Frank Viola > Quotes

“ORGANIC CHURCH
The term organic church does not refer to a particular model of church. (We believe that no perfect model exists.) Instead, we believe that the New Testament vision of church is organic. An organic church is a living, breathing, dynamic, mutually participatory, every-member-functioning, Christ-centered, communal expression of the body of Christ.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“What history teaches us is that men have never learned anything from it.” —G. W. F. Hegel, nineteenth-century German philosopher”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“In fact, I’ve met countless believers who have said, “The church is an organism, not an organization.” Yet as they formed those very words, they continued to be devout members of churches that were organized along the lines of General Motors and Microsoft.”
― Frank Viola, Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or how bad you’ve failed, Jesus Christ is bigger than all your foul-ups, and His mercy and grace loom larger than any sin you’ve ever committed.”
― Frank Viola, The Day I Met Jesus: The Revealing Diaries of Five Women from the Gospels

“In short, the goal of the gospel is not to get you out of hell and into heaven, but to get God out of heaven and into you so that He may be displayed visibly and glorified in His creation.”
― Frank Viola, Revise Us Again: Living from a Renewed Christian Script

“Caution: If you’re a person who will one day mentor others, I have a sobering warning. If your ego hasn’t been annihilated by the cross of Jesus Christ, you will end up becoming a Saul in the lives of those who are just as (or more) gifted than you are. And when God begins to elevate them in His service, you will go insane.”
― Frank Viola, Revise Us Again: Living from a Renewed Christian Script

“How We Approach the New Testament We Christians have been taught to approach the Bible in one of eight ways: • You look for verses that inspire you. Upon finding such verses, you either highlight, memorize, meditate upon, or put them on your refrigerator door. • You look for verses that tell you what God has promised so that you can confess it in faith and thereby obligate the Lord to do what you want. • You look for verses that tell you what God commands you to do. • You look for verses that you can quote to scare the devil out of his wits or resist him in the hour of temptation. • You look for verses that will prove your particular doctrine so that you can slice-and-dice your theological sparring partner into biblical ribbons. (Because of the proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere citation of some random, decontextualized verse of Scripture ends all discussion on virtually any subject.) • You look for verses in the Bible to control and/or correct others. • You look for verses that “preach” well and make good sermon material. (This is an ongoing addiction for many who preach and teach.) • You sometimes close your eyes, flip open the Bible randomly, stick your finger on a page, read what the text says, and then take what you have read as a personal “word” from the Lord. Now look at this list again. Which of these approaches have you used? Look again: Notice how each is highly individualistic. All of them put you, the individual Christian, at the center. Each approach ignores the fact that most of the New Testament was written to corporate bodies of people (churches), not to individuals.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Organic church life, however, is a wedding of glory and gore.”
― Frank Viola, Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

“Sometimes the Lord wants us to wait and rest in Him. Other times, however, He wants us to press into His kingdom and receive what is rightfully ours in Christ.”
― Frank Viola, The Day I Met Jesus: The Revealing Diaries of Five Women from the Gospels

“And to know that this eternal, limitless, incarnated, perfect, crucified, resurrected, ascended, enthroned, glorified, triumphant, victorious, matchless, glorious Christ . . . dwells inside of you.”
― Frank Viola, Epic Jesus: The Christ You Never Knew

“Church planters deliberately left so that the church could function under the headship of Christ. If a church planter stays in a church, the members naturally look to him to lead. Every-member functioning is hindered. This is still true today. The pattern throughout the entire New Testament is that church planters (apostolic workers) always left the church after they laid the foundation. For more details, see The Normal Christian Church Life by Watchman Nee”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Thus the pagan notion of a trained professional speaker who delivers orations for a fee moved straight into the Christian bloodstream. Note that the concept of the “paid teaching specialist” came from Greece, not Judaism. It was the custom of Jewish rabbis to take up a trade so as to not charge a fee for their teaching.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“history is God’s love story. There is no event in space or time unrelated to the Jesus story, and there is no metaphor in existence unrelated to Jesus. “All”
― Frank Viola, Jesus Now: Unveiling the Present-Day Ministry of Christ

“Unfortunately, the metaphor that dominates most of American Christianity doesn’t help us much; we usually envision the church as a corporation. The pastor is the CEO, there are committees and boards. Evangelism is the manufacturing process by which we make our product, and sales can be charted, compared, and forecast. Of course, this manufacturing process goes on in a growth economy so that any corporation-church whose annual sales figures aren’t up from last year’s is in trouble. Americans are quite single-minded in their captivity to the corporation metaphor. And it isn’t even biblical. —Hal Miller”
― Frank Viola, Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

“The Calf Path One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bell-wethers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made. And many men wound in and out, And dodged, and turned, and bent about And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ’twas such a crooked path.15 But still they followed—do not laugh— The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked, Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again; This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way, And lost one hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach, Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. They keep the path a sacred groove, Along which all their lives they move. But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah! Many things this tale might teach— But I am not ordained to preach. —Sam Walter Foss”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Within the triune God we discover mutual love, mutual fellowship, mutual dependence, mutual honor, mutual submission, mutual dwelling, and authentic community. In the Godhead there exists an eternal, complementary, and reciprocal interchange of divine life, divine love, and divine fellowship.”
― Frank Viola, Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

“It is the depravity of institutions and movements that given in the beginning to express life, they often end in throttling that very life. Therefore, they need constant review, perpetual criticism and continuous bringing back to the original purposes and spirit.”
― Frank Viola, Finding Organic Church: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities

“You will never understand Jesus by looking at the God of the Old Testament. You must first look at Jesus and then you will understand the God of the Old Testament.”
― Frank Viola, Epic Jesus: The Christ You Never Knew

“You cannot be around Jesus Christ for very long without changing. His presence transforms.”
― Frank Viola, God's Favorite Place on Earth

“believers are discovering the experience of the body of Christ and what it means to gather under the headship of Jesus.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“letters.”
― Frank Viola, The Untold Story of the New Testament Church

“The pew is perhaps the greatest inhibitor of face-to-face fellowship. It is a symbol of lethargy and passivity in the contemporary church and has made corporate worship a spectator sport.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“Sin and love are exact opposites. Love is benefiting others at the expense of yourself. Sin is benefiting yourself at the expense of others. Sin is selfishness; love is selflessness.”
― Frank Viola, Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom

“The moment He set me free is the moment He captured me.”
― Frank Viola, God's Favorite Place on Earth

“Organic churches, like those in the New Testament, are different. They are not trains, but groups of people out for a walk. These groups move much more slowly than trains—only several miles per hour at the fastest. But they can turn at a moment’s notice. More importantly, they can be genuinely attentive to their world, to their Lord, and to each other.”
― Frank Viola, Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

“Jesus Christ is God’s rule. And Jesus Christ is God’s presence. Wherever Christ is, there is the kingdom.”
― Frank Viola, Epic Jesus: The Christ You Never Knew

“Custom without truth is error grown old.” —Tertullian, third-century theologian”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices

“The Lord has a unique way of preparing His servants for His work. It’s one that involves transformation. And transformation always involves emptying, suffering, and loss. Humanity’s way is to hand you a method. Divinity’s way is to hand you a cross.”
― Frank Viola, Finding Organic Church: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities

“Jesus desires friends, not servants. He desires love, not servitude. In the cold temple of Jerusalem, God was merely served. But in the warmth of the Bethany home, He was befriended and cherished.”
― Frank Viola, God's Favorite Place on Earth

“To put a finer point on it, the church building is based on the benighted idea that worship is removed from everyday life.”
― Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices