Book Review: Why We're Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck

I found out about this book from my old buddy Dan Kimball. It's a critique on emergent that he recommended as a fair look. You can read Dan's review, too. But read mine first.

The Set-Up

This book is written by two very different guys. One is a theology-loving logical kinda guy. He's a 30-year-old pastor in a college town. The other is a story-telling journalist, artsy type. He goes to the pastor's church.

In the intro, they tell the reader that they won't try to combine their personalities into one voice; rather, they each wrote separate chapters, and the rest of the book kinda flip-flops back and forth chapter by chapter.

The Good

These guys did tons of reading to prepare for this book, especially the pastor. His source list was insane long. I have to give a lot of credit because it can be really difficult to trudge through books that go against your deep-seeded convictions. It can be an angering process and an overwhelming one, too. But these guys kept at it and really had some determination.

They also presented their concerns with love. I thought their hearts were very much in the right place as I read their beefs with emergent. I've read lots of critiques on the "movement" and this one was by far the nicest spirited commentary. So many of the critiques lose all credibility because they appear to be rants showcasing a laundry list of grievances and sentencing participants of emergent to hell.

These guys were consistent in their overarching complaint: emergent is an over-reaction against an extreme example of conservative (and I would add - unChristlike) Christianity. These guys point out that emergents offer false dichotomies based on reacting to judgemental, stuffy, legalistic Christians. In shifting so far the toward liberty, they are just as guilty at straying from the Christian message.

The Bad

These guys did tons of reading to prepare for this book. While I admire their persistency to trudge through this, I thought everyone knew that emergent is a conversation and you have to talk about it for years on end to understand what anyone has to say. I say that mockingly, but honestly, I would've appreciated if these men had had conversations with some of the guys whose books they quoted. As it were, the journalist "interviewed" people who were probably not qualified to give much opinion, certainly not any expert opinion. For example, his story about how post-modernism hasn't really taken over the culture to the extent that emergents claim it has was based on a conversation with a college kid. That doesn't really hold a lot of water for me. I mean, how much did you really know as a college kid?

In fact, I'm not really sure the journalist added much to the book except some clever style. Not to say his clever style wasn't appreciated. I actually quite enjoyed his chapters. But I think the book as a whole would have been better if they hadn't separated the chapters by author. As it is now, the book has 2 kinds of chapters -- boring ones with tons of great information (by the pastor), and interesting ones with no real point (by the journalist). Had they worked to use the pastor's info and the journalists style, they could've had a book that was great, instead of just good.

The Verdict

If you're looking for a critique of the emergent church, this is a good choice. Though a bit difficult to trudge through at times, it is generally easy to read and clear. It presents a fair look and offers better solutions to the problems that emergents are also trying to solve.

I recommend it as part of your investigation into what the emergent church is.

My New Calling

Okay...maybe I won't be going into graphic design full-time, but I am pretty excited about the graphics that I made for this morning's worship service at Chase Valley.

I used to mess around on Photoshop and do goofy things like this:



But then I met Billy, and he showed me how to actually use the program, and now I can do cool things like this:

original photo by *hiro008

May Goals

Well, it seems like life has settled down again. It's good to be back together as a family, and we're pretty much settled in except for the stuff that never had a place in Indiana, and will take forever to get a place here in Alabama.

So, I'm looking for a bit more structure to our days, and I thought a good place to start would be in monthly goals. Sure the month's half over, but I've been working on these all along anyway. I just thought I'd share them with you.

Goals for the months of May:

Work out 3 times a week
Pick out photos for Ashlyn's first year baby book
Figure out a scheduling/calendar system that works for us
Read a couple of non-fiction books
Change address on magazine subscriptions
Use the decluttering calendar a couple times a week
Open a bank account down here

Book Review: The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball

The Set-Up

Kimball writes about where the church needs to go in the post-modern era by dividing his book into 2 parts. The first part is an overview of post-modern thought and the "crisis" that the modern church is in as they look at reaching upcoming generations (as well as those crazy hippy fogies who are more post-modern in thought). He gives a thorough and interesting synopsis of where our culture is and why that affects the church.

Part 2 is more of a methods book, although Kimball is careful to say that using methods without understanding the background of culture will turn out a disaster. He goes through several functions of the church (i.e. corporate worship, evangelism, discipleship, leadership structure) and discusses how these may need to change as the church engages the post-modern mindset of those around us.

Throughout the book, Kimball has included comments by about 5 or 6 people who read the manuscript. These are not just quotes that go along with his ideas, but they are people's comments about his words. Most are in agreement with him, but he was mature enough to also include some comments that disagree with his point, or expand his point to include something that may seem omitted. The commenters include Brian McLaren and Rick Warren.

The Good

First, I have to say that I love Kimball's heart in this book. So many times, I get frustrated with "emergents" (or friends of them, whatever that means) being condemning of the modern church. It bugs the crap out of me to have people use the same arrogance in their emerging rhetoric that they accuse the staunchy theologians of having.

But Kimball's heart is amazingly humble and generous. He quotes the adage that goes, "In essentials - unity. In non-essentials - freedom. In all things - charity." I feel like this really is his way of life. He criticizes without condemning, and he encourages all the while.

Another thing that I liked about the book was that he is aware of the risk of consumerism, even in positive changes. He emphasized over and over that the changes he's made must be made to put the focus on Christ and cannot be made solely to cater to the people we're trying to reach. He seems to understand how easy it is to head that direction and maintains that consumerism in the church is harmful, whether it's cheesy bumper stickers or deep spirituality of candles and incense. Consumerism is consumerism, and it needs to stay out of the church. In this vein, he also speaks against the "corporation" structure of many churches. Amen!

Lastly (although I could go on and on about "the good"), Kimball's theology is just very sound. We hear so much about emergent theology being wayward and post-modern itself. But Kimball is clear that theology is important and doesn't need to be sacrificed in order to reach new people. While methods may change to provide a deeper spiritual experience, truth is truth and the Jesus of the Bible is that Truth. It was relieving to read this strong focus on Jesus being the only way to heaven and a relationship with him being the only way to spiritual growth.

The Bad

The one thing that stood out to me the most as a negative in this book was the lack of variety in Kimball's methods. On one hand, he speaks to diversity, but on the other, his methodology indicates that ancient-future is the one way that post-moderns will feel connected. In honesty, I just can't see a lot of people liking the intensely deep, mystical, dark thing all the time. I tend to be deep and melancholy. More so than a heck of a lot of people I know, but I don't think week after week of dark depth is what would be effective toward a holistic spiritual growth. I realize that this is what has worked for his church, and this is what he uses in his community, but I would have liked to hear some other methods that work in other churches that reach to post-moderns.

Another thing that I wasn't crazy about with his methods was that many of them seemed very "Jesus and Me" worship. I'm sure I missed something here because community is so important to post-moderns and is talked about so much in the emerging movement. But a lot of Kimball's examples talked about people leaving their seats to go do something on their own, be it give offering, take communion, or pray. I tend to believe that corporate worship ought to be corporate. If I wanted to pray alone in the dark, I'd put on a CD, light some candles in my bedroom and pray. Being in the community gathering should be about communally worshiping God. It's not just me and Jesus. It's a family of believers worshiping together, and there's something about that kind of worship that cannot be done alone.

The Verdict

This is a fairly old book... that is, it's from 2003. But these days that's ancient, right? I mean, there's so much new stuff coming out everyday that most of the stuff in Kimball's book is now over-discussed. But this book is worth the read.

For one thing, it gives a good impression of what the emerging church can be when it holds fast to doctrinal truth and returns to depth of worship and relationship. It shows that these two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Even though this book was written previous to a lot of the current criticism over the emerging church, it's a good counter to show that the phrase doesn't just point to the liberal whackos who don't want to know anything with certainty. For this reason, I've recommended it to a friend, who has heard a lot of the criticism but none of the positives.

It's also a great read for people who haven't yet heard or investigated the term. I've already recommended it to my mom.

Spending Fast

Now that we're down here and getting settled, Billy and I have had a chance to look over our money stuff.

The move and related things (house repairs, organization needs [read: a kitchen trash can and such], bedding for Eve) have caused us to spend more than we normally do. Add to that an obnoxious bill for car repair, and we're downright tired of shelling out the cash.

So, we decided last night to participate in a "spending fast" for the month of May. This means that we won't be spending any unnecessary money.

"Necessary" will be categorized as anything that would make creditors come after us if we didn't pay. We will be paying rent. We will pay for power. We will pay for gas and groceries, although our efforts will go toward decreasing these expenditures.

"Superfluous" spending would include things like picture frames that I really want so I can hang up family pictures. These are only $2 each at Wal-mart. But $2 here and $2 there is what ends up adding up to big bucks in the long run.

I will be waiting to buy curriculum for next year until June. I'll also have to wait on getting Ashlyn's year-old pictures printed. (Heck! She's already 15 months, what's 30 more days???)

If we want, we can choose to write down things that we wanted to spend money on. Then, at the end of the month, we'll see what we really wanted by seeing if we still want it.

The idea for this came from My Simpler Life.

New

My church has been focusing on newness in Christ for the last several weeks, and today, the sermon series wrapped up with "New Strength." The biblical example was Gideon and his 300 men.

I've appreciated this whole series because my friend Elaine has pounded into my head over the last year that I'm a new creation. I've spent a lot of time learning about what that means. I've begun to understand how to take that truth -- which I've always "known" -- and appropriate it in my daily life. It takes the head knowledge and adds to it a knowledge of experience.

My church has talked about several different areas of life that our new identity and the power of Christ's resurrection in us. Some of the include

New Relationships
New Freedom
New Attitude

As I think on these phrases, I remember that the Gospel message is truly revolutionary.