Tuesday, June 9, 2015

"A Fellowship of Differents" Book Review

I have to say, I was really excited about reviewing this book.  This is something God has been pressing on my heart lately - is my view of church biblical or simply traditional?  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with tradition.  But if tradition trumps the Bible, then we're in trouble.  So I was excited to review "A Fellowship of Differents" by Scot McKnight.  However, this book wasn't what I expected.




Let me be clear, from what I've read, there's was nothing "unbiblical" or "theologically incorrect" in the book. - AT least from what I read.  It was just really hard to read.  Again, the language wasn't difficult or complex, it just didn't ever capture or keep my attention.  There were parts that were interesting.  For example, I really liked this quote:
"Getting the church right is so important.  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.  When this happens, we show the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together are 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."
The beginning of the book was interesting - although his analogies of the church as a salad bowl and a tomato were a bit distracting.  But he did a good job of pointing out how we tend to congregate with "people like us" and exclude people who are different and how dangerous this can be.  But I lost interest about one-third to halfway through the book.  It seemed very redundant.  It just seemed as if he could have made his points in a much shorter book. Again, my complaints with this book weren't necessarily theological.  That's why it so hard to write this review.  It may just be a personality clash.  Someone else may absolutely LOVE Mr. McKnight's writing.  But, for me, I felt this topic could have been handled much better.

I received a digital copy of this book, free of charge, from BookLook Bloggers, in exchange for my honest review.

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