Check out Leonard Sweet’s new book, So Beautiful.
Here’s the endorsement I wrote for it:
The landscape of today’s Christianity is littered with “church” movements: missional church, house church, mega-church, emerging church, the convergence movement, etc. In “So Beautiful,” Leonard Sweet explores three aspects of the church’s inherent character — missional, relational, and incarnational — “MRI” as he calls it. Sweet reminds us that these three aspects are not simply passing movements, but they are built into the church’s very DNA. Moreover, they are attributes of divine life. While so much of modern Christianity restrictively thinks in terms of “either/or,” “So Beautiful” exhorts us to lay hold of the “both/and” of divine truth. Stimulating and creative, every serious follower of Jesus should own a copy of this helpful work.
To my mind, Sweet is the Frank Zappa of today’s Christianity.
You would do well to get familiar with Sweet and his contribution. As you probably know, he was my co-author for Jesus Manifesto.
Just for kicks, last month, my Facebook friends compared modern-day Christian writers to well-known musicians in style and influence. Here’s what they came up with:
John MacArthur = Glenn Miller
Tony Evans = LL Cool J
Rob Bell = Bono
Eugene Peterson = Woody Guthrie
N.T. Wright = Pavarotti
Alan Hirsch = Slash
Dan Kimball = Elvis Costello (and Brian Wilson)
Frank Viola = Jimi Hendrix (and Jim Morrison)
Creflo Dollar = Snoop Dog
John Piper = John Mayer
Bill Hybels = Wayne Netwon (and Eric Clapton)
Stanley Hauerwas = Fittty cent
Mike Yaconelli = David Lee Roth (and Ozzie Osbourne)
Now for a postscript: What’s the deal with white book covers?
Len’s stuff has been growing on me over the years. I got the chance to hear him speak to a small group and since then I’ve been getting more into his stuff. Great author and thinker, thank God for his work! I’m currently listening to So Beautiful on audiobook (thanks ChristianAudio for the freebie!!) and it is really good.
Frank,
Len Sweet is also a friend of mine, my mentor when I was at Drew, and my mentor to this day. Thank you for giving the spotlight to his work in your blog…I’m currently reading through “So Beautiful,” and intend to have as many people read it as possible.
I, too, left the institutional church (a year and a half ago), and am now the lead pastor of 316 Fellowship (www.316fellowship.org) just outside of Birmingham, AL. We are trying to be an organic church (though that sounds almost contradictory), and I will be spending a lot of time with your work and experience. Thanks for shining light on the old/new path of the organic community of faith.
Brad Henderson
No offense Frank — (your new book is great) — but what does give with the white book covers? Hopefully this trend won’t last. They leave me, well, a little cold.
Leonard Sweet comparison to Frank Zappa – I can see that.
Thanx for the fun in this post.
You’re not a bad writer yourself.
Thoroughly enjoyed Reimagining Church. Good critique of important issues to do with de-instutionalisation of the church and de-hierarchialisation of church leadership.
Liken some of your posts, articles & books to having a touch of Larsen ( Far Side satire cartoonist) ironic truth flavour to them. Makes people think `outside the box’.
Don’t know what the white cover phenomenon is all about. Prefer more creative covers myself. Probably a publisher fashion thing.
UnChristian book? What do you think of that book?
It just confirms what this post and the comments say: http://frankviola.org/2011/03/02/christians-are/