Kevin DeYoung takes a good long look at Deep Church by Jim Belcher.
As you know, Kevin wrote his own book about the emerging church movement, so he knows whereof he speaks.
he approached this new book with trepidation:
I am always skeptical of “third way” books anyways. Usually, the “third way” is basically the same as one of the other two ways, only a little nicer. In this case, I was expecting the third way to be emergent-lite with a less caustic attitude toward evangelicals. But actually Belcher was just the opposite. He is an evangelical–a traditional evangelical I would argue–who seems sound in his theology (he is a PCA minister after all), but wants to be non-traditional in a few ways. If I were titling the book I would call it “Why I’m Not Emergent, But I Like Many of the Emergent Folks and I Want to Do Church Differently Too.”
But he was surprised by it and liked it more than he thought he would.
Evaluation
As you can see, there is much to affirm in these chapters. Belcher understands the issues well and clearly rejects the worst of the emerging movement. His church sounds like a good church, and Belcher (whom I never met) strikes me as an honest, thoughtful, irenic pastor. I agreed with much more in this book than I thought I would. As a part of the PCA, Belcher is not only tied to the Great Tradition, but to the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition. As such, I imagine our theology is quite similar. We are on the same team. My agreements with him outnumber my disagreements.Nevertheless, I have a few critiques for Deep Church. Let me mention four, each in the form of a question.
Go over to Kevin’s place and read those four questions as well as the rest of the review. Good stuff.