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.