According to Viola and Barna, the "Protestant order of worship represses mutual participation and the growth of Christian community." Such scripted services, they say, "put a choke hold on the functioning of the body of Christ by silencing its members." (Viola and Barna).

Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican church services are perhaps the most formal of all worship services today. And historians generally agree (as do Viola and Barna of course) that many of their formal, liturgical practices stem from either Pagan origins or pre-Christian Jewish practices.

Frank Viola, one of the leading advocates for the organic church (or "house church") movement, describes the organic church as a "church that is born out of spiritual life instead institutions" and which is characterized by "Spirit-led, open-participatory meetings and non-hierarchical leadership." (Viola, Frank and Barna, George. Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of our Church Practices. Tyndale, 2008).

When it comes to structure and practice, most Christian churches have it all wrong – at least that's what Frank Viola and George Barna argue in Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of our Church Practices. According to Viola, Barna, and what's called the "organic church" movement, churches that follow scripted orders of worship in their services, pay clergy, and/or erect buildings with pulpits and chairs are more ",Foamposites;Pagan" than Christian.

In Pagan Christianity?, Viola described an organic church meeting he recently attended as an example of what one might expect. He writes: ",http://www.foampositesor.com/;We met in a large living room. In the meeting, every member shared his or her experience with the Lord that meeting was so full of life that there were no pauses and no silence. We heard from our Lord from every member of the body in that room." (Viola and Barna).

For Viola, this type of open-participatory meeting is church in its "purest" and "uncorrupted" form. House church proponents argue that the overwhelming majority of church services today have long since been corrupted and claim they bear little resemblance to what was happening in the book of Acts.

Advocates for the "organic church" argue that the structure of the early church and modern church are very different. They say the early church was characterized by open participation and leadership by the Holy Spirit, whereas the modern church is too scripted, too hierarchical, and completely outside what Jesus intended.

Those who have attended house church meetings describe experiences in which some people sing, others read poems, some offer a brief devotional or sermonette, and so forth. In many cases, chairs are set in a c