52 books #2

A Community Called Atonement - Scot McKnight

I once got an email from the author after I commented on his blog. He wanted to know if I was the Daniel Taylor who wrote The Myth of Certainty. I’m not. Sorry to disappoint both of you. I’m also not the opera singer nor the artist. (As an aside, I occasionally wonder what it would be like to get all of us on a conference call for a CBC show like Outfront. stay tuned) Anyway, Dr. McKnight and I had a pleasant email chat. I also waited on him back in the day when he came to my college to deliver a series of lectures. Not only a good scholar and writer, but also a polite and kind person.

A Community called Atonement is about just that; atonement. Atonement is close to the heart of what Christianity is about; the “at- one” ness of God and humanity, humans with each other. Pretty much all Christians agree that something was accomplished in the coming, life, death and resurrection of Jesus that began a new way of relating reconciling to God and to each other. What Christians don’t agree on is what exactly this was.

McKnight attempts to sift through the various theories of atonement, not to discover the best working one, but to discover how they work and how we might better use them to communicate the good news to each other and to the world. I appreciate that he says that the work accomplished by Jesus is bigger than any of our theories.

The church has a role to play in atonement as well. We have a message that shapes our ministry and a ministry that shapes our message. The book is worth the price tag just for this no-brainer

” The gospel we preach shapes the kind of churches we create, the kind of church we have shapes the gospel we preach” (p.5)

As a church planter this is a convicting and challenging word. How are the decisions we are making in our community manipulating the message of reconciliation we have for the world? How can we be people who carry atonement with us?

Next book up: 360 degree Leadership by Michael Quicke