Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Reader Highlights from God's Favorite Place on Earth by Frank Viola

Jesus Christ is Resurrection, and He is Life. And if you outwait Him, He’ll eventually roll the stone away and raise you from the dead.

Kathy Hickey: This is a great book!

“Martha, Martha. You are worried and upset about all of these details. There’s only one thing you need. And Mary has made the right choice. She has chosen the one thing, and it will not be taken away from her.” Mary had breached a barrier by sitting in the men’s space. And on top of that, she sat in the posture of a disciple. Every teacher before or since had only male disciples.

Donn Sunshine highlighted:

Mark it down: Jesus Christ will sometimes wait until you are long dead. But then … when you least expect it … He will come leaping over the hills in some strange and unforeseen way to do what you never dreamed.

Donn Sunshine: if your going thru a tough time this is worth the read in fact it is anytime

Chisel it in stone: you can’t have a resurrection without a death. And you can’t know the transforming triumph of Christ without a crisis. You can’t know the hills without the valleys, and you can’t make a sailor with calm seas. We easily forget this when we’re going through the northeast corner of hell. A word of encouragement: if your foundations are in Jesus Christ, then you can weather the storm. You can endure the crisis. You can put your asbestos suit on and walk through the fire because you are standing on Him who is the Immovable Rock. Sometimes God will deliver you from trouble. Oftentimes He will deliver you through it.

Donn Sunshine highlighted:

Information doesn’t produce transformation. Suffering that leads us to embrace Christ does.
Donn Sunshine highlighted:

Herein lies an important lesson. If you make a home for the Lord Jesus Christ, hard times will come. Crisis will come. Suffering will come. Even death—in some form—will come.

Vince Maltempi: We have been given an ascendent life!

Christians aren’t saved from troubles or delivered from problems. We have been given an ascendant life to rise above them.

Donn Sunshine highlighted:

All service must flow from communion with the Lord if it is to have lasting value. All service must find its source in the life of Christ so it won’t lead to burnout or bail-out. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

Donn Sunshine highlighted:

If you are a Christian, then, expect to follow in the footsteps of your Lord. You will know the scalding pain and heartbreaking disillusionment of rejection. How you respond, however, will determine if you become broken or bitter.

Donn Sunshine highlighted:


While brokenness is difficult, it’s beautiful because it makes God look good. Your natural gifts draw attention to yourself while brokenness draws attention to your Lord. With this in mind, power is dangerous in the hands of an unbroken vessel.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Outside the Institutional Church: Frank Viola


      Like many American male youths, I was taught that grown men don’t cry. If that’s true, then I’m a royal failure. Several things make me weep. I weep when I see other human beings grieving because of tragedy (my eyes brim with tears whenever I’m at a funeral). I weep when my heart is broken. I weep when I watch romantic films, especially at the end. (I cried for a solid week after I saw The Titanic. Call me a “sentimental fool,” if you like.) And I weep whenever I see a Biblical story portrayed on film, including animated ones.

      I also break into tears when I sense the Lord’s presence. This often happens when I hear the pure simplicity of a simple group of Christians singing to their Lord from their hearts. I used to be embarrassed about shedding tears during such times (I also know how to hide it quite well). I guess I’m still learning to accept it. (I’ve learned that tears are a precious gift. They open up our hearts, wash away resentful feelings, and soften our wills.)

      At the age of seventeen, I moved to Tampa and enrolled in college. During my university years, I tasted something of the experience of the Body of Christ. I met a small group of Christians who had the same hungry heart for the Lord as I had. We spent a great deal of time together.

      Dorm-room prayer meetings were a common occurrence. Sometimes, we would pour out our hearts to the Lord all night. We shared our struggles, our victories, our discoveries, and our endless questions. Many a meeting we would sing till our throats were horse.

      And sometimes I would weep.

      At the time, I didn’t know what we were experiencing. But looking back, it was an organic experience of church life in techno-color.

      A few years later, we discovered that each of us had played the same disenchanting tape of traditional church experience. So we formed an on-campus organization where we attempted to fill in what was missing.

      Under the banner of a campus-approved Christian organization, we held a weekly Bible discussion group that drew people from a slew of distinct theological traditions.

      For some, these open discussions turned into an exercise in abstract Biblicism and arcane academic reflection. For others, they were no more than a religious free-for-all where others got roped into endless (and mostly fruitless) debates over a variety of theological minutia.

      To my mind, they represented a profitable learning experience. They taught me the immense benefit of having an “interpretive community” to provide a rich and nuanced understanding of the Biblical text.

      Some people have the idea that only Bible scholars and theological sophisticates are qualified to rightly understand the Bible. I certainly believe that Biblical scholarship and theological sophistication are important components for interpreting the Scripture, but they aren’t the only components. I learned back then that a diverse group of Christians who possessed the Spirit of God is another important component. As my friend Hal Miller once said, “Just as war is too destructive to be left to the generals, so the Bible is too rich to be left to the scholars.” It requires an interpretive community.

      The Bible discussion group taught me the tremendous need for “judging all things” by Scripture. It also helped me to value the insights of other Christians, most of whom stood outside of the safe parameters of my own theological comfort zone. (Seeing through our own biases is not a strong suit for most of us. So it does us well when we are stretched in this regard.) The group also showed me the utter fruitlessness of swapping “proof texts” in order to win an argument.

      But perhaps most important, the discussion group gave me a taste of the spiritual dynamics of mutual ministry and open gatherings. They also urged me to try and master the rudiments of politeness and tact—something that doesn’t get enough air-time in modern religious circles.

      Through our mutual study of Scripture, I discovered the problem of confusing bookish knowledge with being grasped by the Word of life. And I came to see the specific tragedy of substituting the vitality of God’s voice in Scripture with certain rhetorical forms of argumentation and pulpiteering.

      In effect, it was through my experience with on-campus ministry that the Lord began to reveal to me something of the oneness of His Body, the principle of mutual ministry, and the importance of studying/expounding Christ through the Scriptures in a group setting. In looking back, I can readily see that the Holy Spirit was planting the seeds of Body life into my heart.

      Some years later, I made the surprising discovery that the times when I was growing the most as a Christian was when I was outside traditional church services. The strides I made in the Lord all seemed to take place in home meetings, dorm-room meetings, park meetings, restaurant meetings, coffee shops, on-campus meetings—all of them occurring outside church buildings. And oddly enough, all of those meetings were void of the presence of a professional clergyman.

 

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Organic Churches

According to author Frank Viola, organic church is a term coined by T. Austin Sparks. Organic church is biblical, but there are problems in it also. Gene Edwards and Frank Viola have also used the term though their views and practices are very different from one another.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Frank Viola's 100 Best Books Ever Written List

Author Frank Viola's best 100 books ever written list has just been revised.

You can see the whole list now from any computer.

Also, there are no more Amazon ads that pop up. The list is clean.

Click here to view the entire list.