Will there soon be yet another new denomination based on Violaism? It like the rest of the modern ”emerging church” has a strong emphasis on social gathering with all who come welcome to spew their weird religious doctrines while the bible is avoided? We need the rightly divided word of God now more than ever. In 1 Peter 5:1-3 elders are exhorted to “feed the flock of God.” There is only one source of food for the flock of God: The Word of God. See chapter 4 Partnership One With Another: Neil Tolman 1993 at: http://www.neilshouse.com/POA4.html#4 neilrn@maine.rr.com

I’ll be asking both men a few questions of my own in just a few days and sharing them with my readers at my blog, The Thin Edge. I was really thrilled to see that we have not asked the same questions.

Got any coffee left?

“That simply tells me that the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the making of disciples is an organic thing. It’s not a legal duty or religious obligation. You will never find any apostle in the NT telling God’s people to go out and witness or evangelize.”

This entire book is surely igniting firestorms of controversy. Now they (Viola & Barna) take on “evangelical” Christianity. I expect a lot of response to this statement. The idea of “Going into all the world and preaching the gospel being a “prophetic” statement is certainly revolutionary, at least to me. This is enlightening and I am chewing on this one. I will be searching the scriptures. Once again, Frank has thrown down the gauntlet. I for one am thankful.

Now the big question left unanswered is , “What about E.E. (evangelism Explosion). Is nothing sacred?

I think Frank is asking the right questions. He’s shaking things up – poking and prodding the sheep from pew-bound passivity. But how many really care? Until yesterday, I would have said “very few.”

Watching this book reach Amazon’s #11 best seller has changed my perception. It’s pure delight to see such widespread interest in re-learning these very basic ideas. There is clearly a deep hunger among us, a longing to reassess our collective identity AS church.

As Frank releases other books, I hope he writes a few chapters on the role of emerging technologies in flattening the global church into a more “organic, non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical, non-institutional, Christ-centered community” — how individuals and local bodies are being profoundly shaped by access to the global body; how pervasive access is reforming vertical institution into horizontal organism.

The way Pagan Christianity has spread throughout the blog-o-clesia is a perfect example. Scant few pastors are going to talk about this book “from the pulpit.” Ten years ago, a book like this would have remained underground and generally unknown.

Frank’s book is a child of the Google era. The Internet is allowing the church (the people) to subvert millennia of imbalanced ecclesial power. As in the days of Gutenberg, these ideas could not have reached a broad audience until NOW. It’s exciting to watch a new and healthy reformation unfolding.