In Praise of Patriarchal Institutions | Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized...

DeYoung is still great at explaining his views, and Kluck has gotten a little better | Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion | Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck

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	• Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck Moody Publishers, 2009 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very Helpful Perspective

Having read several chapters in "Pagan Christianity", I was very pleased to read this book for helpful balance. I especially appreciated the chapter on historic Christianity that exposes some of the shallowness of confessing sins of the past while neglecting some of our own. Keep it up!

In Praise of Patriarchal Institutions

I found Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck's arguments in "Why We Love The Church" thoughtful, though not all that convincing. In fairness, maybe this is because my husband and I don't fit the authors' "straw man" for church-leavers. We're baby boomers who started out in the mainline and pentecostal churches, and most recently left an evangelical church we saw as more fixated on scrotum than on scripture. We're too old to be emergent, aren't convinced the house church movement isn't the same content in a smaller box, too anti-institutional to hang out at Starbucks. I have no interest in utopia, in revolution or in any community other than my family on Sunday morning.

The subhead for "Why We Love The Church" is lacking a word. It should read: "In praise of PATRIARCHAL institutions and organized religion. The authors' arguments in favor of church membership are made almost exclusively from a patriarchal point-of-view. DeYoung establishes this bias on page 169: "Even in a unit as small and organic as the family, there are authority structures. Mom and Dad make the rules, with Dad leading the way." Kluck, the other author, emphasizes his strong relationship with his father, as well as his admiration for father-worshipping athletes. He does on occasion mention his wife. I identified with the infertility, the homeschool conflicts and the lack of happy endings.

Still, if you, the reader, grew up in anything other than a patriarchal family structure, if you had an absent or abusive father-figure, or if you, like me, were raised by an anti-authoritarian father, you won't understand most of the arguments put forth in this book, and might even find yourself praising the Lord for setting you free from all that.

The book's concept of the institutional church might not even fit many institutional churches. DeYoung's emphasis on preaching would rule out the Catholics; his emphasis on order would rule out many Pentecostals; his emphasis on liturgy would rule out the Baptists; his emphasis on keeping women "in bounds" would rule out liberal mainline churches. One is left to wonder whether any church practice--inside or outside of institutions--would measure up to his standards.

I'm not saying orthodoxy doesn't matter. But when you've seen the same tired gnat strained enough times, you wonder if someone's swallowed the camel. The book emphasizes masculine sources and rejects most things feminine like poetry (apparently it's always bad), old women's prayers and "The Shack"'s non-patriarchal Trinity. By badmouthing everything feminine as spiritually inferior, the authors effectively undermine their argument of the church as the Bride of Christ and therefore to be accepted with all her warts.

Come on! They're not married yet! It's not too late to speak now or forever hold our peace. We aren't going to offend Jesus if we respond to "the banns": "I have just cause why these two may not be joined together: The bride is a man." If Christians find Christ's fiancee lame today, imagine how repulsed Jesus will be on his wedding night!

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DeYoung is still great at explaining his views, and Kluck has gotten a little better

Overall, this is not as good as Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, the authors' previous book, but it's still a terrific response to a problem in the contemporary North American Church. A number of authors are advocating a mass exodus from institutional brick-and-mortar churches to a more free-flowing relational thing that may mean periodic house church gatherings or may come down to just pointing out during a game of golf that God made the mountains in the distance. DeYoung and Kluck present a very thorough case for why organization in "religion" is the most Biblical way to enjoy a relationship with God. As with their earlier work, DeYoung does all of the heavy lifting, as he analyzes missiological, personal, historical, and theological arguments for and against organized churches (in chapters satisfyingly full of footnotes). Kluck presents simple observations and a few interviews in chapters that added nothing to my experience of the book but may make other people smile (actually, I was impressed with Kluck this time around. His writing was so terrible last time that my expectations would have been exceeded in this book if he could have written five pages in a row on related topics, and he far exceeded that. Kluck's chapters almost never related to his clever and engaging chapter titles, but they were awfully close to good on their own, and I'm proud of his improvements). Both authors could have used more aggressive editors to point out typos and grammatical errors, but DeYoung's ideas are presented clearly and authentically, and they are certainly worth reading for anyone who wonders whether or not an organized church is still important. With me, DeYoung is (almost literally, given the subject matter) preaching to the choir, but I think I would respect his arguments even if I disagreed.

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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.

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