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TechnoratiCP: You say you need truth, you need to know Christ died and rose again and that decisions can be made based on Scripture. Many people today also show a desire to know truth but they seem to think it’s impossible to know it so they have this “it’s all relative” attitude. Why do you think they’ve come to that conclusion?
Kluck: I think they’ve come to that conclusion because it’s easier to come to that conclusion. If there’s no truth, then there’s no demands on how we live, what we do with our time, how do we honor God, how do we grow in holiness and sanctification. If there’s no truth, we can’t handle the authority of Scripture, then really everything’s negotiable. Culturally, I think that’s a message that the culture likes to hear because it takes away in a sense the Gospel, the cross and it doesn’t make any demands of our character.
CP: You indicated this in your book, but do you feel there’s an over generalization of people groups such as evangelicals not caring about the poor and pushing right wing politics as you mentioned and also on the emergent side, that they all listen to U2 and reject absolute truth?
Kluck: I suppose there is. We really tried our best to read and interact of emergent as we could for this book so that we could avoid over generalizing ourselves. I think hopefully something else you come away with from the book is that we’re not a spectrum. Not everyone who calls themselves emergent is throwing out the authority of Scirpture, the atonement, the existence of hell or all these core theological issues. I mean some are but there’s a broad spectrum and a lot of guys like Mark Driscoll and Dan Kimball are just changing the way they do church to reach postmoderns which I think is essentially fine as long as the Gospel is there. We didn’t want to make the same mistake in terms of broad generalization.
CP: You and Pastor Kevin stressed several times in the book that you’re writing this critique of the emergent church as Christians and you want to do it lovingly. Why was it so important for you to emphasize that, because of the countless debates and arguments going on about the postmodern churches?
Kluck: Yeah, and I really hate that. I really feel like I was probably the last guy who would ever write a book like this just because I hate the Internet message board debates and I really saw myself writing a controversial book. In a sense I think it’s just because of our personalities but also I think there’s something unique about Christians critiquing or challenging other Christians. There’s definitely biblical precedent for that but I think it needs to be done in a humble and loving way. That was our goal. We probably failed at times but that was definitely what we shot for.
CP: When I look at the younger generation of believers I see a side that’s rejecting the all things traditional about the church but also a side that’s trying to get back the traditions, the doctrine and Scripture. How do you view it?
Kluck: I agree with you. We definitely see it in our church. A lot of it again has to do with context. Where we’re at physically here in East Lansing, we’re literally across the street from Michigan State which is a big secular university. It seems like the kids that come to URC (University Reformed Church) from State they really don’t want postmodernism. They get liberal, postmodern thought five days a week in their classroom. It’s not necessarily exciting for them to look for that in a church. They really want traditional, they want hymns that have a theology behind them, they want expositional preaching from the pulpit. So I really do think, just anecdotally where we are, we see that. Continue »
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