HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE
 FROM SOLOMON’S PORCH

“Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be)”

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck with Foreword by David Wells

Chicago, Moody Publishers, 2008

The cover of Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be looks postmodern enough, with just a touch of retro in the color scheme.  However, the similarity with anything that ever came out of Brian McLaren or Doug Pagitt’s brains ends there.

The host of endorsements on the cover page by neo-Calvinism’s best and brightest should provide a sufficient clue that this isn’t exactly going to be an Emergent love-fest.  DeYoung starts by writing, “I was born in 1977.  I am a pastor.  And I am not emergent.” Hardly on the level of “Call me Ishmael,” but the rest of the introductory chapter goes very long in an admirable attempt to try to define what exactly the emerging church is, while making it clear that every attempt to clear things up will only serve to muddy the waters further.

His partner in literary crime, Ted Kluck, is a sportswriter.  His part of the introduction begins with an anecdote about being the token “young person” on a church committee tasked with promoting a talk by that great Emergent champion (NOT!) D. A. Carson. He shares that the response cards ask the attendees if they would like a follow-up call from the church, with the answers being “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.”  Another committee member questions the use of “maybe,” and Kluck responds that since the talk was on postmodernism, they should exclude all answers except “maybe.”  According to Ted, nobody laughed at his joke.  Neither did I.

The book improves rapidly from this point forward, as DeYoung and Kluck proceed to (dare I say it?) deconstruct every aspect of the postmodern church, from its almost dogged refusal to state anything with certainty to the possibility that Emergent might just be nothing more than the new “seeker-sensitive.”

A major weakness in this book is that, while they really try hard to take a much broader look at the emergent church than D.A. Carson who largely equated the movement with Brian McLaren, the authors seem to keep coming back around to their fellow Michigander, Rob Bell, as an exemplar of the movement.  They also tend to put a bit too much stock in Calvinist theology (at least by this Methodist’s standards) as the remedy for these problems.

What really makes this book shine, however, is their eschewing of strawman caricatures in favor of a broad yet detailed look at the entire scope of the movement from Spencer Burke to Mark Driscoll.  I really got the impression that DeYoung and Kluck bent over backwards to give the postmodern church every benefit of the doubt possible.

If you’re really looking for a book that might help you put your finger on why the emergent church might make you a tad uncomfortable, this is the one.

by Michael Stidham