Report on Frank's First Trip to Ireland

by David Leino, March 2002

A group of seven Christians living in Drogheda, Louth Co. hosted the conference. These believers have been meeting together informally outside of any denominational, hierarchical, or institutional church system for a number of years. They were the ones who invited the speaker, and they also took care of the sleeping and eating arrangements of most of the attendees. This included wonderful meals for everybody all week long and those that traveled far to be apart of the conference they arranged either a home or a nice bed and breakfast to stay in. Their hospitality was overwhelming. There were about forty people attending, which I believe is a large number for this type of conference overseas. 

Most were from the Drogheda area, and a few were from other parts of Ireland. There were some Irish residents from Nigeria, two people from Finland, two people from Poland (who currently live in England), two people from California, one Canadian, and three people from Florida (including the speaker and myself). Most of these people heard about it either by word of mouth or by the Internet, with the exception of one man who saw the poster advertisement on the door of the building being used and walked in.

Most of the believers in Drougheda share a similar story. As it turns out, most of them are very familiar with each other. There are several small house churches similar to the group that hosted the conference. Even though they were not meeting together it was surprising how much they knew about each other. After asking about their familiarity, we found out that the groups have the same origin. A few of the believers recounted their history, which was quite a remarkable yet distinctly Irish story.

As the story goes, it all started about twenty years ago when a man, tired of having no money, kidnapped the bank owners wife and held her for ransom. This kidnapper had a wife of his own who was a Christian. During the whole ordeal and the court hearing and even afterwards while the kidnapper served time in prison, his own wife would have other Christians come over to their house and pray for her husband and also the Bank owners wife and family. As this went on, the number of people attending this prayer meeting grew and people were getting saved and if I remember correctly the kidnapper even came to the Lord. 

This went on for about twelve years and people considered this group their church and they met from house to house. This all changed when a man who was a gifted bible teacher joined this group and began to share radical messages about the cross, and forsaking all and following Jesus with holy lives. What resulted was a church split. Half of the people loved the messages this brother shared and the other half thought they were too radical and would lead them into something they were leery of. After the church split they, the two groups left over, experienced their own splits. The resulting factions also divided in their own time. This went on for about eight years, and consequently left in its wake was a bunch of scattered groups of Christians who were terribly hurt and wounded. What is surprising is even after all of the hurt and ill feelings, which by the way separated even natural families, these groups still kept up with what the other groups were doing.

The group that hosted the conference, realizing the need for change from how badly things progressed, somehow got a hold of some books and materials from SeedSowers publishing house group, a publishing house for materials on the deeper Christian life, and also from the Present Testimony Ministry web site www.ptmin.org. From the web site, they learned a little about Frank Viola and a couple of books that he has written, "Rethinking the Wineskin" and "Who is Your Covering?" They liked what they saw and wanted to let everyone else in the town know about it. So they arranged everything for the conference and invited Frank Viola to speak.

To start with, Frank gave everybody the chance to introduce himself or herself, which gave the conference a much more relaxed and personal atmosphere. Then for the first message he recounted the hypothetical situation of the apostle Pauls traveling companion and early historian, Luke, visiting a modern Christian church. He discussed what shock and disappointments Luke would have during a modern church service, of any denomination. Also that Luke, with a first century mindset, would not understand how the believers would be fine with a meeting of the saints that is modeled after what he would believe to be the pagan religions of his day. 

Frank used a few passages in the New Testament, one of which was 1^st Corinthians chapter 14, to reveal what it was like in the first century meetings of the saints. He even claimed that many of the modern rituals and practices we encounter today, such as a separated clergy and laity, the sermon, the liturgy, the worship team or choir, even the architecture of the buildings with high ceilings and seating all facing a central stage with a raised platform, and many other such practices, "dont have one Scriptural shred of evidence to support them." He was basically saying that most all of the rituals and practices we accept today have no scriptural right to exist. Instead these practices belong to the Greek and Roman basilicas of the pagan gods.

After exposing the modern church system, Frank began to share what was really on his heart to share, that is Jesus Christ and his Bride. From Matthew 16:13 he showed that "true church life or true body life is built on a revelation of Jesus Christ." So for the next message, he answered the question, "Who is this man Jesus Christ?" He stated the there were two books in the New Testament that contain the highest revelation of Jesus; they are Ephesians and Colossians. He focused on Colossians and started by giving the historical background to the text and how the church was planted, and why the letter was written. It was quite a fascinating story to hear that the letter to Colosse was written in response to false doctrines being taught by legalists. 

Even more fascinating is that Paul, instead of directly confronting the false doctrines point by point, "he gave those people, in that letter, the highest, most sublime, most earth shaking revelation of who the man Jesus Christ was, and it blew the doctrine to pieces. He gave them Christ." From that letter Frank conveyed that revelation of Jesus. The audiences general reaction was amazement at how much they heard about Jesus that they had never heard before. What is especially interesting is that most of the people were believers for twenty and thirty plus years in and out of organized Christianity, including Catholic and protestant denominations, and still they have never heard anything like it so deep.

In the next message Frank answered the question, "Who is this woman, the Bride?" He started in Genesis 2 and ended up in Revelation 22. He revealed the church in such a manner that I have to admit was so glorious it puts my own southern Baptist upbringing to shame. Mind you that I grew up in several of the largest and fastest growing Southern Baptist Churches in Tampa. Danny Devlin, a man from the church in Jacksonville, Florida who went with us to this conference, said it was the greatest message he had ever heard on the Bride. Danny said he and others were teary eyed during it.

In the next message, Frank discussed meetings under the headship of Jesus and his eternal purpose. Using mostly the passages from Ephesians 3 and 1^st Corinthians chapter 14 he showed us what the purpose of the church is and that the church is supposed to fulfill that purpose it was created for, and that it would only be able to if it restored Jesus headship. Again this is something not well known in modern Christianity.

Finally at the end of the conference he gave two messages on the Tabernacle of David. The first one is titled "Restoring the Tabernacle of David: Part 1, Burn your wooden cart!" The second is "Restoring the Tabernacle of David: Part 2, The Two Tabernacles." These were my personal favorites. He recounted the dealings with the Ark of the Covenant, from the book of Chronicles, and compared it with what is going on with Gods people today. He conveyed that today the Lords people want to carry the Ark of the Covenant, which symbolizes the presence of God, in a manner that God did not prescribe. God ordained a certain way for his people to carry his presence, however they had their own ideas of how it should be done and built wooden carts to do it, just like they saw the Canaanites do it. This resulted in Gods anger really. 

The analogy was that today Gods people build wooden carts and do things their way. Frank encouraged us to burn our wooden carts and start over just like King David did and learn how God wants things done. He then showed in part two that once King David did it right there were then two tabernacles, the tabernacle of Moses and the tabernacle of David. The tabernacle of Moses had all of the adornments and rituals and was real impressive to see; only the presence of the Lord was not there. Instead the presence of God was close by in a small tent that had nothing impressive about it except the Ark of the Covenant, which was the tabernacle of David. Frank then encouraged us to not be fooled by exciting rituals and neat adornments that today bear the absence of Gods presence. Instead he implored us to recover the simple ways of faith and seek the Lords presence. I found it very remarkable how closely this Old Testament story parallels what is happening today.

After several of the messages Frank gave the chance for people to ask many questions and let them discuss their reactions. If I were to describe the peoples reaction I would sum it up with amazement at how deep the messages were, and how rich the picture of Jesus was. I personally saw many of the peoples eyes begin to tear when they heard about the Lord. I heard people say things like, "I have never heard about the Lord so richly in all my years as a believer," or "I feel like this is the first time that I heard the gospel," one brother who had even been a Christian for many years said, "I feel like I have just been born again for the first time." It really was amazing how the messages were well received. In fact it seemed like people were already starting to fall in love with each other again and allowing the divisions to die. Plainly, they saw so much of the Lord that they were letting the hurt go and receiving one another.

One thing I really appreciated was that Frank was not merely sharing theory. He is apart of and working with and knows of other groups of believers who have the experience of the things he shared on. These saints are actually fleshing out these principles and seeing the results. They know what true body life is by experience. It is easy to spout sermons on theory and rhetoric. However practicing what you preach is weightier in my eyes. This is actually one thing that I look for, that is the living reality of what is preached.

At the end of the conference Frank asked the people if they wanted this as their own experience. He said if they did, he and a few others that he is working with would actually come back and raise up a church there in Drogheda that would stand for the headship of Christ. I know all of the group that hosted the conference wanted to have Frank come back to show them how to be a church like he described. There were also about ten others who definitely wanted to be apart of it and would join the other group of seven. And from the looks of it there will probably be more. Also the two Finnish ladies who were in tears by the end of the conference invited Frank to speak in Finland. They said they would even translate his books into the Finnish language. As well the two people from Poland and even the man from California wanted Frank to come and speak where they lived. It really was an excellent conference to attend, and perhaps may prove to become historically significant.