Brad Edwards’ “The Reason for Church” (Zondervan, 2025) is an prolonged reflection on how the church is simply the form of countercultural establishment modern Individuals want most proper now. Edwards, a PCA church planting pastor in a middle-class suburb of Denver, Colorado, presents these reflections as an apology for the institutional church addressed to anxious souls – churched, dechurched, and unchurched alike – in the popular parlance of the second.
Steeped in “radical individualism,” Individuals (together with American Christians) are suspicious of establishments normally and maybe the church specifically. If this describes you—and it might be naive to suppose ByFaith readers are immune from these pressures—contemplate Edward’s case for the way splendidly true, good, and delightful the seen, institutional church is. In case you’re not the suspicious sort, then it actually describes folks you already know and love, and this e-book will assist you to assist others belief and benefit from the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ.
If you don’t imagine both description matches you, then this e-book might lead you down a path of self-discovery; you might be the previous with out realizing it, and we must always all be making an attempt to assist these round us know and revel in God.
Taking his cues from Timothy Keller’s “The Reason for God,” Edwards divides the work into two components. The primary half is dedicated to the cultural narratives of individualism “that make the church seem to be an implausible, if not not possible, refuge for human flourishing.”
These “implicit cultural beliefs,” he suggests, operate as “church defeaters” (xxvi). The listing consists of frequent culprits: pragmatism, self-directed spirituality, social media affect, political polarization, and “virtuous victimhood.” He devotes a chapter to every, and whereas the evaluation of those cultural strands principally follows well-worn paths, Edwards’s framing of every as a possible defeater for appreciating and taking part within the church is helpful and infrequently insightful.
Within the second a part of the e-book Edwards makes his case for loving and embracing the church—not some disembodied preferrred church however the institutional church because it exists on this planet. The second half is commonly compelling and private. Edwards acknowledges that he didn’t begin out with the depth of appreciation and love for “normie church”—a church embodying the unusual technique of grace and easy liturgical and ministerial practices—that he now has (211).
He admits that he “didn’t actually have a class for the church as an ‘establishment’—not to mention an consciousness of my very own anti-institutional bias,” as he took up the work of planting a church (xvi). That has modified, and the second a part of this work is a sequence of reflections on how completely suited God’s provision of this redemptive establishment is for our wants on this current second.
This isn’t a examine in ecclesiology; it’s an try to solid a compellingly lovely imaginative and prescient for doing church “in a method that’s extra Christian than post-Christian and, sure, extra institutional than individualistic” (112). We’re all steeped in our native ambient tradition and too conformed to the patterns of its worldly beliefs and practices. “Christendom…undeniably inculcated an excellent and biblical individuality…into…Western society,” he observes (xx). However this has gone to seed as a type of post-Christian individualism that works in opposition to the gospel and human well-being, impacting the way in which we view the institutional church and the way in which we “do church.”
Edwards is making a case for why the dechurched ought to return and the unchurched ought to contemplate the church’s place of their lives with contemporary eyes; he’s additionally calling Christians to do church in a method that’s reworked by the renewal of our minds by means of the gospel. Once we do, our life collectively might certainly show “what’s the will of God, what is nice and acceptable and ideal” in his sight, as we worship, serve, and stay because the physique of Christ (Romans 12:2).
Any radicalness in Edwards’s proposal isn’t owing to some form of experimental or modern method of doing church. He has been transferring away from no matter he may need as soon as entertained alongside these strains. It’s slightly owing to how countercultural the institutional church is as a redemptive neighborhood God has designed and supplied for the salvation of his folks.
Reflecting on his expertise main the church in Lafayette, he writes, “We didn’t got down to grow to be a ‘normie’ church, however prioritizing institutional well being and depth of non secular formation slightly than reinventing the wheel throughout 100 totally different choices added as much as precisely that. And [the church] is all the higher for it” (211).
What Edwards actually desires from us is to see and savor the reality, goodness, and great thing about the institutional church beneath the gospel – and accept nothing much less.
As with every e-book of this type, not each reader will agree with each element of Edwards’ cultural evaluation, commentary on the church, or sensible prescriptions. At instances I believe Edwards generally is a bit dismissive of different church buildings, and I believe he typically provides an excessive amount of credit score to the complaints of Christianity’s cultured despisers. Nonetheless, I love how he reads extensively and listens to others, together with these he disagrees with, earlier than he makes an attempt to reply them.
“The Purpose for Church” is welcome, well timed, and helpful. Edwards gives suspicious and world-weary of us many compelling causes to cherish the church as God’s gracious provision for our salvation. “The Purpose for Church” has refreshed my love for the establishment of Christ’s church and renewed my gratitude to God for my native church, my presbytery, and the Basic Meeting – which is maybe essentially the most becoming advice I can provide.
Bruce P. Baugus is professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and theologian in residence at Christ Church, each in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
