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TechnoratiNow … I was coming to realize just the importance of doctrine, importance of what is the Gospel, how can I really articulate what I believe, the Gospel has to be more than living like Jesus or social outreach. It has to involve Christ paying the penalty for our sins. In that sense I was really starting to appreciate our church’s solid teaching on that. I was also realizing that our church was a lot more diverse than I gave it credit for. A lot of people in our congregation doing a lot of social outreach and social justice type stuff that I think I hadn’t give them credit for in the past. Questioning the emergent movement allowed me to appreciate my church.
CP: You described in the book about a time your friend offered you an opportunity to create a church together and then at some point you decided not to continue with it. Can you describe that moment why you decided not to go with that?
Kluck: I didn’t want to give up all that I had at our church – really solid biblical teaching, a gospel-centered approach to ministry, the diversity of families and people I’ve become friends with, older friends and young friends – to give that up and do church in a living room with four couples that looked and sounded a lot like us was not appealing.
The emergent church is big on breaking down the pastor-flock relationship in favor of just an ongoing conversation between people. Something I really always appreciated about church is the pastor-flock relationship. I’ve been fortunate to have had some really good pastors in my life and men who have studied the scriptures and studied a lot more than I have. I realized those are the kind of people I want to be learning from and that’s not to say conversation and questioning can’t be good but I just didn’t want conversation to be where my family and I ended up church-wise for a long time. I don’t have a problem with the different ways emergent folks want to do church but it wasn’t where I saw us landing long-term.
CP: You said you knew what you were against – “the evangelical cheesiness” – but didn’t have a clue what you were for. Do you find many people today in that same state? Just a bunch of people rebelling against organized religion but not really knowing where to go from there?
Kluck: I think that’s where a lot of the emergent church is at. They’re against the religious right, all those bad pictures of Christianity that they’ve seen. But I don’t think they know what they’re for. They just know they’re against that. part of what we wanted to illustrated in why we’re not emergent, we really wanted that book to be an encouragement for local church pastors who maybe don’t refer to themselves as futurists or revolutionaries or transformational change architects but just do good solid gospel-centered ministry and outreach in their communities. And I think there are a lot of churches like that. It really gave me the hope and the encouragement that wow, evangelical church isn’t as dire as the emergent authors would like you to think. Continue »
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