exploring God's grace through worship, education, and community

ATONEMENT IS…..

• Grounded in the Spirit exploring the meaning, purpose, and diversity of God’s grace through personal faith in Jesus Christ.
• Dedicated to developing the spiritual growth in individuals through worship, education, and through every day lives of prayer, thanksgiving’ and witness to God’s reality.
• A place between the security of private life and the uncertainties of public life where one can be oneself, learn to trust one another; and share in the holistic ministry of reconciliation.

In the fall of 2002, Atonement celebrated 40 years of worship and ministry in the Rosemont and surrounding areas of the greater Sacramento region. We are an inclusive congregation which welcomes and encourages all people, regardless of race, language, previous denominational affiliation, gender, or sexual orientation to worship with us that we may enjoy all the spiritual gifts that God gives to God’s people.

      

Come worship with us,
David A. Peters
Pastor

Atonement is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)

• Statement of Faith
• Lutheran Tradition
• The Name of Atonement

A Brief History

Atonement conducted its first worship service on Easter July 14, 1963 on its present site in the suburb of Rosemont. Financial contributions from congregations throughout the country in the 50’s and 60’s made it possible, through The American Lutheran Church, to purchase the land and construct the sanctuary and multi-purpose room still in use.

Over the last 40 years, Atonement lived through what religion observers cite as major shifts in the American church and culture including the decades of religious activism (justice, politics, race relations, war & peace), a gradual erosion of the legitimacy of traditional institutions(business, government, education, the churches, the family), and various expressions attempting to fit God into the world (science, moral challenges, novel problems of knowledge). The modern period, in some respects, reduced God to the “mirror image of culture” catering to the human desire of being autonomous, individualistic, and advancing and maximizing self-interest—using God to construct the world rather than a biblical way of seeing the world.

Today Atonement exists in a post-modern world where “everything is possible and almost nothing certain ”and where church and the Christian message has shifted from a position of influence to a “permitted option in the private sector.” Atonement explores its place as a church in the world (community) even though the Gospel is not of the world and that Christ did not bring a new religion to the world but new life.