has landed me on a path that many have called “the deeper Christian life” which includes a fresh understanding and experience of the church.

As for serving God, I had many opportunities to publically serve the Lord in my 20s, but I came to conclusion that I wasn’t ready. I first needed to know Christ deeply, and I needed to understand His church experientially. Therefore, I spent my 20s learning those two things: Jesus Christ and the experience of the body of Christ.

Most of my peers were doing something different. They were taking leadership positions in parachurch organizations, some became pastors, some missionaries, etc. When we all hit the age of 30, something telling happened. Most of them burned out and a number of them aren’t even following the Lord today. When I was 31 years old, the organic church of which I was a part laid hands on me and sent me out to begin the work of planting organic churches. And I’ve been engaged in it ever since.

Guys, I guess it is fair to say that Pagan Christianity is causing a bit of a stir. Maybe even more so now that George Barna’s name has been added to the second edition of this book. How, and why, did you two work together for the second edition of Pagan Christianity?

Frank: When George discovered the book and expressed interest in publishing it, I was thrilled because this meant that the message would get out to a much wider audience. George, being a seminal researcher, also added a good bit to it and made it a stronger and more compelling book. I’m very pleased that the book continues to change lives. So many have written to us saying the same thing, “I always knew that there was more to Jesus Christ and His church than what I have experienced. Thank God I’m not out of my mind!”

George: When I was writing the book, Revolution, I searched high and low for a book that described how the conventional church became what it is today. I couldn’t find such a book. After Revolution was published, one reader sent me a note asking if I had read a book called Pagan Christianity. I’d never heard of it but got a copy and realized it contained much of the information I had searched for in vain. We contacted Frank and discussed the possibility of producing a revised version, which is what Tyndale has published. Frank did an amazing quantity and quality of research that forms the foundation of the book, and I was able to add a few insights to the revised edition.

It looks like a meticulously well-researched book on which you spend an enormous amount of time. How long did it take to write the book?

Frank: Ever since I’ve been a Christian I’ve studied church history. My feeling is that if we don’t know the past, we are doomed to repeat its mistakes. As Hegel once said, “The only thing that history has taught us is that men learn nothing from it.” I would like to see that trend broken. Nonetheless, the initial research for this particular book took around four or five years. When George and I collaborated, it took around a year for us to put the new version together.

After reading the book, I am sure that many people will want to experience Church like Jesus wants us to be the Church. Leaving the institution and establishing a gathering of disciples at someone’s house is not an easy process. Do you have any advice for these followers of Jesus?

Frank: Yes, I’ve written a very practical article that answers this very question. It’s called “Finding Organic Church” and it can be freely downloaded at www.ptmin.org/findingchurch.pdf

George: My own experience has been that as you talk to people about matters of faith, their hopes, dreams and experiences become evident. It was fairly easy for us to initiate our house church simply by listening to other people who were frustrated with their experience in a conventional church. We asked several families if they would be interested in exploring an alternative way of being the Church rather than just going to a church event every week, started by spending a few months studying the Bible’s teaching about what it means to be part of the Church, and then organized our community around the things we had learned. Through the studies conducted by The Barna Group on house churches across the nation, we’ve found that one of the most challenging aspects is having a good leader to keep things focused and organized. We have been fortunate in that regard.

To George: What books are you working on now and how will they help move Christians forward from the things you’ve written in Revolution and Pagan Christianity?

George: In May I will have a book release entitled The Seven Faith Tribes that delves into the seven dominant faith groups in America, and challenges us to rethink how we are attempting to be good citizens at the same time that we try to integrate our fundamental faith principles into our lifestyle and have a positive influence on the world for Christ. The old strategies don’t work in this new world, but there are strategies that will produce spiritual fruit. In June I have a book, co-authored with Tony and Felicity Dale, entitled The Rabbit and The Elephant, describing how to get involved in a healthy simple church. In September I’ll have a book entitled Master Leader, which draws insights into leadership from more than two dozen of the best leaders in the country. The leaders I’ve interviewed for that book come from ministry, government, business, military, education, sports and entertainment. It has been mind-boggling getting inside the heads of these incredible leaders.

To Frank: We see from other materials that you recommend an apostle or worker visiting the house church after an Aquila, Priscilla type of role has been fulfilled by some starters. What if we are in Africa, and we can’t get a worker or apostle to visit, indefinitely? What should we do then?

Frank: I’ve never seen a situation where those who sought apostolic help didn’t get it. One of my coworkers has been to Africa, for example. Another brother and I are planning to go there next year in fact J. I read the NT once and somewhere in there it says, “you receive not because you ask not.” The truth is that lots of groups don’t receive apostolic help because they have never invited an extra-local worker to visit them.

If, however, a group asks for extra-local help and every person they invite says “I can’t come at this time,” I believe the Lord will sustain them until they get sufficient help. That’s been my experience anyway.

In your opinion, is it at all possible to move closer to an organic house gathering with a few Christian friends while staying involved with the institution?

Frank: Yes, it is. However, according to my experience, once God’s people touch and experience true, authentic organic church life, they have little time for institutional church programs and services. (Many people, quite frankly, lose interest in such things after they experience body life for a while. Instead, they are wrecked to know and express Christ in the setting of Christian community.) Properly understood and experienced, organic church is a shared-life together. It’s not a once or twice a week “event,” and there are only so many hours in a week. I trust that makes sense.

George: Our research shows that currently, most of the people involved in various types of organic churches have kept one foot in the conventional church world. As Frank indicates, it’s a difficult balancing act to pull off successfully because it’s not simply about attending events and programs, but about a commitment to a community. More often than not, the balancing act lasts only as long as necessary to ensure the individual that he/she has found a healthy faith community, at which time they make the transition from their old place to a new community.

To George: What trends do you see happening among those who remain a part of the institutional church, among pastors, and among Christians who are gathering in alternative forms of churches?

George: Among the trends of interest are:

• the changing of the guard in Christian leadership, away from the spokespeople of the past 25 years to a new group of leaders, in addition to the transition in local church leadership to an increasing percentage of pastors who are under 40 and a growing number of female senior pastors in conventional churches;
• the increasing percentage of people are sampling alternative forms of church meeting;
• the aggressive marketing of atheists;
• the shifting moral and ideological positions of the born again community, largely driven by the under-40 crowd and emboldened by the Obama victory;
• the rapid growth of church franchising, through the multi-campus model adopted by many megachurches;
• the rise in ecumenism, again driven by young adults, in which increasing numbers of people believe that all of the major faiths essentially believe the same thing;
• the challenge of raising up strong leaders to lead organic churches. There is more interest in participating in a house church than there are leaders who are capable of facilitating the meetings of the growing numbers of people who are inclined to test those waters;and the increasing media addiction, especially among children and adolescents, that is altering the nature of relationships, life goals and scheduling.

To Frank: I have read Reimagining Church about halfway through. I think after reading Pagan Christianity, people are in dire need of some very practical advice on how to move forward.

Frank: To my mind, there’s another step that must be taken if we will see lasting change. We Westerners want formulas, quick solutions, and five steps before we even understand the problem and the solution. We think in terms of add water and stir, even when we don’t grasp the bigger picture. It’s for this reason that many movements crash and burn within five years.

Pagan Christianity was only one part of the argument – a very introductory part. It deconstructed what we do in our churches today, exposing their roots and challenging their spiritual value. Reimagining Church begins the second part of the argument, which answers the question: “Okay, if the modern institutional church doesn’t map to God’s original intention, then what does a church look like that does? If the institutional church was never God’s perfect idea, then what should stand in its place?”

Reimagining Church is a positive answer to that question. It roots the practice of the church in both the NT and the Trinity. It also gives practical examples of what it looks like in our day and time. It paints a picture of the main characteristics of organic church life that will always be present if the church is truly organic, despite time, culture, or location.

Let me give you an analogy of what I’m talking about. Consider a puzzle. You can’t easily put a puzzle together without looking at the picture on the box. Pagan Christianity pointed out that the picture on the box was wrong. So that’s why the pieces weren’t fitting together. Reimagining Church presents a new picture for the box, one that I believe is painted by the New Testament narrative. The book isn’t trying to reconstruct a first century church for the 21^st century. Instead, it describes the main features of “the organic expression of the church” that will always emerge regardless of space or time. That’s because it’s rooted in the eternal Trinity and the timeless teachings of Jesus.

Now, here’s the problem. Many Christians want to start putting the puzzle together before they’ve even seen the picture on the box. The result is that the pieces still won’t fit together. So the temptation is to try and force them to fit into what we have previously known in organized Christianity.

Example: Sometimes I get emails from people who have read Pagan Christianity, but not the follow-up book. They hit the ground running only to hit a brick wall. They tell me, “We’ve started an organic church and we’re having this problem and that problem, etc.” However, when they describe their “church” to me, it’s not organic at all. It’s just another version of performance-based, duty-driven, institutional, clergy-led Christianity. When these same people read Reimagining Church, they respond by saying, “Oh, now I get it. I just read the deconstruction without first understanding the construction.”

That’s where we should begin. We begin with what Paul called “the heavenly vision.” Without a vision, the people disintegrate (Proverbs says). So let’s first get an understanding of what organic church life is before we put our fallen hands to the plow of trying to create such a thing ourselves. Let’s first remove the old garments of Babylon and behold the city of Jerusalem before we begin rebuilding her walls. If not, we will unwittingly repeat what we know in institutional Christianity. I’ve seen it too many times to count.

Right now, I’m working on a very practical book that gets into the “putting the pieces together” part. It’s a discussion on how churches were planted in the NT, and how those principles can and should be reclaimed today.

Again, we Westerners want all of this reduced to five steps. A flower doesn’t grow into full bloom in a day. It takes planting, watering, time and patience. This is one reason why there is so much superficiality and shallowness in much of Christianity today. I was speaking at a conference recently and many 20 and 30 year olds attended. One of my coworkers and I met with them for lunch, and we had a great conversation. Some of them said that the thing that drew them to organic church life was the depth, the purity, the Christ-centeredness, and the authenticity. The churches, parachurch organizations, and mission organizations they all knew were shallow, superficial, and in many respects, unreal. Those are their words.

On the heels of all that, some of my friends have created a website for those who are asking practical questions: www.HouseChurchResource.org. It’s only been up for about a year, but the site is connecting thousands of Christians throughout the world in this new move of God and helping to plant new churches that gather under the headship of Jesus Christ all throughout the world. As I explained in a recent article entitled The 8 Characteristics of the Current Move of God, we are in the beginning stages of this work. And it’s very exciting.

Once a person has read your books, and moved away from the institution, planted a house church, and gotten to know each other well, how do we become missional? How do we really impact our community in a way that Jesus would have done?

George: It’s a matter of volitional obedience. You do not become missional by getting into a program or by developing events that have an external orientation. The foundation is to have a heart dedicated to God and His principles, which include an outward, service-oriented perspective. One of the reasons America has so few missional churches is because they contain so few people who are truly sold out to the purposes and principles of Christ. In that regard, every community of faith, regardless of its nature or structure, faces the same challenges: facilitating the transformation of people’s minds and hearts. To become more missional requires accountability for one’s commitment; leadership that focuses us on the core scriptural principles through modeling, through vision, and through applauding people’s investment in missional endeavors; teaching that underscores the fundamental values of our faith; and a community dedicated to being the Church that Christ died for, in all of its biblical aspects. These needs are the same, no matter what type of faith community we discuss, conventional or organic.

Frank: Mission begins with understanding God’s eternal purpose. There is no mission outside of that. The Missio Dei is nothing other than God’s eternal purpose (Eph. 3:11).

God’s purpose goes beyond saving souls and helping the poor and oppressed. It’s much higher than that, and it goes beyond the meeting of human needs (though it includes it). It has to do with satisfying something in the burning heart of God Himself. I dedicate an entire chapter on the eternal purpose in Reimagining, and my next book will discuss it in great detail.

The churches that I’m in relationship with are truly missional in that:

1. They understand that God’s mission is His eternal purpose, which is God-centered rather than man-centered. Bringing lost people to Jesus Christ has a higher goal than simply preparing them for heaven or motivating them to get other people saved.
2. They understand that God’s mission is fulfilled not by human efforts, trying to do good works, getting people motivated by religious duty and obligation, but by living by the indwelling life of Jesus Christ. How did Jesus fulfill God’s mission in His earthly days? Christ learned how to live by an indwelling Father. That’s how He did it. He would often say, “Without my Father, I can do nothing … it’s not me, but the Father doing it.” And then He turned around and said to us, “Without me you can do nothing.” In the same way, a “missional” church that will bear fruit that has eternal value is learning how to live by an indwelling Christ. Unfortunately, many Christians have never been taught how to live by Christ, and so they are trying to serve God in their own strength.
3. They understand that mission is not focused on the individual or individual discipleship, but on the life of Christ being shared and expressed by a local community that is learning how to live and meet under Christ’s headship. So the real question comes down to: What is mission according to the New Testament, and what is the vehicle for its fulfillment?

The answer: A) God’s eternal purpose and B) learning to live by an indwelling Christ in the context of Christian community that gathers by, through, and to Jesus Christ alone. These two themes were neglected in the first missional movement of the 1970s. And that’s one main reason why it died and gave way to the seeker-sensitive movement. Yet the root and goal of both was the same: The central focus was the meeting of human needs instead of God’s ageless purpose and ultimate passion.

Today we are in a second wave of the missional movement, which has some of its own unique nuances to match our postmodern world. My hope and plea is this: let’s not repeat the mistakes of the first missional movement, but identify and correct them.

If we will make mistakes, let’s make new ones.

Frank’s website is www.ptmin.org
George’s website is www.barna.org

When the ascension gifts emerge organically in a church, their chief function is to nurture and encourage the believing community toward spiritual maturity, unity, and every-member functioning.

I will now try to demystify the so-called “five-fold ministry” and discuss how each of the ascension gifts probably functioned in the first century:

Apostles

Apostles were extra-local, traveling, itinerant church planters. They were highly gifted individuals who were sent by the Lord and by a particular church to plant and equip new churches. Apostles enabled the church by giving it birth, raising it from the ground up. They also helped it walk on its own two feet. Apostles grew up in an organic expression of church life as nonleaders before they were sent out to plant churches of the same kind. And they always left the churches they planted on their own without administration or ritual.

Prophets

Prophets were people who had a clear vision of Jesus Christ and who were able to articulate it lucidly. Prophets enabled the church by speaking to it the present word of the Lord. Sometimes their words would simply reveal Christ to encourage, inspire, and comfort. Other times their words would cast spiritual vision. Prophets sought to restore God’s will whenever it had been lost. They sometimes confirmed the gifts and callings of other members and prepared the church for future trials.

Evangelists

Evangelists enabled the church by modeling the preaching of the good news to the lost. They were fearless souls who possessed an extraordinary boldness to share Christ with nonbelievers. And they had a genuine passion for the unsaved. The closest equivalent to an evangelist today is a natural-born salesman (an honest one of course).

Shepherd/Teachers

Shepherd/teachers are two sides of the same gift. In Ephesians 4:11, the apostles, prophets, and evangelists are mentioned separately, while shepherds and teachers are joined together. Further, the first three ministries (apostles, prophets, and evangelists) are preceded by the word “some.” But the word “some” is attached to shepherds and teachers together. This indicates that shepherds/teachers are one gift.

The chief task of the shepherds/teachers was to help the church in times of personal crisis (shepherding) and to enlighten and cultivate the church’s spiritual life by revealing Christ through the exposition of Scripture (teaching). Shepherding was the private side of their ministry, teaching was the public side. The closest equivalent to a first-century shepherd/elder is a modern-day Christian counselor who is capable of teaching.

None of the ascension gifts dominated the meetings of the church. They were simply brothers and sisters in the body carrying out certain functions. In that connection, you would never see a first-century Christian sporting titles like “Apostle Delaquarius Epps,” “Prophetess Pamela Jones,” or “Evangelist Tarianna Dunson.” As we’ve already established, the use of honorific titles and offices were unknown to the early Christians.

Answering the Call

The burden of my heart is to see God’s people far less concerned with a “five-fold ministry” that’s supposed to be recovered someday and instead, focus their attention on discovering what the church is supposed to be according to the mind of God. Upon making this discovery, the Lord’s dear people will be faced with a decision. To answer the call of meeting around Jesus Christ alone in the way that He has prescribed. Or to remain chained to the unmovable traditions of men.

If the former path is taken, it will involve considerable cost. But all the giftings in Christ will eventually come forth in the way that He designed organically. And those gifts will never usurp or dilute the ministry of the entire body.

Would to God that all men and women who feel called to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds/teachers would soberly reexamine what these ministries were in the first century and in the thought of God. I believe that when this happens, many of them will be led into brand new directions. And those directions will undoubtedly lead them to break with cherished traditions and popular concepts. Yet only by these elements will the house of God begin to be restored on a broad scale.

The Peril of a Wrong Environment

So what happens when gifted Christians are reared in a human organization built on unbiblical systems rather than growing up naturally in an organic expression of the body of Christ? To put it another way, what happens when a gifted Christian’s only experience is in the modern institutional church?

The answer? Mixture with a capital M.

Add to that a footnote: Malfunction.

What happens when you remove polar bears out of their natural habitat? If they survive (and some do not), they don’t function as God designed. They lose their ability to reproduce.

What happens when lions are caged and domesticated from birth? They lose their predatory and killer instincts. They lose something of the natural functioning with which God wired them.

Over the past decade, I’ve met scores of men who were self-proclaimed prophets and apostles. Some were genuinely gifted. Some had the gift of teaching. Others had authentic gifts of healing. Others had a genuine operation of the word of knowledge.

But most lacked any real depth in Christ and very little experience in embracing His cross.

Why is this? Because of the institution that raised them up. Or, in some cases, because they raised themselves up in isolation from other Christians. (The latter is an equally abnormal environment for a Christian to be nurtured in.)

To put it in a sentence, such men didn’t grow up in their proper habitat. Few if any of them grew up in organic body life where they were simply brothers among other brothers. Few if any spent any time in a New Testament expression of church life where their weaknesses and blindspots were exposed to others. Instead, most were part of several institutional churches and launched out into independent ministry on their own. As Watchman Nee once observed, “The tragedy in Christian work today is that so many of the workers have simply gone out, they have not been sent.”

The New Testament never envisions such a situation.

To place my concern into a question, where are the churches that the “new apostles” have planted that are gathering under the headship of Jesus Christ without a clergy, where the members know one another deeply and are experiencing a depth in Christ, where decisions are made by consensus, and where every member functions in the meetings without any man controlling, directing, facilitating, or dominating?

Still more disappointing, every titled “apostle” in the new apostolic movement that I know of fiercely defends those church practices that are rooted in pagan tradition and have been hindering the headship of Jesus Christ and the full functioning of His body for the last eighteen hundred years. (If you don’t understand that last sentence, I refer you to my book, Pagan Christianity.) For these reasons, I’m monumentally unimpressed with the “new apostolic movement.”

Running the Cart Over the Horse

So is God going to restore “the five-fold ministry”? To my mind, that’s the wrong question. It’s pushing the cart before the horse. The ascension gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4 are gifted people that God gives to the body of Christ as gifts.They are the natural outgrowth and by-product of organic church life.

All in all, there are twenty gifts mentioned in the New Testament.  If a group of believers gathers around Jesus Christ alone (rather than a doctrine, a theological system, or a ritual) —and they are void of a clergy system— —then that group will eventually produce all the gifts and gifted ones that exist within the body of Christ.

It’s no mistake that Paul uses the human physical body as an apt metaphor to describe the way the body of Christ functions. When a baby girl is born, most of her physical capabilities are not present. She can’t ride a bicycle, add and subtract numbers, or eat with a fork and knife.

However, within her body, she possesses the genetic codes that will produce the physical development by which to carry out these capabilities. If she is fed and nurtured properly, in time, these abilities will naturally develop within her. She will organically grow into them. Why? Because they are organic to her species as a human being. They are the product of human life.

In the same way, when an organic church is born, it possesses within its spiritual DNA all of the giftings that are in Jesus Christ. But it takes time for them to develop and emerge. (Unfortunately, we live in a day when many ministers don’t seem to understand this spiritual principle. Hence, they try to force the exercise of gifts and ministries in the body prematurely.)

What is needed, then, is not a restoration of the so-called “five-fold ministry.” What’s needed is the restoration of organic church life. And that is what God is seeking to restore today as He has in every generation.

Therefore, if we can discover how a church is born from God’s perspective and how it is to be nurtured and maintained, then we will see a restoration of all the gifts that are in Christ in the way that they were meant to be expressed.

Since I’ve been meeting in organic churches over the last twenty years, I’ve made a startling discovery: The gifts of the Holy Spirit function very differently in an organic expression of the church than they do in the institutional church. The gift of prophecy, for example, that comes up out of the soil of authenticb life looks profoundly different from the way it’s packaged in the typical Pentecostal/Charismatic church. (The latter is largely based on imitating others.)

In the 1980s, I was part of a spontaneous expression of organic church life. Most of us who were gathering at that time came from the Pentecostal/Charismatic tradition. We functioned freely in spiritual gifts as they were modeled to us by that tradition. A number of years later a group whose background was anti-Pentecostal/Charismatic joined us, and we had a first-class dilemma on our hands.

After a blood-letting church split, the Lord graciously showed us that both groups needed to lay down their beliefs and practice of spiritual gifts and leave them at the foot of the cross.Though it was difficult, we let our ideas and practice of the gifts go into death. In a year’s time, something remarkable happened.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit were resurrected in our gatherings. However, they looked very different from what any of us had ever before seen. The Pentecostal/Charismatic packaging was utterly stripped away. And what was left was a pure expression of the Holy Spirit that glorified, unveiled, and lifted up the Lord Jesus Christ. As a result, the two groups came into a unified experience of the Holy Spirit’s work.

Consequently, the pressing question is: Are we going to get serious about discovering how to gather around Jesus Christ in an organic way? Or are we going to blithely ignore New Testament principle and for the next two hundred years continue to hope (and prophesy) that “the five-fold ministry” will one day be restored?

Again, God’s way of raising up the ascension gifts is by restoring organic body life. The ascension gifts don’t magically appear because someone writes a book prophesying that they’re just around the corner. Nor should we assume that they’re restored when someone claims to be the “First,” the “Last,” or the “New Apostle.”

Authentic apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherd/teachers are gifted members who grow up in organic churches–not as leaders, but as brethren–equal in status to everyone else in the church. Because they have grown up out of the soil of church life, they have been tested and proven safe to the Kingdom of God and to the Lord’s children. Their outstanding landmark is that they glorify, reveal, present, magnify, and bring into clear view the Lord Jesus Christ in unusual depths and practical experience.

This is the heritage of the Ephesians 4 ascension gifts. It was true for all apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds/teachers in the first century. And Jesus Christ has not changed (Heb. 13:8).

Undoubtedly, some who have read this book are wondering: “Frank, do you believe in ‘the five-fold ministry’? And do you believe God is restoring ‘the five-fold ministry’ mentioned in Ephesians Chapter 4?” In this appendix, I would like to answer that question.

First off, my answer is largely hinged on what one means by “the five-fold ministry.” In other words, what “five-fold ministry” are we talking about? Are we talking about the two-hundred-year old doctrine of the restoration of “the five-fold ministry?” Or are we talking about the ascension gifts that Paul had in mind when he penned Ephesians 4:9–16?

The Making of a Doctrine

In nineteenth-century England, Christians were ripe to embrace apocalyptic prophecies about the coming Millennial Age. The upheaval that the French Revolution produced left God’s people wishing for a reign of peace that would set all things right.

In the year 1824, Edward Irving, a Presbyterian pastor in Scotland, began teaching that “the five-fold ministry” of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers had disappeared from the church and were in need of restoration. According to Irving, the restoration of these ministries would usher in the Millennial Kingdom of Christ on the earth.

Irving and his followers began the Catholic Apostolic Church in 1832. Its chief purpose was to restore “the five-fold ministry” and usher in the Millennial Kingdom. The Church ordained twelve “apostles” who were to be the last days equivalent of the original Twelve whom Jesus appointed. Henry Drummond, a wealthy banker from England, became the leader of the Church. Drummond himself took the highest position—“apostle to Scotland.”

It was prophesied that these twelve apostles would be the last apostles to appear on earth before Christ’s return. (This is a throwback to Mani of Persia of the third century who labeled himself the “Apostle of Light”—the very last apostle of Jesus.)

Eventually the twelve apostles of the Catholic Apostolic Church died (the last one dying in 1901). Upon their death, the Church expired in England. In Germany, however, the Catholic Apostolic Church ordained twelve more apostles and took the name the “New Apostolic Church.”

In 1896, an erstwhile Congregational minister named John Alexander Dowie founded the Christian Catholic Church. In 1901, with five thousand followers, Dowie established the “City of Zion” in north-east Illinois. In 1904, Dowie revealed that he had been divinely commissioned to be the “First Apostle.” He then told his followers to anticipate the full restoration of apostolic Christianity. In 1906, the community of believers in the City of Zion began to break down. And Dowie passed away the following year.

Following the famed Azusa Street revival in 1906 in Los Angeles, California, the emphasis on the restoration of “the five-fold ministry” and “a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit just before the return of Christ” reappeared. And a new generation of apostles emerged. Luigi Francescon (“apostle to Italy”), Ivan Voronaev (“apostle to the Slavs”), and T.B. Barratt (“apostle to Europe”) were just some of them. Pentecostal denominations in Wales, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States elected and ordained colleges of apostles to govern their denominations.

As the years rolled on, the restoration of “the five-fold ministry” doctrine somewhat faded. But it reemerged again with a revival spawned at Sharon Orphanage in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1948. The “New Order of the Latter Rain” movement, as it was called, was prophesied to restore “the five-fold ministry” to prepare for “the manifestation of the sons of God” on the earth.

But when the waters of revival receded, the restoration of “the five-fold ministry” doctrine faded again until it was resuscitated in the Charismatic Movement of the late 1960s. In the late 70s, the doctrine’s flame began to dim again until a group of men resurrected it with new fervor in the mid-1990s.

In 1996, Peter Wagner led a conference at Fuller Theological Seminary entitled National Symposium on the “Post-Denominational Church.” This conference produced a new movement called the “New Apostolic Movement,” which Wagner claims is sweeping the globe with a new way of doing church. The churches who are part of this movement are being labeled “New Apostolic Churches.”

In 1999, Wagner sought to organize the movement under the name “International Coalition of Apostles” with Wagner as the “Presiding Apostle.” The movement claims to be restoring “the five-fold ministry” today.

Parenthetically, the churches in the new apostolic movement are vanilla Charismatic institutional churches replete with the office of modern pastor (now called “apostle”), Sunday sermons, pulpit, pews, church buildings, the five hundred year-old order of worship, music led by a worship team, etc.

Point: The doctrine of the restoration of “the five-fold ministry” is over 180 years old. And it’s been repackaged from movement to movement.

I’m looking forward to 2009. I believe it’s going to be an important year for the church of Jesus Christ.

In August, I was privileged to be one of the speakers at a conference for Christians who gather outside the institutional church. Some of the other speakers were Tony & Felicity Dale, Paul Young, Wolfgang Simpson, John White, and Jon Zens.

In one of the leadership sessions, I gave a very short talk in which I stated that I’m not someone who goes around saying that there’s a new move of God happening in our day. In fact, for the last two years I’ve heard many others say this, but I’ve suspended judgment. I then announced that I’m now forced to say that I am convinced that we are in the beginnings of a new move of God.

Please note that I believe that God is up to many things. And He’s using all sorts of movements, “conversations,” etc. in various ways to bring His people to His final and ultimate goal.

In this article, however, I’ll be focusing on one particular move of God that has taken place in two different phases, or currents, thus far. Both of these currents have occurred outside the organized church in the West.

1. The first current occurred in the late 60s and early 70s. By 1979, it had all but died.
2. The second current began in the late 80s and early 90s.

This brings me to the reason why I’m excited about 2009.

It’s because we are just now beginning to see a third current of God’s move in the United States (and other Western countries) where Christians are leaving the institutional church structure (in record numbers) and discovering the living, breathing, headship of Jesus Christ in an organic, collective way without a clergy.

The landscape is changing rapidly. God is raising up new voices and new expressions of the church which look very different from the traditional expression.

According to my travels, my observations, and my correspondence, eight main features appear to be marking this third current. They are as follows:

1. A genuine revelation and experience of an indwelling Lord.

Many Christians are being awakened to the fact that Jesus Christ dwells inside of them, and that He seeks to be everything to them. Some movements today emphasis the historical Jesus and seek to provoke Christians to try to imitate the Jesus of history. But in this third current, God’s people are discovering that the historical Jesus has taken up residence within them. He is resurrected, glorified, enthroned and has become a life-giving Spirit. Consequently, we can actually live by His indwelling life. Not as a theory, a doctrine, a positional truth, but as a reality.

2. A recapturing of a spiritual vocabulary to reflect a unique experience.

Ephesians Chapters 1-3 are littered with a vocabulary that few Christians use today. This vocabulary emanates from a mind. And that mind is characterized by the capacity to see the unseen and to declare as present fact heavenly realities that exist outside the constraints of created time. Realities that are not just doctrinal or theological, but experiential. This vocabulary is being restored in this third current.

3. Meeting together for a very high and noble purpose.

That purpose is to display the living Christ who indwells the church. The third current is being marked by church gatherings— not as services, not as platforms for sermonizing, not as pastor-led or priest-led orders of worship, not as Bible studies, and not as liturgies— but to make visible a living Christ by His every-member functioning Body where principalities and powers are put to shame. This aspect of church meetings, where every member is participating under the headship of Christ, is little understood today. But it’s beginning to gain traction in this new current.

4. An incredible Christ-centeredness in the thinking, life and vocabulary of God’s people.

This new current is marked by the centrality of Christ. Jesus Christ is being put in His place. He is being given His rightful position of centrality, supremacy, and preeminence.

This Christ-centeredness is being reflected in conversation. (That’s how the first believers got the name “Christian,” by the way. They were always speaking about Christ. ) This  Christ-centeredness is being reflected in songs. This Christ-centeredness is being reflected in ministry.

Our message is Christ. It’s not about how to be a better person, how to serve God more, how to do better and be good. It’s instead marked by a revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ along with practical help on how to know Him deeply. Out of that flows everything else, including the church’s mission.

5. An experience of close-knit community.

This is becoming an experience, rather than a buzzword. Believers who know church as community do not think merely as individuals. They do not think in terms of “me” or “I.” Instead, they think and live in terms of “we” and “us.” To their minds, there is no disconnect between getting saved and being part of the community of believers. This element is a restoration of the New Testament Christian mindset.

If you were a pagan in the first century, you knew that becoming a Christian meant being initiated into a shared-life community. It meant losing your raw individualism and your rugged independence. It meant becoming part of the people of God. Not as an abstract doctrine, but as a way of life. You became part of something larger than yourself—a new culture in which you lived your life. For that reason, the early Christian movement was called “the Way” (Acts 19:9, 23; 24:14, 22). It wasn’t a belief system; it was a way of life.

Let’s face it. Western Christians have inherited an individualistic Christianity with an individualistic salvation and an individualistic walk with God. A Christian publisher recently told me that there are about 45,000 evangelical Christian titles in print and about 5,000 that are published every year. 95% or more of those books are addressed to you as an individual Christian. And the underlining point of those books is what you must do as an individual to be a better Christian.

But there is no such concept in the mind of God. Christianity has always been a corporate experience and a corporate reality. The individual Christian mind was born during the Reformation, driven into the ground during the Enlightenment, and set in concrete for the last several hundred years. But the New Testament knows no such mindset. This, I believe, is an important recovery.

6. An understanding of the reality of being “in Christ.”

Like the early Christians, those in this third current are being pulled loose from a “works” mentality, liberated from a guilt complex, and set free from a sense of religious duty.

If you open up the New Testament letters, you will find that Paul always addresses the churches he planted (despite what they were going through) with the arresting phrase “holy ones.” He saw them holy “in Christ.” And the recipients of Paul’s letters clearly understood what Paul was saying, because he didn’t give much explanation for it.

I want to give you a testimony of how this mindset is being recaptured in this new current. Not long ago, a sister in a Christ-centered organic church stood up in a meeting and gave a testimony. She said,

“I have been raised a Christian since I was a child. I’ve been meeting with you all for about a year now. I was listening to the Christian radio, as I sometimes do, and a song came on. The singer was singing about how unworthy she was and how she needed to try harder to please God. She sang that her righteousness was as filthy rags, and she needed to improve her spiritual walk. I paused and suddenly realized that I couldn’t relate to that song anymore. I couldn’t relate to it because I’ve been given new eyes to see myself in Christ. For many years I struggled with a sense of unworthiness, guilt, and condemnation. But that’s all gone now. I don’t have it anymore, and I feel so free in the Lord’s love.”

When she shared this testimony, the room erupted and others began to testify along the same lines. It was an awesome experience. I believe this sister had laid hold of the same spiritual reality that the first Christians had laid hold of.

To add another illustration, a few years ago one organic church did an interesting experiment. They broke up into pairs and visited the various institutional churches in town for two solid weeks. And they decided to analyze the sermons they heard.

When they came back to report, they made this striking observation: every sermon they heard had the same essential message. It was this: “What you are doing isn’t enough to please God. You need to do more than you’re doing. You need to read your Bible more, pray more, help people more, come to church more, etc. You need to do better than the best you can do.”

This is the script upon which most contemporary sermons are built. It is a gospel of duty—pure and simple.

Interestingly, it was observed that these same churches give a very different message to the non-Christian. It sounds like this: “God loves you the way you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, His love is unconditional. Jesus died for you because He loves you without condition. You can’t please God. Your good works are as filthy rags. But God will receive you as perfect if you come to Christ. So receive Him today.”

Ah . . . but once those same people receive Christ and “get saved,” the “bait and switch” gospel kicks in with a passion. Here’s what it sounds like:

“Now that you’re a Christian, here’s what you must do to please God. You must try harder, you must do more, you must work harder, God won’t be pleased with you if you don’t do such and such, etc.”

A question that every Christian should ask when listening to a sermon or a message is this: “Am I hearing about the glories of Jesus Christ or am I being told what to do to be a better Christian?” The latter is a duty-based gospel – it’s legalism in one form or another. It’s eating from the wrong tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the luring counterfeit for the tree of life. Note that the forbidden tree contains the knowledge of good.

According to the New Testament, good works are like fruit that falls off of a tree spontaneously as the result of life. In the same way, Christians naturally walk in good works with others as they learn to live by God’s life.

In this connection, I have lost count of the letters I’ve received from pastors (some of whom are part of “cutting edge” movements) who confessed, “My gospel isn’t working. For so long I have been serving the god of serving God, and I admit now that I really don’t know Him nor do I know His love and acceptance in a genuine way.”

A large number of these men have also expressed the fact that burned out with respect to ministry and confessed that they had come to the shocking realization that they were serving God in their own strength instead of by His life.

You and I cannot live the Christian life by ourselves. You can I cannot serve God in ourselves. Theological knowledge, doctrinal precision, and the intent to do good and help others is no substitute for living by Jesus Christ. Being a Christian is territory staked out only by Divinity. Only Christ lives the Christian life (John 15:5; Gal. 2:20). We learn to live by Christ and we learn to serve God together in community, not as an isolated Christian. This experience is beginning to take root among a growing number of Christians today.

7. A rediscovery of God’s eternal purpose.

It appears that the eternal purpose of God is the governing vision of this third current. I won’t unravel that statement here (as I’ve spoken on it extensively elsewhere), except to say that this is probably one of the most exciting aspects of what’s beginning today, for me at least. The eternal purpose is deeply bound up with an experiential understanding of the Trinity (the fellowship of the Godhead) and its relationship to the Christian life, the expression of the church, church planting and mission.

8. An inclusive, open spirit to all of God’s people.

Unlike so many past movements, this third current is marked by an open attitude toward all of God’s people. It rejects and even hates an exclusive, sectarian, elitist attitude and posture. While it has its own unique distinctiveness, it embraces and receives all whom God has received. Neither is this movement built around a human personality.  While God is using a number of people to influence it, no human being is taking the center of attention. Those who are influencing it the most are pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ rather than to themselves.

In conclusion, we are only in the beginning stages of this third current. So there’s not a whole lot that’s established yet. The baby is breaking open the womb. But through her birth, we are seeing a recovery of what’s been lost and a discarding of what’s been picked up over the centuries.

As we approach 2009, pray with me that the Lord will gain much more for Himself with respect to these eight characteristics—all of which tell us something about one of the ways in which the Spirit is blowing today.

Let’s face it: Viola’s earlier 2008 release Pagan Christianity was a rampaging bull in an ecclesiastical china shop. Called simplistic and mean-spirited by detractors and a prophetic call for renewal by its champions, all readers had this in common – we wanted more. Okay, Mr. Deconstructor, we said. We see how you can tear down someone else’s sand castle with gusto – now let’s see how you’d build your own. And build he does.

This book is a comprehensive re-visioning of what leadership, authority and accountability in a Trinity-rooted, organic church. If you’ve always had an inkling that you don’t need denominational “covering” or hierarchical authority fencing you in to be right with God (as an individual or church body), Reimagining will fund your biblical imagination with an alternative reading of Scripture that points to the dignity of each person in the church, encouraging relational and shared authority responsive to the leading of Christ alone.

“The body of Christ has been stifled by human traditions for far too long. Reimagining Church charts a fresh course for the church that recovers the simplicity of Christ and listens seriously to what the voice of the Great Shepherd is saying to His people.” – Jon Zens, editor, Searching Together and author of A Church Building Every ½ Mile: What Makes American Christianity Tick?

“True to form, this book contains a thoroughly consistent critique of prevailing forms of church. However, in Reimagining Church, Frank Viola also presents a positive vision of what the church can become if we truly reembraced more organic, and less institutional, forms of church. This is a no holds barred prophetic vision for the church in the twenty-first Century.” – Alan Hirsch, author of The Forgotten Ways and The Shaping of Things To Come

Click here to download the gleanings for “Reimaging Church”(PDF)
(Right-click and select “Save Link As”)

GLEANINGS – What are They?
Several months ago, I decided to go through the time-intensive labor of typing out passages from books I read. The collection of quotes and comments came to be known as “gleanings.” If you want to read the gist of a book without flipping through all the pages, this format is for you. Consider it my version of “Cliff’s Notes.”

The Result: A high-drama, edge-of-your-chair message and a hair-raising question-answer session on church leadership, eldership, and authoritarian abuse that lasted the better part of an entire day!

What some have called “the most remarkable church council ever to occur on South American soil,” this book contains the entire transcript of that meeting.

An excerpt from the book’s introduction:

Frank Viola’s explosive address to a group of authoritarian pastors is a powerful summary of the case for the New Testament’s non-hierarchical model of leadership. Read it. Be shocked at how far we have wandered from the practices of Jesus and the apostles of the first century.”

Click here to download the e-book (PDF)
(Right-click and select “Save Link As”)