Brad Edwards’ “The Reason for Church” (Zondervan, 2025) is an extended reflection on how the church is just the sort of countercultural institution contemporary Americans need most right now. Edwards, a PCA church planting pastor in a middle-class suburb of Denver, Colorado, offers these reflections as an apology for the institutional church addressed to anxious souls – churched, dechurched, and unchurched alike – in the preferred parlance of the moment.
Steeped in “radical individualism,” Americans (including American Christians) are suspicious of institutions in general and perhaps the church in particular. If this describes you—and it would be naive to think ByFaith readers are immune from these pressures—consider Edward’s case for how wonderfully true, good, and beautiful the visible, institutional church is. If you’re not the suspicious type, then it certainly describes people you know and love, and this book will help you to help others trust and enjoy the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ.
If you do not believe either description fits you, then this book may lead you down a path of self-discovery; you may well be the former without realizing it, and we should all be trying to help those around us know and enjoy God.
Taking his cues from Timothy Keller’s “The Reason for God,” Edwards divides the work into two parts. The first part is devoted to the cultural narratives of individualism “that make the church seem like an implausible, if not impossible, refuge for human flourishing.”
These “implicit cultural beliefs,” he suggests, function as “church defeaters” (xxvi). The list includes common culprits: pragmatism, self-directed spirituality, social media influence, political polarization, and “virtuous victimhood.” He devotes a chapter to each, and while the analysis of these cultural strands mostly follows well-worn paths, Edwards’s framing of each as a potential defeater for appreciating and participating in the church is useful and often insightful.
In the second part of the book Edwards makes his case for loving and embracing the church—not some disembodied ideal church but the institutional church as it exists in the world. The second part is often compelling and personal. Edwards acknowledges that he did not start out with the depth of appreciation and love for “normie church”—a church embodying the ordinary means of grace and simple liturgical and ministerial practices—that he now has (211).
He admits that he “did not even have a category for the church as an ‘institution’—let alone an awareness of my own anti-institutional bias,” as he took up the work of planting a church (xvi). That has changed, and the second part of this work is a series of reflections on how perfectly suited God’s provision of this redemptive institution is for our needs in this present moment.
This is not a study in ecclesiology; it is an attempt to cast a compellingly beautiful vision for doing church “in a way that is more Christian than post-Christian and, yes, more institutional than individualistic” (112). We are all steeped in our native ambient culture and too conformed to the patterns of its worldly beliefs and practices. “Christendom…undeniably inculcated a very good and biblical individuality…into…Western society,” he observes (xx). But this has gone to seed as a kind of post-Christian individualism that works against the gospel and human well-being, impacting the way we view the institutional church and the way we “do church.”
Edwards is making a case for why the dechurched should return and the unchurched should consider the church’s place in their lives with fresh eyes; he is also calling Christians to do church in a way that is transformed by the renewal of our minds through the gospel. When we do, our life together may indeed prove “what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” in his sight, as we worship, serve, and live as the body of Christ (Romans 12:2).
Any radicalness in Edwards’s proposal is not owing to some sort of experimental or innovative way of doing church. He has been moving away from whatever he might have once entertained along those lines. It is rather owing to how countercultural the institutional church is as a redemptive community God has designed and provided for the salvation of his people.
Reflecting on his experience leading the church in Lafayette, he writes, “We didn’t set out to become a ‘normie’ church, but prioritizing institutional health and depth of spiritual formation rather than reinventing the wheel across a hundred different decisions added up to exactly that. And [the church] is all the better for it” (211).
What Edwards really wants from us is to see and savor the truth, goodness, and beauty of the institutional church under the gospel – and settle for nothing less.
As with any book of this sort, not every reader will agree with every detail of Edwards’ cultural analysis, commentary on the church, or practical prescriptions. At times I think Edwards can be a bit dismissive of other churches, and I think he sometimes gives too much credit to the complaints of Christianity’s cultured despisers. Still, I admire how he reads widely and listens to others, including those he disagrees with, before he attempts to answer them.
“The Reason for Church” is welcome, timely, and useful. Edwards provides suspicious and world-weary folks many compelling reasons to cherish the church as God’s gracious provision for our salvation. “The Reason for Church” has refreshed my love for the institution of Christ’s church and renewed my gratitude to God for my local church, my presbytery, and the General Assembly – which is perhaps the most fitting recommendation I can offer.
Bruce P. Baugus is professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and theologian in residence at Christ Church, both in Grand Rapids, Michigan.