Book Review: The Local Church, by Edward W. Klink III
Edward W. Klink III, The Local Church: What It Is and Why It Matters for Every Christian. Crossway, 2021. 176 pages.
Many evangelicals in the global West have been rethinking their relationship to their local church. . . not always in a good way. Edward Klink begins his primer on the church with his eyes wide open to the Great Dechurching. With the rise of the “Nones” (those who mark the ‘none’ box on religious affiliation surveys) has come a parallel rise of the “Dones” (those who identify as Christians, but who are, in proper Valley Girl idiom, “so over” the local church).
It is encouraging, then, for Klink to conclude that “your local church is the primary people and place where your relationship with God happens, where your relationship with Christian family happens, and where you are assigned to do ministry and missions” (132). We need more Christians saying that.
Summary
Klink begins by disabusing us of our common misconceptions about the church. It’s not a disposable metaphor for community, but a concrete gathering. It’s not a random coffee with like-minded friends (“where two or three are gathered”!), but both an organism that breathes and an organization with authority to discipline (Matt. 18:15–20). It’s not a human project, but a divine one. And while you may join a local church voluntarily, everyone who is in Christ is already as united to his corporate body as he is (21–38)—whether we intended it or not.
Klink goes on to define the church in terms of God’s pleasure, people, presence, power, proclamation, provision, and purpose. “The story of the world presented throughout Scripture is that God is gathering a people to display his love and glory” (41). As a result, “the church is not a means to an end but an essential aspect of the end itself . . . the goal . . . is the ‘God-gathering’ of the new humanity in the new creation” (60). Now that is a God-centered, ecclesiological worldview if there ever was one!
This being the case, the purpose of the church is to love God in worship, love neighbor in witness, and love one another in nurture (63–82). Here I think Klink channels his inner-John Stott with a philosophy of ministry that sees proclamation in both word and deed as two wings of a plane, both indispensable for achieving lift.
The church then functions in four ways, each rooted in an aspect of the church’s identity in 1 Peter 2:9—as a ministry of presence (“a chosen race”), as ministering priests (“a royal priesthood”), as ministering pilgrims (“a holy nation”), and as a ministry of proclamation (“a people for his own possession”) (83–108). These practices (the how’s) implement the purposes (the why’s).
But who then is the church? In brief, the church relates to the Christian as a family to a member. The church is where we experience Christ as our Bridegroom, God as our Father, other Christians as fellow members ministering in Christ’s body. It’s also where we ourselves become Christ’s ambassadors to the world as part of his embassy in a foreign land (111–133).
Klink helpfully rounds out his ecclesiology primer with twenty practical questions (and pretty good answers!) on the church, focusing on issues both local and universal, emphasizing practices and preferences, leadership and participation (135–158).
Encouragements and Critiques
Klink has given us a short, readable, transferrable resource for Christian discipleship. What’s more, he’s done a great job at putting the local church back at the center of individual discipleship to Christ, where the NT Apostles put it themselves.
Maverick Christian, no more flying solo after this. “Do you want to know God’s will for your life, your ‘calling’? . . . You have been ‘called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 1:2). And ‘every place’ includes the place you live” (157).
If you count yourself among the “Dones,” you really would do well to give Klink a fair shake. If you’re a faithful member of a local church and there’s a “Done” in your neighborhood, or one that’s somehow wandered into the church you serve, this is a good place to start.
If you’re a pastor, you’ll be glad to know that Klink is solid on the nature of the church as both organism and institution. He’s solid on the marks of the true church—the right preaching of the Word, the right administration of the ordinances, and the right administration of oversight and discipline (102–107). He’s even imported some good stuff on theological triage (142).
Klink answers wisely on questions of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, local church membership, and discipline. He’s even got some good stuff on the significance of Sundays, what to look for in a local church, and how to know when it’s time to leave one. What’s more, his counsel for participating in the church is golden—be present (attend all you can), be personal (get to know people), and be persistent (don’t let discouragements make you give up) (154). If more church members just mastered those three counsels, our churches would be stronger for it.
Enough gushing. My most serious disappointment—and it is serious—is that the book never lands definitively on egalitarian or complementarian leadership in churches (even if the author himself might do so in the church where he serves). It simply demands that a church be able to defend its conclusions either way (151). For the book itself to take no position at all, however, is what seems indefensible.
In the taxonomy of triage, gender roles are treated here as not essential but urgent. Now, that may be technically true—you can be a Christian without being a complementarian. However, because of the clarity of the Bible’s witness on male headship in the home and church, leaving this issue dangling is a glaring blemish in an otherwise good book. It’s the hanging chad that leaves my vote for the book, well, hanging.
It’s hard to see how women are permitted to either teach or have authority over men in the church when Paul actually says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man,” and when he roots that position, in that passage, in creation, not culture (1 Tim. 2:9–15). It makes me wonder what else might be clear in Scripture but not compelling to an author.
My second disappointment is the equal weight given to testimony in both words and works in the ministry of the church. The church’s “words make known the special grace of God, centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ,” whereas “to witness with works is . . . to make visible the true source of the common grace of God” (77). All well and good, of course. Paul told Titus over and over that people in the church should be zealous for good works, and so they should.
Still, I might give a gentle push back on an equipoised weighting of word and deed in the venerable tradition of John Stott. The church is the only institution ordained by Jesus for the verbal proclamation of the gospel; as such, that verbal proclamation ought to retain the norming priority over the deeds. It is, after all, the verbal proclamation that informs, directs, disciplines, even produces the church’s missionary love to the world. The church is a special-grace institution in a common-grace world, so it must put whatever common-grace obligations it has into the context of its sui generis special-grace calling . . . not the other way around.
It’s true enough that faith without works is dead, and knowledge without love is like fingernails on a chalkboard. But it is, after all, precisely faith that produces works, not vice versa. And how does faith begin? “Faith comes by hearing (not by seeing), and hearing by the Word of God (not by the works of men)” (Rom. 10:17). Verbal proclamation, then, must remain primary, if only because it is God’s chosen instrument to produce a faith that will, inevitably, work.
Maybe my only other quibble would be a couple uncareful statements. “Scripture in no way distinguishes the church from the Christian” (114). But it does. The individual Christian is still called to “bear his own load” even though we’re all called to “bear each other’s burdens” (Gal. 6:1–5). Similarly, the priesthood of all believers is said to be “a call to each believer to be the church” (95). In a way . . . maybe. But while the Bible does not neglect the corporate for the individual, neither does it conflate the two. Each individual cannot be the corporate.
Conclusion
So where does all that leave me on this one? I’d say read it yourself, especially with a de-churched friend. But don’t use it as an excuse to punt on biblical gender roles. And for goodness’ sake—for the good of your soul, for the good of your church, for the glory of God, for the consistency of your witness—follow Klink’s counsel to make a healthy church your own: to attend your church, join your church, submit to your church, serve your church, and love your church (150). You’ll be glad you did. I’m with Klink: if you’re in Christ, then you’re already united to his body. Why on earth wouldn’t you make that official?
