I've just read a blog on Frank Viola's blogsite http://frankviola.wordpress.com/ where he put up an open letter by author Jon Zens to author Jim Belcher, commenting on his book called Deep Church. Here are a few excerpts:
"Why Is 1 Cor.14 Not Practiced?
You assert, “Since the Bible does not give us enough information to construct a worship service, we must fill in the blanks” (p.137). Why do we feel compelled to find a “worship service”? There is no evidence that the early church had “worship services,” as we conceive of them. The largest insight we have about a Christian gathering appears in 1 Cor.14. We have these glimpses because Paul was correcting a problem. In this passage we see (1) the whole ekklesia gathered; (2) an open meeting where everyone was potentially involved in prophecy; (3) that what was spoken had to be understood by all; (4) multiple expressions from many, “each of you has…”; (5) no mention of a sermon by one person; (6) no pulpit; (7) no leaders. You mention “the people up front” (p.139), but in the 1 Cor.14 meeting there is no “front,” as they met in homes with simplicity as a family. Indeed, while the NT does not give a lot of information about believers’ gatherings, my question is: Why have our traditions essentially jettisoned what light we do have from 1 Cor.14 and other passages? Why don’t we practice open meetings where we can express Christ together? John H. Yoder astutely observes:
Paul tells his readers that everyone who has something to say, something given by the Holy Spirit to him or her to say, can have the floor . . . . Within this freedom for all to speak, a relative priority should be given to the mode of speech called “prophecy,” because it speaks “to improve, to encourage, and to console.” It is noteworthy that there is no reference to a single moderator, “minister,” or “priest” governing the process, as things tend to proceed in most Christian groups in our time. Paul wishes that everyone might prophecy, perhaps echoing Moses’ words to the same effect in Numbers 11:29 (Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before A Watching World, p.61).
I suggest that moving toward deep ekklesia would involve enjoying a body meeting where all the priests can function. We are missing great blessings by retaining “worship services” that focus on and are led by “those up front.” Traditional services have “filled in the blanks” with practices that do not foster and enhance NT perspectives concerning the Body of Christ."
Why Isn’t Our Lord’s Supper A Meal?
"“Weekly Communion” is a practice of your church. You call it several times a “sacrament.” To apply this word to the Lord’s Supper, given its origin and meaning, seems inappropriate and misleading (cf., Leonard Verduin, “Sacramentschwarmer,” The Reformers & Their Stepchildren, pp.132-159;Vernard Eller, “The Lord’s Supper Is Not A ‘Sacrament,’” Searching Together, 12:3, 1983, pp.3-6).
Emil Brunner in The Misunderstanding of the Church (1952) did a masterful job of showing how a simple meal in the early church became a “sacrament” controlled by an ecclesiastical institution (pp.60-73).
Properly speaking, New Testament Christianity knows nothing of the word ‘sacrament,’ which belongs essentially to the heathen world of theGraeco-Roman empire and which unfortunately some of the Reformers unthinkingly took over from ecclesiastical tradition. For this word, and still more the overtones which it conveys, is the starting point for those disastrous developments which began soon to transform the community of Jesus into the Church which is first and foremost a sacramental Church (pp.72-73).
New Testament scholarship is united in acknowledging that the early church remembered the Lord in a meal they ate together (Daniel Doriani, “Wasn’t the Lord’s Supper Originally a Feast?” Christianity Today, March 18, 1983). You note that in your celebration, “Even though people come forward as individuals, it is done as a community – a covenant-family meal” (p.140). How do you have a covenant-meal with no food? Don’t people sit at, not come forward, for a meal? When the Lord commenced the remembrance time, it was in the setting of a full meal, not a snack. Why have we abandoned the blessing of eating together in anticipation of the future supper of the Lamb and his Bride?"
Why Is Preaching Central?
"It seems that no matter how you slice it – in the traditional, emergent, or your view – the sermon still remains intact and central. I do not see how deep ekklesia can blossom until this tradition is dealt a death-blow. There is no NT evidence of the “centrality of preaching,” as it came to be practiced in church traditions (cf., David Norrington, To Preach or Not To Preach? The Church’s Urgent Question, Paternoster, 1996, 130pp.; and Anglican Jeremy Thompson, Preaching As Dialogue: Is the Sermon a Sacred Cow? Grove Books, 1996 & 2003, 68pp.). The pulpit-centered architecture of most churches has no roots in the Biblical revelation.
In order for everything to focus on the sermon, the participatory body meeting described in 1 Cor.14 must be eliminated. There are 58 “one-another’s” in the NT, and there is not a whit about the centrality of “the pastor.” Yet the pastor and his sermon is what “church” revolves around in most cases. Why? Why do we push aside that which has some sound basis (1 Cor.14), and elevate that which has no foundation in Scripture? Dr. Henry R. Sefton observes:
Worship in the house-church had been of an intimate kind in which all present had taken an active part . . . . [This] changed from being ‘a corporate action of the whole church’ into ‘a service said by the clergy to which the laity listened.’ (A Lion Handbook – The History of Christianity, Lion Publishing, 1988, p.151).
The early church was about the saints gathering around Christ in their midst. Jeremy Thompson correctly notes in his chapter, “A Theology of Preaching As Dialogue”:
According to Paul’s understanding, participation in the community centered primarily around fellowship, expressed in word and deed, of the members with God and one another…. This means that the focal point of reference was neither a book nor a rite but a set of relationships, and that God communicated himself to them . . .primarily through . . . one another."