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Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

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Author: Frank Viola
Publisher: David C. Cook
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$13.99~~
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Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars

33 reviews
Sales Rank: 5947

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 318
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9

ISBN: 1434768759
Dewey Decimal Number: 262.0017
EAN: 9781434768759
ASIN: 1434768759

Publication Date: August 2008
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Also Available In:

•	Kindle Edition - Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity

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Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

'Flip side' to 'Pagan Christianity' November 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book is the flip side of `Pagan Christianity', Frank Viola's previous book that delved into the practices and history of the traditional ways of church and saw them wanting from a biblical perspective. If you viewed that book as negative, then here is the positive written in the same thorough and biblical perspective.

He starts with a quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones - "We are living in an age hopelessly below the New Testament pattern - content with a neat little religion."

Frank's "I have a Dream"is a good summary of the book. The turning around of the old ways of doing church to becoming the `Dream Church' that is organic and operating under the headship of Jesus Christ. He says that the church must get back to its roots. ".....the only sustaining force of the early church gathering was the life of the Holy Spirit. The early Christians were clergyless, liturgyless, programless, and ritualless. They relied entirely on the spiritual life of the individual members to maintain the church's existence and the quality of their gatherings. Thus if the spiritual life of the church was at a low ebb, everyone would notice it in the gathering." (P.63)

In the `dreaming' he reimagines the Lord's Supper, the gathering without hierarchy - he deals with the issue of true authority very well, the church as unified organism, and perhaps the great dream becoming reality based on the eternal activity in God Himself before the constraints of physical time? If you have read one of Frank's previous books "God's Ultimate Passion', you would know something already of the vision that he has on his heart - that which is on God's heart. He wants us to reach back to God's eternal purpose and passion - the Bride (the church) He is preparing. He describes so much evangelical theology as based on individual salvation and stemming from after the fall, but for a real sense of what we are being prepared for as His Bride we need to take our theology back from before the fall.

The clear structure of the book aids focused reading. The end of each section ends with `Questions that must be faced' and there is a good bibliography at the back for further reading.

I would suggest that groups that have come away from traditional church would be helped by studying together firstly `Pagan Christianity' and then this book - and as a group dealing with the questions raised chapter by chapter in both. Studying these would help groups not to `re-invent' traditional church in their lounge rooms.

You can sample the book at www.reimaginingchurch.org
Available at most Christian bookshops.

5 out of 5 stars

Great Book! November 18, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I am really happy I bought this book at amazon, it was delivered really fast.

4 out of 5 stars

The Best of Frank Viola November 18, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Reimagining Church: Pursuing The Dream Of Organic Christianity is without a doubt Frank Viola's magnum opus of his numerous writings on the ekklesia. In this book, church is realigned with all the "strange" descriptions and practices that we read in the pages of our New Testament. It is church as we dream about it being, a going back to her 1st century roots as intended by her Founder.

Reimagining Church is in my estimation a constructive summation of "The Best of Frank Viola." In these pages we find a more mature, polished, and cleaner compilation of reworked earlier material found in, "Rethinking the Wineskin" and "Who Is Your Covering?" and the original "Pagan Christianity" was intended as the third book in this trilogy of early church practice.

The newly released, revised, and widely read (and debated!) Pagan Christianity co-authored with George Barna, was intended to historically demonstrate how far the contemporary church has strayed from its original roots. Reimagining Church is the natural sequel where Viola paints a compelling picture "where the body of Christ is an organic, living, breathing organism."

Even though I believe I have read most of the published writings of Frank, a lot of his earlier writings often have the feel of a radical zealot--a modern John the Baptist "crying out in the wilderness"--preaching repentance from a church gone far astray from its 1st century roots. Reimagining Church has come a long way to bringing the same challenging ideas expressed in these earlier ground-breaking works, for mainstream evangelical consideration and dialog. If I had a $1000 (and the book was in Spanish--hint, hint, Frank!) I would buy every pastor, servant leader, house church worker/planter, and missionary I know a copy. It is that good.

A good idea of what is between the pages can be seen in The Table of Contents:

Preface
Introduction: Toward a New Kind of Church

Part ONE: Community and Gatherings

1. Reimagining the Church as an Organism
2. Reimagining the Church Meeting
3. Reimagining the Lord's Supper
4. Reimagining the Gathering Place
5. Reimagining the Family of God
6. Reimagining Church Unity
7. Church Practice and God's Eternal Purpose

Part Two: Leadership and Accountability

8. Reimagining Leadership
9. Reimagining Oversight
10. Reimagining Decision-Making
11. Reimagining Spiritual Covering
12. Reimagining Authority and Submission
13. Reimagining Denominational Covering
14. Reimagining the Apostolic Tradition
15. Where Do We Go from Here?

Appendix: Objections & Responses about Leadership
Bibliography
Notes

5 out of 5 stars

hungry November 14, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

I have just finished reading Reimagining Church and what I found was that my heart was hungry -- hungry for the kind of fellowship that Frank describes, the kind of freedom from the weight of tradition that does not build my faith, the new kind of witness in the world that the organic church would give. I have always loved "church" so I find myself surprised at the journey this book and Pagan Christianity have taken me on -- surprised and now very hungry.

5 out of 5 stars

"Reimagining Church"--An Excellent Resource for those seeking "New Testament Christianity" November 11, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

I have read many of Frank Viola's books and I found "Reimagining Church" to be an excellent resource for at least a couple of reasons: one, it brought together, in one place, many of the points that he has written about in other books (and he went deeper on some of these issues), and two, this book would be a great resource for a small group of people (i.e. "organic church seekers") to read together and discuss. I will be sharing this resource with others who are desiring to know more about this very important topic!

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