Truly, an unpopular title for this day and age and I’m not talking among “them” out there. I’m talking about my own social and cultural stratosphere… the evangelical world. The church world is full of perceived church leaders and laymen and women who find every reason to criticize, blast and all out accuse the church and all her failures–and why not take a bunch of church leaders down with them? The good ones rail against their local church, but are careful to not step on the toes of the universal Church. I mean… that would be blasphemy–right? But what Kevin and Ted do, with strong arguments from Scripture and church history, is successfully, IMO, defend against such thinking, and make a reasonable (and accurate) case that if you’re attacking the local church; you’re in its very essence, assaulting Christ’s universal Church… the Bride of Christ.
For those who do not desire to follow all of the commands in Scriptures (not just the ones we agree with), you will most likely find this book borderline boring and relentlessly narrow-minded. For the rest of us who sincerely desire to worship Christ through ministering in our local churches, you will no doubt find this book convicting, encouraging, and incredibly useful as a practical foundation for building a meaningful and authentic church life. Two important things, I believe, people must know about the book before reading: 1) writing style and 2) perspective.
The first is writing style. Like their previously successful publication, Why We’re Not Emergent by Two Guys Who Should Be (a really great read, too), they each take a chapter and write from their agenda. The result is two very different writing styles. DeYoung writes from an academic, pastoral slant while Kluck writes from an easy-going, conversational style. Both are intelligent and prolific, but if you have a hard time switching back and forth (which I do) then you might find the style a bit distracting. I want you to know going into it, so you can prepare and hopefully it can cut down on the diversions and help you focus. It’s like getting two books in one.
The second is perspective. You might think they are sitting down with Scripture and going verse by verse, challenging us from the many passages that hail the Church. They actually start from a cultural point of view, using what’s out there now in the so-called evangelical kingdom (i.e. Barna, McLaren, Viola, etc.) and using Scripture and church history to successfully defend against such “revolutionary” thinking. If this type of contending isn’t apropos for this day and age, then I don’t know what is.
What I thoroughly enjoyed and was pleasantly surprised to read is they don’t deny or bury their heads in the sand about the problems in church life. They don’t leave us feeling, at best, immature and, at worst, unregenerate, because our lives can be littered with a sinful experience, both from within our own hearts and from outside circumstances against us. The church is made up of people and people sin (gasp!). What they do well is flesh out the many failings of the church without throwing the “baby”–”bathwater” and all.
The bible is clear; those who are true disciples, love the church even with its many blemishes and weak systems. DeYoung and Kluck dive into the unpopular task of guarding against misguided and/or even heretical thinking by taking popular, evangelical spins and turning them on their apostasy heads.
In the end, I walked away from the book acknowledging my sinful part in the flaws of the church; being convicted of the subtle ways I often undermine church life; and feeling completely refreshed that my general love, not just for the universal Bride, but my beloved and cherished local church, wasn’t a symptom of head burying; but a marker of true discipleship. I hope it does the same for you, as well.
Below are some excerpts from the book to hopefully whet your appetite for it. Here is the Amazon.com link if you want to buy it. I hope you will.
What the jacket says:
Why We Love the Church presents the case for loving the local church. It paints a picture of the local church in all its biblical and real life guts, gaffes, and glory in an effort to edify local congregations and entice the disaffected back to the fold. It also provides a solid biblical mandate to love and be part of the body of Christ and counteract the “leave church” books that trumpet rebellion and individual felt needs.
Why We Love the Church is written for four kinds of people – the Committed, the Disgruntled, the Waffling & the Disconnected.
What the guts say:
What makes the church unique is its commitment, above all else, to knowing and making known Christ and Him crucified. True, biblical story line is creation, fall, redemption, and re-creation. But the overwhelming majority of Scripture is about our redemption, how God saves lawbreakers, how sin can be atoned for, how rebels can be made right with God. ~ DeYoung
It seems to be me that proclaiming this message of redemption is the main mission of the church, even more than partnering with God to change the world through humanitarian and global activism. ~ DeYoung
No matter what the trendmeisters recommend, it is absolutely biblically and eternally necessary that we verbally tell people the gospel and call people to faith and repentance in Jesus Christ. ~ DeYoung
We need to be careful about our language. I think I know what people mean when they talk about redeeming the culture or partnering with God in His redemption of the world, but we should really pick another word. Redemption has already been accomplished on the cross. We are not co-redeemers of anything. We are called to serve, bear witness, proclaim, love, do good to everyone, and adorn the gospel with good deeds, but we are not partners in God’s work of redemption. ~DeYoung
Jesus’ initial description of the church focused not on changing the world but on the hope of eternal life. ~DeYoung
If we’re all revolutionaries, are any of us an actual revolutionary? Being a revolutionary used to mean that you overthrew a government; now it means that you’re a courageous enough visionary to have church on a golf course or in someone’s living room. ~ Kluck
What [Dan] Merchant fails to realize is that the gospel is, by nature, offensive. It suggests that we are in fact sinners in need of salvation. Jesus tells His disciples that they will leave behind friends, careers, and even family members for the sake of the cross. He is, essentially, suggesting that if the gospel isn’t divisive in some way it’s probably no gospel at all. ~ Kluck
As a people, we’ve carried too much swagger and shown too little brokenhearted humility. ~ DeYoung
But the church failure is not the whole story. Outsider perceptions are not always accurate, and insider angst is not always fair. Before we write off the church because young nonChristians hate her and thirtysomething church dropouts think she’s lame, we need to think more carefully about the critiques. ~ DeYoung
In all honesty I can say that in the times I’ve been hurt by church people or been disheartened, the biggest problems, in the end proved to be those that came from my own heart. This is not to discount external pressures or difficult situations or the way sin which Christians can hurt each other. Yet even with all of these outside factors, my main issue has been Kevin. I respond in sinful ways. I feel sorry for myself. I lose faith. I doubt the Word of God. I don’t want to forgive. I stop hoping. I get embittered. I grow lazy. I don’t stay in step with the Spirit. these are my sins from my heart. Others can make life difficult for me. I can make it unbearable. ~ DeYoung
The bible is all for honesty, truth, and sincerity, but authenticity is something a little different. If authentic is simply the opposite of fake, contrived, and hypocritical, then I’m all for it. I like people who are honest with their feelings and open about their struggles. But godliness demands a lot more than just being real. In fact, godliness demands that we stop acting like we want to and start acting like Christ. I sometimes find, especially among my peers, that authenticity is not a self-abasing means of growing in holiness, but a convenient cover for endless introspection, doubt, uncertainty, anger, and worldliness. So that if other Christians seem pure, assured, and happy, we despise them for being inauthentic. ~ DeYoung
Granted, the church shouldn’t be a happy-clave naive about life’s struggles. Plenty of psalms show us godly ways to be real with our negative emotions. But the church should not apologize for preaching a confident Christ and exhorting us to trust Him in all things. Church is not meant to foster an existential crisis of faith every week, nor are we justified in leaving church because there seem to be too many answers offered to our questions. Belief is not the enemy of authenticity. ~ DeYoung
At the end of my life, I want my friends and family to remember me as someone who battled for the gospel, who tried to mortify sin in my life, who fought hard for life, and who contended earnestly for the faith. Not just a nice guy who occasionally noticed the splendor of the mountains God created, while otherwise just trying to enjoy myself, manage my schedule, and work on my short game. ~ Kluck
While God only knows the heart, I fail to see signs of reluctance from those who write about all the ways the church “sucks.” I don’t sense that their critiques come from a broken heart, much like conservatives can “confess” the sins of America with a self-righteous swagger. I see little evidence in today’s church critics of spiritual zeal rising about strong natural affection.
To the contrary, I see the church derided with mockery and scorn. I see critics exaggerating her weaknesses and incapable of affirming any of her strengths. I see many leaving the church instead of loving her for better or for worse. I see lots of peers who have 20/20 vision for the church’s failings, but are nearsighted to their pride, self-importance, and mutual self-congratulation. I see a willful ignorance to the church’s history, a simplistic understanding of its past errors, and a childish impatience for her current struggles.
To be sure, let us lament with broken hearts the impurities yet to be washed clean in Christ’s bride. But let us never forget that the first errors to confess are not those sings belonging to our grandparents or the crusaders, but our own. ~ DeYoung
“Church isn’t something to be endured, it’s something to be entered into joyfully. Maybe you don’t like the sermons, or maybe the music bothered you one Sunday, but those things are trivial compared to the very act of committing yourself to being part of the body of Christ, and participating fully.” ~ Chuck Colson (Ted Kluck’s interview with Colson)
“We live in a therapeutic age where everything is measured by how much I get out if it,” he continues. ”The church ought to be measured by what we put into it for God and others. And we live in an era of rampant individualism. So in a very individualistic culture, the whole idea of being a part of a community is countercultural. And it fits perfectly in the what’s-in-it-for-me, narcissistic attitudes prevalent in American culture.” ~ Chuck Colson
No less pragmatic is the “revolutionary” leave-your-church-and-find-God movement, which in effect says, “If people in your life don’t like the church, fine; just distance yourself from the church and do our own spirituality.” The problem with this is it is entirely self-sufficient. There’s no risk-taking on behalf of the gospel. It allows us [...] to take with us our staff, bread, bag, extra tunic, and reputation. [based from Luke 9] ~ Kluck
Churchless Christianity makes about as much sense as a Christless church, and has just as much biblical warrant. ~ DeYoung
“To say that Christ has founded a church without any organization, government, or power is a statement that arises from principles characteristic of philosophical mysticism but takes no account of the teaching of Scripture, nor the realities of life.” DeYoung quoting Professor Herman Banvick
As evangelicals we’ve become addicted to “happy ending” stories where we go through “x” (hard thing) and then start praying and then–Shazam!–God makes everything better and we have a nice, utopian story to tell where we are the hero who ends up with a great job, the great family, the time off, the free plane ticket, the lost purse, or the great healthy kids. The fact of the matter is, sometimes (often) the happy ending is heaven, and the getting there is a really difficult but formative part of our sanctification. And sometimes what God wants in the interim is for us to find our happiness, holiness and identity in Him, rather than our perfect jobs, perfect 2.5 kids (or 6.5 kids in the case of our church), and perfect testimonies. ~ Kluck
I can’t read Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus without thinking that preaching is really important. Preaching is more than a conversation, or a collection of inspirational thoughts to ponder. It’s a passionate, desperate plea for life through the gospel, as Paul declared to Timothy: “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage–with great patience and careful instruction.” (2 Timothy 4:1-2 NIV). ~ Kluck
The nice thing about the doctrine of original sin is that it focuses our attention on issues that are a little more timeless. People will always be sinners. So our main problem is not lack of integration or balance, or lack of success or education, or even poverty and injustice, as serious as these problems can be. Our main problem will always be sin. And, hence, we are always in need of a Savior. This doesn’t mean we can be blissfully ignorant of the world around us, but it means our focus will be squarely on the gospel. We can forget about being the church of what’s happening now, and relearn to be the church of Christ, and Him crucified. ~ DeYoung
