Book Review: Real Church

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses

Dr. Crabb writes in his typical deeply personal, reflective style. In fact, he was motivated to write the book by his realization that “in most Evangelical church services I’ve attended, my hunger for truth that transforms, for love that liberates, is rarely satisfied” (p. xiv). Given his personal quest, in Real Church Crabb seeks to answer one central question, “What church would compel me to attend?”

Crabb’s Vision Quest

In answer to that question, Crabb provides an extended introduction in which he sketches his four visions (what we might call his “Four Marks”) of a captivating, biblical church.

1. A Church of Spiritual Theology: Truth That Has the Power to Change Lives.

A real church is a ragtag assortment of truth-hungry folks who want to hear the beautiful story God is telling.

2. A Church of Spiritual Formation: Lives That Increasingly Reflect the Inner Life of Christ

A real church is a bunch of formation-focused folks who want to love like Jesus so they can join the story and advance its plot.

3. A Church of Spiritual Community: Relationships That Are Meaningful and Satisfying

A real church is a group of people who want to hang out with and relate deeply to others who don’t love all that well.

4. A Church of Spiritual Mission: A Purpose That Makes an Eternal Difference

A real church is a gathering of people who love well so that the world becomes a little more of what God had in mind.

Crabb powerfully summarizes his idea of real church, “The church I want to be a part of, a real church, will teach spiritual theology that stirs a hunger for spiritual formation that surfaces the need for spiritual community that then marshals its resources for spiritual mission” (p. xix).

Crabb’s Vision and Pastoral Vision

Though Crabb doubts that most pastors and church members are headed in a similar direction (p. 3), so far what he’s presented is not significantly different from what most Evangelical pastors, and the seminary professors who train them, envision for biblical local church ministry. His four marks align neatly with the typical “4 Cs” of pastoral equipping: Content, Character, Community, and Competence:

1. Biblical Content (Head): Changeless Truth for Changing Times—Spiritual Theology

2. Christlike Character (Heart): Changing Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth—Spiritual Formation

3. Christian Community (Home): Empowering and Encouraging God’s People to Speak the Truth in Love to One Another—Spiritual Community

4. Relational Competence (Hands): Equipping and Enlightening God’s People Impact Their World for Christ—Spiritual Mission

While Crabb puts his unique nuances on this four-fold model, pastors I’ve spoken to sense that his presentation of the model has the feel at times of, “You are wrong and incomplete in how you do church, and here is what is right and comprehensive.” This can come across, intended or not, as “I’ve found the secret(s), and you have not.”

I wonder if Real Church might have more impact on pastors in particular, if the tenor were less “prophetic” and more “priestly.” Perhaps the feel could have communicated more, “Here are four common core values all biblical churches share, to which I want to offer my small contribution.” This can come across as, “We’re all striving the best we can to be a real church, and here’s my contribution to the discussion.”

The Difference Maker

Real Church does have a distinctive contribution to make as Crabb places the “4 Cs” (or his “4 Ss” or “4 Marks”) in the context of a story—a wonderful love story, replete with an invitation to join in the eternal, joyful “dance” of the Trinity. He summarizes his take on the story in two short sentences. “God is a party happening. I’m invited to the party” (p. 15).

Crabb then adds to the mix what he wrote in Inside Out—the horrible inner sin of false idols of the heart and false lovers of the soul. Additionally he incorporates what he has written about in Connecting and later books—the new nature of the new covenant Christian. Putting all of this together the way he does is rare—it is the “difference maker.”

So, here is Crabb’s Real Church. He wants a church with the four marks (spiritual theology, spiritual formation, spiritual community, and spiritual mission) that revolve around God’s eternal, relational love story and that address the depth of evil with the wonders of life-changing grace.

That’s quite inviting. Having been a pastor and now equipping pastors, I think most pastors, lay leaders, and lay people would happily ask, “How can we all move together increasingly toward that vision?”

A Side Note

In the context of the love story, Crabb writes: “Church was designed by God to be the dance studio. A gathering becomes a church when a group of Christians together hear the music of heaven’s party and the laughter of god enjoying Himself and begin awkwardly dancing with the Trinity into the relationships and circumstances of life in order to bring heaven’s way of doing things to earth” (p. 15).

Within this quote, Crabb embeds the following footnote. “No book has helped me more to believe that the music and laughter can be heard now than The Shack, a remarkable novel by William Young” (p. 159). Crabb is well-read and well-schooled in the controversies of the day, and in the varying convictions about The Shack.

Once again, if his design is to invite the average Evangelical pastor to ponder his prescriptions, it seems that dropping this comment into the mix, without any statement of concern about anything in The Shack, may not be entirely inviting. This seems especially true given that Crabb expends great energy in Real Church to critique how most churches do church today. He discerns and prophetically addresses their faults, as he sees them, but offers basically a blanket endorsement for a book that many Evangelical pastors discern to be less-than-fully Evangelical.

In another paragraph, Crabb writes, “I’m glad that as a conservative evangelical who still believes in biblical inerrancy and penal substitution, I’ve gotten over my Catholic phobia, and I’ve been studying contemplative prayer, practicing lectio divina, valuing monastic retreats, and worshipping through ancient liturgy” (p. 41). Given that Real Church criticizes all current ways that Evangelicals do church, it seems surprising that Crabb would share such an all-embracing statement about non-Evangelicals without disclaimers and cautions.

Wrong Reasons for Doing Church

After his extended introduction, Crabb hypothesizes why so many people still attend church and like it. In this section he exposes three less-than-biblical ways of doing and being church.

The first answer that does not work for Crabb is, “Church will make my life better.” As he describes this church, Crabb seems to be assessing the “seeker church.”

He asks the pointed questions, Does going to church help people want to know God more or use God more? Do I come to church so my life is better or so I become a better person, defined as a Christlike lover? Do I go to church to get good things from God or to get God Himself.

The second answer some give for doing church is, “It will show me how to change my world.” In this section Crabb evaluates the missional church (and to some extent the emergent church). He sees the missional church valuing experiencing God now, authenticity, and influence—changing the world.

He’s wisely reluctant to embrace and endorse these values. “Here’s my hesitancy to buy into an experience-grounded approach to living like Jesus: it opens the door to false mysticism. There is such a thing as true mysticism” (p. 39).

Crabb makes the astute point that we should build our lives on our future hope for intimacy with God, not upon experience-on-demand-today. The demand to experience God now actually numbs our longing for God later and it is that unfulfilled longing that motivates us to serve God passionately now. He also wonders if the longing to make a difference becomes a value that trumps personal holiness.

Additionally, Crabb perceptively critiques the missional/emergent de-emphasis on conversion. “Of course, getting saved means more than someday getting into heaven. But it doesn’t mean less” (p. 48).

The third answer some give for what makes a church real is, “It offers salvation and sanctification.” Here Crabb seems to move between critiquing the stereotypical “fundamentalist, doctrine-not-applied-to-life church,” and/or the “soul winning moralistic church,” and/or the “deep Bible teaching church.”

He contends that such churches can pervert great theological truths such as justification, sanctification, and glorification. It’s not terrible clear how Crabb sees such churches doing this, other than that they make these words “boring.”

Crabb precedes this section on three wrong ways to do church with Revelation 3:1, “You think you are alive, but you are dead.” He wonders if God would not say the same to some churches today. This is another case of prophetic warning in Crabb’s writing, that, while a valuable caution, may be given with brush strokes that paint every church wrong other than the one the author believes is a superior way of doing church.

Crabb shows a keen eye for categorizing, and displays keen discernment for exposing stereotypical, or potential, or likely, or actual weaknesses in other model approaches. He then places his approach to real church in the healthy “mean,” balanced between unhealthy extremes.

In essence he says, concerning the church options available today, “I see what ____ is doing. I see this _____ good in it. However, I see this ______ bad in it. What they need to do instead is this _____. Then they would have it right.”

What Will Make Me Want to Go to Church?

Having spent thirty pages divulging what’s wrong with all the typical (stereotypical) Evangelical ways of doing church today, Crabb then asks, “So what church do I want to be a part of?” The rest of the book answers that question with the “4 Ss” already introduced: spiritual theology, spiritual formation, spiritual community, and spiritual mission.

Crabb powerfully addresses spiritual theology as truth that exposes the sinful addiction of loving anything or anyone more than we love God. He calls this a hunger for truth that sets addicts free.

Crabb creatively discusses how a real church could present such truth:

1. Resurrection Truth: There’s always hope. Never give up.

2. Story Truth: Doctrine applied to life by seeing the Bible as 66 love letters from God.

3. Signpost Truth: Truth applied not in formulas but in creative freedom that relate truth to daily life.

A spiritual formation church, according to Crabb, respects the necessary ingredients in the remedy for addiction. The ingredient is unquenched thirst for God that will not be met fully until heaven.

Crabb shrewdly notes that some versions of spiritual formation wrongly advertise that spiritual disciplines will provide an experience of union with God now that completely satisfies our thirst. Instead, true spiritual formation is about helping people to become more like Jesus inside, where it counts. He traces the four capacities of personhood (see his earlier book Understanding People) and notes that we are to reflect increasingly the inner life of Christ in our desires (relational beings), beliefs (rational beings), choices (volitional beings) and feelings (emotional beings). This comprehensive understanding of the imago Dei remains a major strength of Crabb’s biblical psychology.

A spiritual community church finds contentment in wanting what Jesus wants. Truth-hungry churches of spiritual theology become formation-focused churches of spiritual formation, and then become community-centered. The more our appetite for truth and our desire to resemble Christ grows, the more profoundly we will long to connect in a new way with others. Good discernment, succinctly worded.

A spiritual mission church is “mission-energized” after having been grounded in spiritual theology, formation, and community. Crabb is to be commended for critiquing any church for doing mission apart from theology. “Doctrine still matters. Theology still matters. Truth still matters” (p. 126).

Now What?

Having spoken against the wrong ways of doing church and having outlined the right way of being church, Crabb asks, “Now what?” It is not Crabb’s style to offer prescriptions. He thinks deeply and reflects personally. Thus his “take-aways” purposefully stay at the level of principles which he wants people to apply creatively. Therefore, he offers the following five considerations for applying Real Church.

1. Spiritual Theology: Truth should be a dialogue.

2. Spiritual Formation: Formation takes a lifetime.

3. Spiritual Community: Conflict is an opportunity, don’t skirt it.

4. Spiritual Mission: Hope sustains mission.

5. We’re all addicted to the same thing: Self

These are sound principles, briefly developed, that perhaps could have left a stronger impact had Crabb concluded by addressing some of the very practical questions that pastors and church leaders in the trenches must face. For example, questions such as:

*If I am a leader or a lay person in a local church that is not living according to the “four marks,” how do I transition my church?

*If movement toward a “four marks” church is not done through programs (which Crabb has a strong distaste for), then how are such churches developed?

*How could pastors and leaders be equipped for leading “four mark” churches?

*What does it look like to preach and teach spiritual theology that leads to spiritual formation in spiritual community?

In Summary

Real Church shares solid insights for pastors and lay people, at times presented in a way that may come across to some readers as having “cornered the market” on a superior way of doing real church. The four marks of spiritual theology, spiritual formation, spiritual community, and spiritual mission in the context of life as a story of God’s love offered, rejected, and restored, show great promise for equipping pastors, planting churches, transitioning churches, and deepening congregational life. Readers willing to step back and take in the constructive critiques will find many areas of renewed focus that could lead any congregation toward a healthier, God-honoring real church.