Book

My book, The Reconciling Community: The Missional Mending of Spiritual and Social Relationships Through Local Church Ministry, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. It’s the story of our church — its history, context, struggles, failures and successes — and our attempts to be a reconciling community in our small town.

If you’re looking for a case study of how one church approached the theology and practical ministry aspects of becoming a community of reconciliation, our experience may be beneficial. The type of reconciliation I deal with in the book is racial reconciliation because Virginia has such a storied past. Tragically, Jamestown, Virginia was the port of entry for the first “cargo” of enslaved Africans brought to America. From that infamous beginning, I trace the history of race relations in Virginia and our small town of Chatham through the colonial period, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow South, the Civil Rights movement, up to the present.

The book explores and critiques historic Baptist theology, and suggests a new ecclesiology for our church as we seek to become a reconciling community. In addition, the book explores the variety of approaches to reconciliation in other disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, and peace and justice studies.

I hope you find the book helpful, and I would like to hear your responses to my research and vision. Whether you agree with my conclusions or not, Christian congregations, as Paul wrote, are called to the ministry of reconciliation.

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…” -2 Cor 5:18 NIV.