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There are no superstars in Jesus' Revolution, except for the man himself. But there are those who have served as pioneers and innovators, breaking new ground or recovering ancient paths. Because they are fore-runners, they have had an opportunity to uniquely influence many lives. Frank Viola is just such a person. He has been a voice of vision from the infancy of the house church movement and, thourgh his writing, speaking, and ministry experience, has served as a guide in this uncharted territory. I had a chance to interview Frank about his new book God's Ultimate Passion: Unveiling the Purpose Behind Everything .
Q: Frank, you're not new to ministry or to writing books, yet you say in your new book "God's Ultimate Passion" that this is your capstone work, or maybe even the foundational message under everything else you've written and done. Why this book? Why now? What's going on in your life and ministry or in the world around you that made you feel like this needed to be written?  | About Frank
| | FRANK VIOLA is one of the most influential figures in the contemporary house church movement. For the last twenty years, he has been gathering with organic house churches in the United States. Frank has written eight revolutionary books on radical church restoration, including God's Ultimate Passion , Pagan Christianity , The Untold Story of the New Testament Church , Rethinking the Wineskin , and Who Is Your Covering?. He is a nationally recognized expert on emerging trends for the church, and he is actively engaged in planting New Testament-styled churches. Frank also holds conferences on the deeper Christian life which are designed to enrich the spiritual lives of God's people. His Web site contains many free resources for those desiring to explore a more scriptural way of experiencing Christ and His church: www.frankviola.com Frank's new book, "God's Ultimate Passion" can be ordered at www.ultimatepassion.org |
Readers can find the story-line of God's purpose in the subtext of all that I've written. Recently, however, the Lord put on my heart to write an entire book on the subject which seeks to unfold it to both left-brain and right-brain readers. God's Ultimate Passion is my attempt at doing that. To answer your question specifically, I think perhaps the first reason I waited until now to write this book has to do with what's happening in the church today. There is a spiritual groundswell taking place throughout the world. Some leaders, like George Barna, are calling it a "Revolution." At the same time, the emerging church conversation is generating new questions about the church, its mission, its theology, and its expression. I believe that this Revolution is of God. However, I feel strongly that if it is not grounded in a groundbreaking revelation of God's eternal purpose in Christ, it will lack spiritual value and ultimately longevity. There will be little to no lasting fruit that will come out of it. Second, to my knowledge, there have only been two books previous to mine that have unfolded the eternal purpose in an expansive way. The first is "The Stewardship of the Mystery" by T. Austin-Sparks published in 1939. The second is "Ultimate Intention" by DeVern Fromke published in 1963. Interestingly, T. Austin-Sparks was a mentor to DeVern Fromke, and DeVern has been a mentor to me. I felt it was time for another expansive book to be written on the subject for contemporary readers. Third, I believe that the revelation of God's eternal purpose, which is the main theme of Scripture, has been given virtually no airplay in our day. I hear a lot of talk about the Kingdom of God, the Mission of God, and being "missional," but precious few people are talking about the eternal purpose of God, which I believe is God's all-governing mission in the world. I suppose that's another reason why I felt compelled to write the book at this time. Q: In the book, you state that this ultimate desire in the heart of God is somewhat covert. There is not really one place that says "here it is" in the Bible. It's there, but it has to be discovered. Why, in your opinion, doesn't God simply come out that say in a simple sentence, "this is my ultimate passion"? I used to know the answer to that question :). Today, I will shamelessly tell you that I'm not sure. The Lord is mysterious. And His deeper ways are a mystery. I can tell you that Paul talked an awful lot about "the mystery" in his letters. To Paul's mind, God had a secret that He kept hidden in Himself for ages. In Ephesians and Colossians, Paul says God chose him to reveal it to the world. Yet it still remains a mystery. This is why he prayed that God would give the Lord's people a "spirit of wisdom and revelation" so that they would know the mystery just as he did. Since I've been a Christian, the deeper and central things of Christ have always seemed to be veiled in Scripture. Yet when someone points them out, one wonders, "how in the world did I miss this? It's been right under my nose all along!" Perhaps another reason has to do with the gospel that we've been preached. Our gospel is basically a human-centered gospel. It's aimed at how God will meet our needs. Whether that be our spiritual needs (salvation, spiritual experiences, etc.) or our physical needs (healing, a better life, the alleviation of suffering, etc.) God's eternal purpose, however, is centered on His desire, His interest, His intention. The dial of the compass points to Him rather than to us. We benefit, obviously. But there's something in the heart of God that is from Him, through Him, and to Him . . . not first and foremost unto us. This, I believe, is one of the reasons why the eternal purpose has been veiled to many Christians. If our needs as humans are our point of departure and our frame of reference, the purpose of God will remain veiled to us. At least, that's how I think anyway. Add to that the fact that few people preach on the eternal purpose in our day. Q: In the beginning of the book you mention your discovery of this truth. What was life like before and after? Life before: I was caught up in many different "things" that were preached to me. I was told that these things were God's central purpose. First it was the salvation of souls. Then it was personal holiness. Then it was feeding the poor. Then it was social activism. Then it was the gifts of the Spirit and the power of God. Then it was revival. Then it was Bible study. Then it was apologetics. I could go on. In 1992, when the eternal purpose was unveiled to me, I staggered for about a week. It was so mind-blowing that my entire thinking changed as to what the Christian life was all about. I saw that God had one single purpose. And that the Bible, from beginning to end, was an unfolding drama of that purpose. I saw the purpose of God as the hub of a wheel, and all the different things that I was majoring in were the spokes to that hub. I understand that the purpose of God was like a mighty river, and everything else I was centering on were the little tributaries that were part of that river. In short, I discovered what I believe to be God's heartbeat. The thing that makes Him tick. The result: I had purpose and meaning in my life like never before. The eternal purpose became my passion as well. I saw all the things that I had specialized to be parts of a greater whole. And that greater whole was for God and not for us. I have likened it unto the paradigm shift that occurred in the 16th century when astronomers moved from a geocentric model of the universe to a heliocentric model of the universe. It was that dramatic. In that connection, I've observed that whenever Christians get a revelation of God's eternal purpose and they "see" it, it blows their circuitry. Their life suddenly has new meaning and they are given a new direction from which to live. Q: Your book explores three themes or master stories in the Biblical narrative and the life of God: God searching for a bride for his Son, a wandering God looking for a home among his people, and God creating a new species of humanity in contact with the divine. What about these stories in particular draws you in? What are they saying to us about God? Well, that's what my book is all about actually. I unfold it in about 300 pages. These themes teach us a great deal about our Lord. Namely, that He is a romantic who is relentlessly pursuing us. And He sees us with completely different eyes than our own. Once we get behind His eyes and see as He sees, it changes the way we see ourselves (and our fellow Christians). Our guilt complex disappears. Our performance-based relationship with God vanishes. And we fall in love with Him. In Genesis 1 and 2, we find a bride and a bridegroom. In the New Testament, the Gospel opens with a bride and a bridegroom. John the Baptist announces that the bridegroom has come to find His bride. And in Revelation 21 and 22 the bride and the bridegroom appear again, only now they have become one. He is also a God who wishes to inhabit us and make us His home. That's not a nifty metaphor, it's a reality. When Jesus was on this earth, He had no place to lay His Head. In fact, He was rejected in all quarters. He was rejected by His own people, the Jews. He was rejected in Bethlehem, in Galilee, in Samaria, and in Jerusalem. The only exception was a little town called Bethany. That town was the only place on earth that received Jesus and understood His worth. It was "home" for Him. Recently I wrote an eBook that explores this little town showing how it serves as an apt picture of God's desire for His church today (www.ptmin.org/bethany.htm ). God's Ultimate Passion explores God's quest for a home from Genesis to Revelation. When you trace this theme, the Scriptures take on new meaning. Finally, God seeks to have a family and a body through which to express Himself. And this theme can be traced beautifully from Genesis to Revelation. In short, if we look at the human drive for romance and passion and love . . . if we look at the human desire to bear offspring and reproduce . . . if we look at the human desire to have a place of security, acceptance, and significance, then we can understand a great deal about the heart of God. We can trace all of those desires back to our Creator. For they are faint echoes of what's been in His heart from before time. Q: Let's start with the first image: God searching for a Bride for his Son. In our times, more and more people are loosing their belief in marriage. At the same time, people seem just as interested as ever in romance and finding significant and unique relationships. What does this story in particular have to tell us about finding that kind of love, both with God and other people? If there is anything standing in the way of that kind of love, what would that be? A woman cannot receive the love of a man if she doesn't allow him to love her. If she believes that she is unlovable, the man will be frustrated because the love he has for her will have no outlet. The same principle works with God. The greatest thing that keeps Christians from experiencing His love is their view of themselves. Most Christians that I meet feel (deep down) that they are unlovable by a holy God. They feel that they aren't doing enough to please Him. Underneath the religious layers lies a fear of God. I don't mean a reverence, but a terror of Him: a feeling of uneasiness and unworthiness. This prevents them from truly believing that God loves them unconditionally and accepting that love. Part of the reason for this is because we have been preached a bait-and-switch gospel. We tell non-Christians, "Come as you are. God loves you. It doesn't matter what you've done. He accepts you because He loves you. Christ died for you while you were a sinner." But once that nonbeliever becomes a Christian, the message suddenly changes dramatically. They are told: "You have to do the following things to make God happy. If you don't read your Bible daily, pray daily, do thus and so daily, then God will not be happy with you." As a result of this mixed message, the contemporary Christian lives on a treadmill of performance. He or she tries to do better than the best they can do. My book seeks to liberate Christians by showing them how God really sees them. It's all over the New Testament if someone points it out to us. Q: The image of the bride is also a prominent theme in writing of the Prophets, but the marriage is not always that happy. In fact, during the exile God was going through a painful and messy divorce. How do you think the relationship of Jesus and the Bride is going today? What could make it better? Interestingly, what the prophets teach us is that even though the Bride of God can be unfaithful and fail the Lord, He still loves her with an unfailing love. And He will eventually woo her back to Himself. Hosea and Ezekiel are evidences of this. It was the Lord's unconditional love for His Bride that eventually brought His people back to Him. So I think one of the things that can be done, and needs to be done, is for God's people to be taught how the Lord actually sees them. It's His love that draws us to Him. "It's His kindness that leads us to repentance." I believe the Bride is suffering from a case of mistaken identity. She's been told a wrong story about who she is and who her God is. And she has been conditioned to live out of that wrong story. The task of Christian ministry is to tell a new story . . . the one that is found in Scripture. And that story is rooted in a God who is out-of-His head in love with His people. It's rooted in a perfect heavenly Suitor who has given His life to win a Bride for Himself. Such love is astonishing, and it has the power to capture our hearts and change the direction of our lives. Q: You call God homeless in the second main section of your book. I work with some people who are recovering from living on the streets, so that description has added meaning for me. Now, I don't want to take anything from God, but it seems that a homeless God is quite different from the Hellenistic visions of God as the unmoved mover - this absolute singular being that is stoic, impervious, and totally self-sufficient. It's hard to imagine how we could matter to a God who is so high and mighty. The image you paint flies in the face of this Greek image of God and also the currently fashionable idea of God as a generic force or impersonally principle. What is the importance of seeing God in this way as opposed to the other ways I've mentioned? Among other things, it shows us that God longs to live with us fallen humans. And not only to live with us, but to live in us. In my early Christian life, I was part of a movement that emphasized "visitations" from God. They opened every service with a prayer that invited God to visit them. Later, I realized that this is a contradiction to what the Lord really wants. He doesn't want to visit; He wants to dwell. And that means He wishes to be master of the house, not just the guest of honor. At the end of Revelation, we see the ultimate purpose of God fulfilled. God will find His dwelling place with human beings and human beings will find their dwelling place in God. And there will be a oneness whereby He will be all in all. That's not just high theology. The church is called to live in the foretaste of that future reality. To put it another way, the Father dwells in the Son and the Son dwells in the Father. And this has been the case before the creation project of Genesis 1 and 2. Yet because of the overflowing love that is in the Truine God, the Lord wanted to expand and enlarge that mutual dwelling to a physical creation. And we have been invited into it. Thus the human longing for a home is in essence a reflection of God's desire for a house. For me, there's something quite touching about that. The living God created me and others to take up residence in us and be His home. Q: There's this great film called Garden State that I think says a lot about my generation. In it, the main character talks about coming home for the first time after moving out as a grown-up and how you realize the house you grew up in is not home anymore. By the end of the movie, he says he's found home in a relationship that's formed through the story. Have you encounter many people in your ministry who are looking for home? Can you tell us a real-life story about that and how that person found home? I plant what I call "organic churches." (see www.ptmin.org/organic.htm ) One of the most frequent statements that people make when they first begin living in an organic expression of the church is: "I'm home now!" As Christians we were built for a specific habitat. That habitat is the ekklesia, the community of the believers under the Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. As I state in the book, we will always be searching for home until we find our native habitat. Until we do, we will always have an inward sense that "this is not it; there must be something more." Once we find our habitat, everything else falls into place. Q: In this section of the book, I heard a strong theme of God's household in opposition to other powers that are in operation in the world. I can't help but think this relates strongly to the major theme in Jesus' teaching about the coming of the Kingdom of God. What is going on behind the scenes in this battle for the world? What is God calling us to do in this struggle? In section two of the book, I discuss the Kingdom and how it relates to God's quest for a home. Ever since the fall of humanity, there has been a battle over the earth. In unseen realms, there has been a relentless war over land. The history of the Old Testament as well as the New, with the coming of Jesus, is the story of that very battle. My book expands this point. But to put it in sentence, I'd say that the Lord is looking for a people who will stand on this earth for His rights and who will live as a colony from the heavenly realm, where His ways, His ideas, and His desires are being fleshed out by His people. And that, essentially, is what the church is supposed to be on this planet in every city where it gathers. Q: The third story you tell is about God's efforts to create a new species on earth that serve as ambassadors to the human race. In sci-fi films there's this major theme of space invaders infecting or altering human DNA to make a race of monsters to the peril of mankind. I think this is a mythological way of expression a deep-seated worry in our modern psychology. I think we fear submitting ourselves to anything bigger than us -- especially things that will change us -- because we think that will be the death of our individuality, uniqueness, and personality. In other words, it will mean that we're not human anymore. This is certainly one way that faith is portrayed today - that it will make you less human, and that's not a good thing. Why should people want to become this new species? Are they right in thinking it will be the death of who they are as a person? Actually, the new species is what God created humanity to be in the first place. C.S. Lewis wrote that when man fell in the garden, he became a different species from what God created him to be. When Adam took from the forbidden tree, he quickly became what the Bible calls "the old man." Jesus Christ, however, came not as a Jew or as a Gentile, but as a being from another realm. (Colossians and Ephesians show us His origins in the heavenly realm and throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus makes repeated references that He is not of this world.) Christ is the head of the "new man." But that head has a body. In the Greek text, the new man in the New Testament means a new race, a new species, a new humanity, a new kind of human being. In His death and resurrection, the head of the new man gave birth to a new lineage of humanity. The new man was then complete: head and body. And we are that body. Put another way, Jesus Christ embodies God's original thought for humanity. He is the real man, the real human. And so is the church. I find it interesting that the second century Christians referred to themselves as "the third race" and "the new race." They understood their identity. Unfortunately, Christians today, by and large, suffer from an identity crisis. There's a strong bent to find our roots. And so we engage in tracing our lineage here on this planet in hopes to find our identity and feel as sense of worth and meaning. Well, our identity is not rooted on this earth. It's not rooted in Adam. According to Scripture, we were in Christ from before time. That is where our true identity lies and that is where our real roots are from. "We are neither Jew or Gentile, but a new creation," says Paul. If we could grasp that we are part of a new species -- a new humanity that God has created in His Son, it would change the way we see ourselves and the way we treat one another. I say this not as an arm-chair theorist, but as someone who has both lived it and witnessed it in living color. Q: This new species has a purpose: to represent God to the world. A lot of people are throwing around the theological term "incarnational". They're talking about forming "incarnational ministries" that attempt to wrap Jesus in real flesh and blood so others can encounter him. Why is this important? Can't someone just read about Jesus in the Bible and that's it? Is this anything more than saying Christians should get out there and preach to their neighbors? It's not only to represent God to the world, to show forth the multi-colored wisdom of God to principalities and powers in heavenly realms (Ephesians 3:8-11). The fact of the matter is, Jesus Christ Himself could not show forth the Father on His own. He said, "I can do nothing of myself; the Father that dwells in me, He does the works." In the same way, the Christian today, no matter how well motivated, cannot show forth the living God. We must take our que from the Son of God and learn to live by the indwelling Christ. That which comes out of our own human efforts will never have any spiritual value. Only that which Christ does Himself through us has value and brings glory to God. This, I believe, is a missing note in much of the "incarnational" teaching today. We can only be incarnational in so far as we are living by the Divine life of the God who indwells us. That's how Christ lived while on this earth. Thankfully, this is possible for those who desire to learn how. Q: When you talk about the new species, it seems to me that you're not talking about creating some kind of super-hero Christian dressed in white with an impeccable smile and 10-pound Bible under his arm who is going to single-handedly win the world to his ideology. There's a strong sense that all the power comes from God and that this isn't really an individualistic thing. First, how can this be a reality in a culture that has an individualistic approach to everything, even community? Second, how can someone tell the difference between something that is man-powered, but wearing "religious clothes", and something that is really the new species of God and man participating together? In the West we have been taught to be individualistic. So living in community requires a denial of what we have been taught. It also involves a denial of our base nature, which is to live for self. We don't hear much about the cross today, but Jesus and Paul talked a great deal about the need "to take up our cross and die to ourselves." That's the negative side. The positive side is that every Christian has a spiritual instinct to be with other Christians. To gather with them. And to live their lives in close-knit community. My book seeks to put readers in touch with that spiritual instinct. And it encourages them to follow it. For the last 20 years, I've been gathering with Christians who lived a shared life together. I'm not speaking of a commune. I'm speaking of a community of believers who gather together under the Headship of Christ (rather than the headship of a man) and who know one another very well, care for one another, bear one another's burdens, explore the Lord together, and express Him together in the earth. Those who have had this experience, which is really a normal experience of church, wouldn't trade it for the world. As far as your second question goes, I would simply say that once a Christian sees the real deal when it comes to God's power, they will intuitively know the difference. The flesh has a smell. And so does the spirit. The Christian who is in touch with the Lord will be able to discern both. Q: Knit this all together for us: How would you like to see these three stories working themselves out in the lives of ordinary people? A great deal of my book points out that God's ultimate passion has to do with the church. However, the way the church is expressed today is a far cry from God's original intention and design. After finishing the book, readers have come away with this conclusion: That the present-day expression of the church does not reflect a body, a bride, a family, nor a house. Christians, by and large, still conceive the church to be a building, a service, a denomination, an organization, a ministry, or (perhaps most popularly) all the Christians in the world. But this is not God's thought, and it's not the Biblical vision of church. My other books, namely, Pagan Christianity, Rethinking the Wineskin, and Who is Your Covering? explore the question of how the church practically expresses God's eternal purpose in the world today. In summary, God's Ultimate Passion was published January of this year. That was six months ago. Since then, we have received letters, emails, and reviews on the book almost weekly. So far, the practical effect of the book on most readers has been that they have been utterly set free from a guilt complex. They have been liberated to enjoy the Lord's incredible love for them, and as a result, they have fallen in love with Him on a new level. In addition, they are beginning to discover what it means to "partake of the Lord," to live by His indwelling life, and to do it with others, not just as an individual. Finally, it has helped to lead some out of the wilderness, it has led others out of Egypt (the world), and it has led others out of Babylon (organized religion) to find those expressions of the church that are standing on the earth for God's eternal purpose and who are living it out as a body, a bride, a family, and the house of the living God. And that is what God is ultimately after, I believe.
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