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Book Review: Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), written by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. Published by Moody Publishers, 2008. My father took me skeet shooting for the first time when I was eleven years old. For some, the words “skeet shooting” may conjure images of fancy gun clubs with expensive shotguns and the automated traps that toss clay pigeons at pre-determined heights and speeds, but we were not of that level of sophistication. We bought a box of clay pigeons at the local K-Mart, found an open field, and tossed the clay pigeons with a plastic, hand-held device that we had purchased for $4.00. My shotgun was a single-shot 12 gauge that my dad had purchased at J.C. Penneys for $12.00. With my first skeet shooting experience, I learned something about the difficulty of hitting a moving target. After much practice, I was able to anticipate the trajectory of the target, keep the gun steady, and concentrate to the point where I could diminish to powder a great number of the sailing discs. But hitting a moving target, such as those clay pigeons, continues to be a great deal more difficult than hitting a stationary target. Let us suppose that when my father took me to that open field on that day many years ago, that he had said, “Son, we don't want to be limited to just a little clay pigeon as a target. That just seems to be too confining. Our target today is going to be every inch of ground, and every tree, and every blade of grass within the forty acres of this open field.” As an eleven-year-old, I may have been initially excited about the potential for churning up so much earth and the destruction that would be caused by repeated blasts of birdshot, but I would have eventually tired of the endeavor, probably prior to destroying the first acre. In the end, I would have come to the conclusion that hitting a stationary target that is not clearly limited and defined is even more difficult than hitting a moving target. Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck encountered a similarly unlimited and undefined target when they decided to write a book about the current emergent Christianity movement. Much like trying to spray birdshot over every inch of a forty acre field, addressing the fallacies posited by the emerging or emergent church is a tiring endeavor, because the emergent church prefers to be a target with no limit or definition. Limiting and defining their movement would require the proponents of the the emergent movement to use propositions, statements that can be seen as either true or false. Addressing the fallacies of any movement requires that the movement be defined and defining a movement which seeks to avoid definition is, as DeYoung aptly puts it, like “nailing Jell-O to a wall.” After reading Why We're Not Emergent, I have become convinced that not only is it possible to nail Jell-O to a wall, but that DeYoung and Kluck must be the two best Jell-O nailers in existence. I hope that they take that as the compliment it was intended to be.
The two authors of Why We're Not Emergent make an interesting writing team, to say the least. Ted Kluck is a writer of sports books and has done some writing for ESPN the Magazine and other sports periodicals. Not too long ago, he wrote a book entitled Paper Tiger, which is something of a re-visiting of the work done in Plimpton's Paper Lion, and in my opinion, is actually superior to Plimpton's work. In Why We're Not Emergent, Kluck provides the layperson perspective to the emergent church movement, and his writing is alternately witty and comical or emotionally touching. Kevin DeYoung is pastor of the University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan. His writing and detailed, love-filled arguments and analysis are of a kind that provides me with a strong desire to move to East Lansing just so that I can have him as my pastor. As a short digression, I will point out that Pastor DeYoung is a Reformed theologian, as the name of his church would suggest. I currently attend a Presbyterian church, but I still have not shaken my independent Bible church upbringing, and so I am, at the most, a three-point Calvinist. I still tend to have difficulties with the Limited Atonement and the Irresistible Grace petals on the TULIP. But I have found that Reformed theologians, from Wayne Grudem to Ian R.K. Paisley, tend to have more detailed, well-thought-out, and compelling arguments than those of us who are their Arminian brothers, and I find this tendency reinforced in the writing of DeYoung. DeYoung and Kluck do a stellar job of identifying emergent leaders and defining the emergent movement, and this review of their book makes no claim to the ability to summarize in a few paragraphs what they said in over 250 pages. But I feel compelled to attempt to succinctly identify the emergent movement for those who may have a limited familiarity. In my view, the emergent movement is the abortion that occurs when postmodernism attempts to impose it's vagaries on Christianity and it's leaders are authors and speakers such as Brian McClaren, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Spencer Burke, Dan Kimball, Andrew Jones, Chris Seay, Peter Rollins, David Tomlinson, Leonard Sweet, and Rob Bell. The two writers make an elegant tag-team as they write alternating chapters, with Kluck focusing on the comfort that a solid, orthodox Christianity brings to a sportswriter's life, and with DeYoung focusing on the stark contrast between Biblical certainty and emerging church ambivalence. DeYoung accurately details the historical inaccuracies, compass-less morality, and inept theology of the emerging church, while Kluck casually discusses how these inaccuracies, the lack of a compass, and this ineptness can negatively affect everyday life for a thirty-something resident of Michigan. The casual reader, such as myself, may be inclined to ignore philosophy. By the time I was nine years old, I knew that “of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things,” (Romans 11:36) and so I had the “who am I, why am I here, and where am I going?” questions answered. I must admit that my confidence in my faith caused me to ignore much about post-Enlightenment thinking. But even with my ignorance, I found DeYoung's discussion concerning the emergent church's modernism masquerading as postmodernism to be interesting, and DeYoung demonstrated that I have arrogantly ignored philosophical discussions that I should not have, if only to be able to discuss this newest threat to Christianity. I found a great deal of meaningful writing in Why We're Not Emergent, but I will focus on the two items of most significance to me. At one point, DeYoung discusses the tendency of the emergent church movement to either avoid the discussion of a physical place called “hell” or, at the least, to minimize it's importance. In this discussion, DeYoung delineates why the acknowledgement of the very real wrath of God is an important part of a vibrant Christianity. After reading DeYoung's discussion, I came to realize that I had fallen prey to the easy tendency to minimize God's holiness in an effort to make Him politically acceptable to a society that does not care for absolutes, and I think that many Bible-believing Christians may come to the same realization after reading DeYoung's excellent discourse. In addition, DeYoung discusses the question that keeps him well-grounded in his decision-making as a pastor, and that question is, “Will this help me and my people die well?” The question of dying well should be utmost in all decisions associated with a Christianity that seeks to live well. If you are an Evangelical Christian who is seeking to re-affirm that which you have always believed, please buy this book. If you are involved in the emergent church movement, please buy this book, if only to re-assess why you do/don't believe whatever it is that you do/don't believe. This book is required reading for all who treasure their relationship with Jesus Christ and who wonder about the direction of the Christian church today.
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