Book review by Paul Sue 'Jesus Has Left The Building' by Paul Vieira, Harvest Stone, 2006. Vieira's book is about his personal journey out of "institutional Christianity" to a more dynamic and fluid missional way of "doing church". In his own words, This book reflects my personal and very painful journey away from institutional Christianity. What has driven my quest for a new experience with 'church' has been a growing dissatisfaction with the alarming contrast between what I read in the gospels and the Christianity that I have known. (13) The book begins with some biographical details. Vieira was born into a nominally Catholic family. Eventually, the grace of God touched the whole family and they began to worship and study the Bible together as a family. In his newborn zeal, young Paul began to invite his friends over for prayer and mutual edification. God used this group of young people to spread the fire of revival in his neighborhood. As the number of young converts increased, the "religious elite" felt challenged:Some of the older leaders in the churches around us asked how God could use untrained youth for such a significant ministry responsibility. The religious elite in the fourth chapter of Acts followed the same line of questioning when a few uneducated fishermen started turning Jerusalem upside down with the kingdom of God. I'd have to say that in most ways I was a better leader when I was seventeen years old, operating by dependency on the Holy Spirit not by the "tricks" I would later learn in ministry training. (16)Thus, at a young age, Paul sensed that there was some missing, something fundamentally wrong with the way church was. He began to question the status quo (a dangerous and subversive act!):
...I began to experience distaste for organized "Christianity". I found myself asking why incessantly. Why were we giving more time to the building project, when the marriages of our leaders were falling apart? Why was our staff cutting their salaries to pay for the ever growing financial needs of our building? Why did we spend so much time trying to figure out how to organize the church, when there were people hurting and lost, right across the street? Why did we spend thousands of dollars and hours doing evangelistic outreach, seeing little or no fruit? Why did everyone have to talk and look the same to be accepted? Why were we all so lonely, even though we saw each other at church meetings three or four times a week? (20, 21)Lest the reader draw the conclusion, that Paul was just another disgruntled young Christian who left the church in a huff, Vieira does NOT spend time bashing churches. Instead, he draws from the scriptures: from the Exile, from the lives of David and Jeremiah, from the story of the apostolic church. Vieira's passion is for the church to recover the "apostolic dream... a dream in the heart of the Father to have a multitude of 'sent ones.'" This then, forms the backdrop for the rest of the book:
For this dream of God's to come true, there are some changes that are going to have to take place. Believers in Jesus will have to emerge from behind the closed doors of the "church" sub-culture, and live out their faith daily as a part of real life. Outside the walls of institutional religions there are many people who are searching for truth and spiritual reality. They may not know it yet, but they are waiting for you. They are waiting to see the only Jesus that they may ever get to see. The apostolic dream cannot be fulfilled with the prevalent traditional ideas of church. Many of these people find "church" to be irrelevant to their lives and are resistant to its restrictive structure. If we are infected with the dream to have Jesus plainly seen and authentically represented to people in search of Him, it will inevitably lead us out. We must follow Jesus. Jesus has left the building. (49, 50)In the remainder of the book, Vieira seeks to flesh out what it means to us that "Jesus has left the building". He begins by illustrating from the OT, the "religious spirit" stands as an obstacle to God's purposes. I'm glad that Paul doesn't offer any formula or simple "7 Step Plan" as simplistic answers. Instead, he challenges us to wait upon God, to get out of our religious rut of shallow busyness. Like many others, Paul and his wife had to go through a period of "detoxification". As the book continues, Vieira reminds us of the importance of our everyday lives and the need to get away from the concept of church as a Sunday event. He lambasts the obsession with form, structure and the latest fads (e.g. the "emerging church" movement, or even the house church movement).
Try not to see the church in terms of a place you go or meetings you attend, but as a network of relationships rooted in Christ. This kind of "fluid" church is organized in the sense that it is based on tangible, real meaningful relationships. It is planned because you love these people and enjoy spending time with them. However, it's completely spontaneous and seemingly chaotic. In fact, it is so chaotic that it's not manageable from a human perspective. Only the Holy Spirit could actually pull it off. (144)Paul laments that in our modern society, despite an abundance of knowledge, there is so little spiritual maturity.
Many Christians, even after being in the church for years, feel inadequate to minister. They believe that they must learn more before beginning to serve. In our attempt to train believers in the church, our methods have communicated something else. The elevation of men or women in ministry has greatly contributed to this issue. We have a class of professional ministers that appear to be untouchable. These Christian celebrities travel from city to city showing us how to do the "ministry." (149)This point is especially salient for readers of this site. I believe the ignorance and laziness of the average Christian, along with the "elevation" of "professional ministers" is a major reason for the stories on this site. Christians have allowed themselves to be in bondage to a clerical caste; instead of submitting to the Headship of Christ in the church, they submit to the so-called "Senior Pastor". Christians must open their eyes to see the danger of the unbiblical "clergy/laity" concept. In short, this book will hopefully encourage Christians to think outside the box of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Vieira writes passionately and from a genuine desire to reach the unsaved and to encourage Christians to be more effective for the Kingdom of God. It is definitely worth reading, even if in the end, one doesn't agree with everything.
