Frank Viola Re-imagining Church chapter 2

Basically a chapter regarding how Violas understands how the Church meetings took place in the New Testament. These came in four types-

Apostolic Meetings

Evangelistic meetings

Decision-Makeing Meetings 

A point that is made a number of times is that Leadership is flattened

The regular meeting of the church envisioned in scripture allowed for every member to participate in the building up of the body of Christ (Eph. E:16. There was no “up-front” Leadership. No one took center stage.

An interesting aspect was on worship. 

…early Christians worshipped God through song, they didn’t confine their singing to the leadership of a group of professional musicians. Instead, the meeting allowed for “each one” to lead a song. Or in the words of Paul, ‘each of you has a psalm’ in the gathering (1 Cor. 14:26 NKJV). Even the song themselves were marked element of mutuality…

This worship scenario has been something that in some ways we have been forced into at Ranges. There just aren’t that many musicians at Ranges, it has made us to look at what worship is and then encourage people to explore and share what it means. In the process I would say worshiping.

I think that Violoa is heading in the right direction. I can only really image what he describes in a home, small group context. The question arises does this totally exclude medium to mega size churches? I don’t think you can do that. 

So onward to the next chapter….