Veroni Kruger: What Has Your Church Become
Véroni Krüger, What Has Your Church Become (CreateSpace, 2014), 230 pages, ISBN 9781500556839.
Véroni Krüger’s work What Has Your Church Become is a look with historical insight at what the church was at its beginning, at Pentecost, compared to what it has become. Reverend Krüger uses a literary style with scripture as its own interpreter and his primary source of documentation. Believers young in the faith would benefit greatly reading it. What Has Your Church Become would serve to introduce to them some important spiritual Truths. It is an easy read and inspiring, not argumentative.
Reverend Krüger pastored a pentecostal church and holds a masters degree in Greek. This wide range of experience in ministry makes him amply qualified from a pentecostal perspective to discuss the changing church. In bold honesty Reverend Krüger encourages the church to face its realities from frenzied emotionalism to blind intellectualism. Yet he doesn’t dazzle us with Greek terms and syntax. His easy reading style encourages us to embrace the message.
What Has Your Church Become is an ecclesiological study (a study of the church). Krüger has brought the truth into our language with the clarity, simplicity and emphasis that honors it as a timely message from God’s Word.
What Has Your Church Become is written in 4 sections, the first was background information and brief which I summed above. In his second section Reverend Krüger offers scriptural evidence of the ideal church as God envisioned it at Pentecost after which in section 3 he outlines the Pentecost movement in church history. Lastly he provides a look ahead to the potential for tomorrow’s church.
The Ideal Church
Aside from the scriptures which he writes out for our immediate reference, there are very few quotations from other sources. One I must give you because for me its provides us with his overarching theme. The late Dr. Richard Halverson, US Senate chaplain from 1950 to 1995, provided us with a succinct history of the church:
In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centring on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.
Pastors who read his work with an honest heart will find themselves equipped with a month of messages and a driving burden to share them. Brother Krüger opens up the Psalms in the process. Sprinkled throughout are the davidic thoughts that undoubtedly were in themselves prophetic precursors of New Testament worship.
Worship requires liturgical expression. Brother Krüger sees this as a matter between the Holy Spirit’s opportunity to minister in contrast to a static and well-defined church culture developed to benefit the leadership’s personal corporate goals. Interpreting I Corinthians 14:26 he contrasts professional standards, impersonal large gatherings, leadership manipulation, spiritual weakness and an emphasis on numerical growth with the Biblically outlined work of the Spirit and our response to it. God’s people are to experience God when they gather together—intellectually (studying the Word), spiritually (worshipping God), and emotionally (participating in the service with a sense of belonging and community). Participating in the liturgy for Brother Krüger means becoming more aware of the Divine Presence with human leadership fading into the background. Liturgical worship is not an oxymoron but God’s opportunity to minister to His people. And Brother Krüger sees this as the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit among us.
Category: Ministry, Summer 2015
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