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TechnoratiCP: What’s the one thing you’d like to highlight for believers from the book?
DeYoung: We end the book by talking about the seven letters to the seven churches in Revelation. What I think the church needs to recover is … a fully orbed view of what church is supposed to be. You look at those seven letters and they’re all similar in that Jesus commends the churches for some things and then he’s critical of some other things. And the emergents have been good at pointing out Ephesus’ faults – that’s the first church. They had good doctrine, they had good ethics, they worked hard but they didn’t love each other. The emergent church says “there are churches in America that don’t love, don’t care about the lost, don’t care about loving the poor.” That’s a good critique but what they tend to do is ignore all the things Jesus commended of that same church – that they were intolerant or err, that they hated the things Jesus hated. You don’t hear the emergent church talking about Jesus hating or Jesus intolerant.
I think we need a view, to look at all the seven churches in Revelation. What are their weaknesses, what are their strength. We need to have a bigger view of the church that’s more than just kingdom talk and inclusion and welcome. It’s got edges, it’s got doctrine, has truth and delineates between falsehood. We really need a church that reflects the whole character of God – God who is truth and grace; God who is holy and kind; tender and sovereign. We need a church that reflects God in all of His diverse excellencies and not a lopsided church.
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