About the Book and Author

Now Featured in the Patheos Book Club
A Fellowship of Differents:
Showing the World God's Design for Life Together
By Scot McKnight

 

About the Author

Scot McKnight (Ph.D., Nottingham) is professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, Lombard, Illinois. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning The Jesus Creed, The King Jesus Gospel, One.Life, and The Blue Parakeet, as well as Galatians and 1 Peter in the NIV Application Commentary series. He is a frequent contributor to Patheos via his award-winning blog, the Jesus Creed.

  

About the Book

Author and professor Scot McKnight presents a compelling case that everything we learn about the Christian life we learn from our church. But, what is the church supposed to be?

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the table to share life with one another as a new kind of family, and when this happens we show the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a family.

In this compelling book, Scot McKnight shares his personal experience in the church as well as his study of the Apostle Paul to answer this significant question: What is the church supposed to be?

For most of us the church is a place we go to on Sunday to hear a sermon or to participate in worship or to partake in communion or to fellowship with other Christians. Church is all contained within one or two hours on Sunday morning.

The church the Apostle Paul talks about is designed by God to be a fellowship of difference—how people differ socially—and differents—how people differ culturally. God did not design the church to be a two-hour experience on Sunday but a mixture of people from all across the map and spectrum: men and women, rich and poor, Caucasians or African Americans, and Mexican Americans, Latin Americans, Asian Americans, and Indian Americans, and a mixture of people with varying personalities and tastes.

The church McKnight grew up in was a fellowship of sames and likes. There was almost no variety in his church. White folks, same beliefs about everything, same tastes in music and worship and sermons and lifestyle. Because of his experience, he writes incisively and compellingly.