"Deep Church" - Book Review

Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional

Just over ten years ago, my friend Steve told me he was part of a core group that wanted to plant a church in my neighborhood, not far from downtown Kansas City, MO. He wanted to know if I knew of a place they could meet. I suggested the unused third floor of our church building. That was the beginning of Jacob’s Well, an emerging congregation pastored by Tim Keel.

The struggling Presbyterian (PCUSA) congregation of which I was a part played the supporting role of landlord and cheerleader from 1998 until 2003 to the newer merging congregation. In 2003, the Presbyterian congregation dissolved and sold the facility to Jacob’s Well. Jacob’s Well now has three Sunday worship services and a vibrant ministry presence in the community.

I found a lot in common with Jacob’s Well and the questions they wrestled with. I’ve attended a couple of Emergent Village events. I’ve attended local discussion groups. I continue to read books, articles, and blogs by several key personalities connected with the emerging church (of which Emergent Village is but one expression.) There is also a community of Emergent folks inside the PCUSA called Presbymergent that I follow. I’ve been at least at the edge of the emerging church movement since before it … well … emerged. So what is the emerging church all about? 

Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional is a book by Jim Belcher, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Newport Beach, CA. Belcher offers a brief account of how the emerging church came to be and acquaints readers with the significant contours of at least the American expression of it. I like his characterization of the emerging church movement as a desire for what C. S. Lewis called mere Christianity or “deep church.”

Belcher lays the defining features of traditional Evangelicalism and characterizes the Emerging church as a protest movement against Evangelicalism’s cooption by Modernism. While many emerging church folks share some common critique of traditional Evangelicalism, Belcher identifies three types of responses:

The Relevants. Still hold to traditional theology but believe that worship and ministry need a serious makeover for the message to become more relevant to the postmodern world.

The Reconstructionists. Tend to be influenced by Anabaptist “resident aliens” perspectives and a desire to return to a pre-Constantinian early church model … they hold to more orthodox views of Scripture but see a need for more radical change in mission and ecclesiology.

The Revisionists. They are questioning core theological understandings and virtually every other aspect of what has historically been known as Christian. This third group includes some key leaders of the Emergent Village and is the group that most people first think of when the “emerging church” moniker is mentioned. (It is also safe to say that most Mainline Christians who call themselves emerging are of this camp.)

Over the last two-thirds of the book, “Protest, Reaction and the Deep Church,” Belcher walks us through seven key issues the emerging church is protesting. With each, he explains how traditional Evangelicalism has responded to the protest and then how he sees Deep Church as a response. The book is written in a very engaging, gracious conversational style, with Belcher offering considerable autobiographical accounts that relate to his journey and the formation of the church he planted.

I think Belcher has his finger squarely on the pulse of what is happening with the emerging church. He offers some insights into how church could be done differently that escapes some of the Evangelical versus emerging church conflict, as well as some useful insights about church that have applications beyond that conversation.

The book also really taught me why I always feel like an outsider to the emerging church conversation. My frame of reference is Mainline Christianity, which has a different set of Modernist baggage than Evangelicals. Postmodernism presents major challenges here as well. The only “emerging church” conversation I find is with those who identify strongly with Belcher’s Revisionist group. I’m not a Revisionist. Go to any emerging church venue that Revisionists don’t dominate, and it’s like walking in on someone else’s family squabble (i.e., Evangelicals versus Emerging). Where is the conversation for non-Revisionist mainliners who aren’t Hauerwas Anabaptists or McLaren social progressives but see the need for a serious rethinking of what it means to be the church? This is not a criticism of Belcher’s book but rather an acknowledgment of how his clarity helps bring other issues into focus.

If you want to get a handle on what the Evangelical and emerging church controversy is about, and gain considerable insight into alternatives to the controversy, you need to read this book. It is one of the best two or three books I’ve read on the emerging church movement. Hat’s off to Belcher for a very important contribution to the conversation.

Comments

[David Opderbeck]

Michael, what's his "third way" take on differences between Emergents and Traditionalists over Biblical inerrancy?

[JMorrow]

Michael,

Thanks for the tip on this book. I'll definitely give it a read. As someone who is also from mainline circles, I have trouble finding a place to land in this emerging conversation. There are times when I feel comfortable in any of the three typologies and times when I do not. Part of the problem is the fluidity between these typologies. There are times when being relevant appropriately prevents throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Yet there are also times when our ecclesiology needs more than a facelift, it needs to be rehabbed. And changing the way we do Church often changes our theological understanding and how we communicate it publically. It's difficult to just stay in one camp, or see one camp as the "preferred" way.

I also feel the Hauersian Anabaptist crowd can get a bad rap. Part of the problem with their theological perspective is that it needs to be more informed by people who must live it out and make sense of it in the local church context. That's partly why I follow with interest Will Willimon's work as a Methodist Bishop in Alabama. It's a chance to see how someone who was intimately invovled in the Hauerwas "camp" translates postliberal concerns into church life.

[Travis Greene]

I'll be interested to read this, but I've not found this trifurcation helpful where I've come across it in the past. Partly, that's because it tends to presuppose what "traditional theology" is...which of course can mean very different things depending on who is talking. And partly because stacking a list like a gradient in that fashion inevitably smuggles in a value judgment (aka, relevants are okay, revisionists are trouble). I find Scot McKnight's 5 streams more useful: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/11.35.html

The strength of emerging for me (coming out of an SBC-evangelical background) is a return to tradition--as in, tradition that goes back more than 200 years. It's about finding a third way forward between theological conservatism (read: evangelicalism) and liberalism (read: mainline). So to need to find a third way now between emerging and "traditional" is odd to me.

[Michael W. Kruse]

David, Belcher doesn't lay out a particular formula. He has seven chapters dealing with truth, evangelism, gospel, worship, preaching, ecclesiology,and culture. He gives pointers on what each of these might look like in Deep Church.

With truth, for example, he talks about bounded-set, centered set, and relational-set thinking. You're probably familiar with the first two. The third is the idea that truth emerges almost entirely from within the community, led by the Spirt. He argues for a centered-set ... wants to avoid both foundationalism and anti-realism. To paraphrase U2, things have to be believed to be seen. Talks about the hermeneutical circle. He also champions "multiperspectivalism" that holds a centered-set with humility and embraces the validity of many views.

When he talks about evangelism he stresses the importance of belonging before believing. We welcome people into community and walk with them toward belief.

Maybe that gives the gist. I don't recall him distilling the idea down to one thought other than to become centered on mere Christianity ... that which all Christians hold in common.

[Michael W. Kruse]

JMorrow

I like Scot's article two. One of the best short summaries. I think you would find that Belcher is clearly attuned to the dilemma you are describing.

Travis

I think Belcher was fair in his treatment of the different expressions of emerging church. Tony Jones, for one, gives it a thumbs up, at least in terms of being a fair treatment. So don't let my brief summary discourage you from reading it.

I agree about the going back more than 200 years. What Belcher captures well is that there is more agreement about the critique of church than about the response.

I didn't raise it here, but in the past I've complained about the "Third Way" language. There are always far more than three ways.

It often implies a continuum between two poles on line. I think a better analogy is of two poles on the globe and there are 360 degrees of ways you can move away from either pole. It isn't finding gray between black and white but rather a rainbow between the absence of color (black) and the presence of all colors (white.

[David Opderbeck]

So what does he use as the plumbline for Mere Christianity?

[Michael W. Kruse]

I think he would say the Apostle's Creed, Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed. He writes about two tiers:

"The top tier matches the creeds of the early church that have historically and universally defined orthodoxy. The bottom tier corresponds to the distinctives of each individual church body." (60)

Top tier is mere Christianity. Bottom tier is very diverse.

[Travis Greene]

I sometimes have a semi-crackpot theory that "mere Christianity" might actually be found in the distinctives--that is, the RCC is right about Eucharist, the Baptists about baptism, the Pentecostals about the Spirit, Methodists about discipleship...

Or maybe I just dig ecclesial eclecticism.

[Michael W. Kruse]

I like it. It fits my suspicion that a great many things that divide us are more about elevating our proclivities to dogma rather than having actual differences of significance.