So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church

What people are saying about …

LEONARD SWEET

PRAISE FOR 11

Leonard Sweet combines theory and practice in life-changing ways. He not only makes me think, he spurs me to live. This book will not only help you cross the finish line strong, it will also help you bring others with you.

Mark Batterson, lead pastor at National Community Church

and author of In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day

In this book, Len Sweet has combined his distinctive form of theologizing with really wise, practical insight to concoct a unique typology of sanctifying relationships. Here is a book that will help us move toward a genuinely biblical form of holiness in a relationally unholy culture. One of a kind!

Alan Hirsch, author of The Forgotten Ways and

coauthor of The Shaping of Things to Come

PRAISE FOR THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO STARBUCKS

Cultural barista Leonard Sweet serves up a triple venti cup of relevant insights to wake up decaffeinated Christians.

Ben Young, pastor and author of Why Mike’s Not a Christian

Reading this book is a caffeine jolt. Get ready to be accelerated into the future, with Jesus a central part of the experience.

Dan Kimball, pastor and author of The Emerging

Church and They Like Jesus but Not the Church

I have a massive passion for passion. It’s my favorite spiritual topic. And I have a nominal coffee obsession, Starbucks being my ritual more often than not. So what a treat to read Leonard Sweet’s extra-hot weaving together of the two—all in the hope that each of us will drink in the meaningful and passion-filled life we were designed for.

Mark Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties

Sweet’s bottom line? Christianity must move beyond rational, logical apologetics, and instead find ways of showing people that it can offer ‘symbols and meaningful engagement.’ This whimsical and insightful book offers a fresh approach to a topic of perennial interest.

Publishers Weekly

PRAISE FOR THE THREE HARDEST WORDS IN THE WORLD TO GET RIGHT

Leonard Sweet gets us to examine what it takes to live out love in this world, and he does it beautifully.

Tony Campolo, coauthor of Adventures in Missing the Point

and professor of sociology at Eastern University

Len Sweet has, in his inimitable style, tackled the three easiest-hardest words in the English language, wrestled them to the ground, hugged them, and then let them fly again. His imagination takes us on a journey, his mind is an encyclopedia of wonderful references, and his language is captivating.

Tony Jones, national coordinator of Emergent-

US and author of The Sacred Way

Sweet’s work is thought-provoking, insightful, and a must-read for any postmodern thinker.

Margaret Feinberg, author of Twentysomething and

What the Heck Am I Going to Do with My Life?

Leonard Sweet’s book is a tremendous help in guiding us not only to say the words ‘I love you’ with greater understanding of what they really mean, but also to live them with greater integrity and intention.

Ruth Haley Barton, cofounder of the Transforming

Center and author of Sacred Rhythms

PRAISE FOR SOULTSUNAMI

Although Sweet believes that many churches are behind the times, he also notes that the postmodern world offers them new opportunities for mission. In places, these suggestions do little more than urge churches to use the best the culture has to offer.… Sweet goes beyond such commonplaces and also speaks about the spiritual resources that churches possess. Sweet’s insistence that postmoderns need to be reminded of the Christian teaching on original sin and human fragility and his sense of the need for spiritual values, such as humility, to counterbalance consumerism are cases in point.

Publishers Weekly

PRAISE FOR SOULSALSA

As American culture attempts to find its footing during the transition into postmodernism, Leonard Sweet … attests that Christians must do the same thing.… By the end of the book, the Christian reader will want to strive to make worship a way of life, the outworking of grace a visible commodity, and his or her allegiance to Christ the revolutionary factor that causes the soul to dance.

Jill Heatherly for Amazon.com

This provocative exhortation to a more vibrant Christian life fairly sings with relevance.

Publishers Weekly

SO BEAUTIFUL

SO BEAUTIFUL

Published by David C. Cook

4050 Lee Vance View

Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

David C. Cook Distribution Canada

55 Woodslee Avenue, Paris, Ontario, Canada N3L 3E5

David C. Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications

Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

David C. Cook and the graphic circle C logo

are registered trademarks of Cook Communications Ministries.

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,

no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

without written permission from the publisher.

The Web site addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These Web sites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of David C. Cook, nor do we vouch for their content.

See Bible-resource credits on page 297.

LCCN 2009900142

ISBN 978-1-4347-9979-1

eISBN 978-1-4347-0087-2

© 2009 Leonard Sweet

Published in association with the literary agency of

Mark Sweeney & Associates, Bonita Springs, Florida 34135

The Team: John Blase, Amy Kiechlin, Jack Campbell, and Karen Athen

Cover Design/Illustration: JWH Graphic Arts, James Hall

First Edition 2009

For Alan Hirsch

friend, colleague, and Sensei of the Spirit

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART 1

The Missional Life: God’s GO

PART 2

The Relational Life: God’s YES

PART 3

The Incarnational Life: God’s NO

EPILOGUE

NOTES

BIBLE RESOURCES

MORE SWEET RESOURCES

Discover More Online

Check out interactive questions and insights, the book’s trailer video, and join the ongoing conversation on the So Beautiful Facebook page (search for So Beautiful by Leonard Sweet with quotation marks) and at www.DavidCCook.com/SoBeautiful.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is based on a haunting insight from an unknown, lost writer named François Aussermain:

Nothing is ever lost; things only become irretrievable. What is lost, then, is the method of their retrieval and what we discover is not the thing itself, but the overgrown path, the secret staircase, the ancient sewer.

If amnesia is the act of forgetting, anamnesia is the act of unforgetting, or remembering.

In the Eucharist, the technical theological jargon goes like this: In the Western church, after every epiklesis (invocation of the Spirit) there is an anamnesis (remembering the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ). Here it is in English: After every original movement of the Spirit, there needs to be a re-membering of the origins from which we came.

This book is an exercise in anamnesia, or re-membering, after years of talking and writing about epiklesia, or what’s going on out there?

In the course of this book’s retrieval of memory, many people have helped me find the overgrown path, the secret staircase, the ancient sewer. Mike Oliver and Chris Eriksen, my graduate assistants at Drew, have thrashed through many thorny thickets in pursuit of secret staircases. My research assistant Betty O’Brien has waded through more ancient sewers than she cares to remember, though she loves to taunt me with their stories and smells. But without her I would not have been able to open some old springs that had become dammed and neglected. For some reason my former doctoral student Ray Leach took a special interest in this book and kept pushing me down paths I hadn’t seen. I’m grateful for your interest and initiatives, Ray. Paul Newhall, of the United Methodist Ministries Credit Union, helped me to understand more of what an MRI entails from a patient’s perspective. And Professor Jeff Keuss, of Seattle Pacific University, helped me distinguish between some live wires and dead wood.

The classic wood-and-trees problem was higher in this book than in any other I have written. Thanks to two of my doctoral cohorts at George Fox University, I was able to determine what wood-felling would give better sight of the trees, and what paths through the woods we need not cut for ourselves. I am enormously grateful to Charles Allo calling me on some blind spots, Terry O’Casey was there to keep the sources clear, and Michael Blewett always pointing me to roads less traveled.

My partner Karen Elizabeth Rennie helped me see what were the too too many ideas in this book for its own good. And my still-at-home kids, Thane, Soren, Egil, kept me alert to the flora and fauna that populate the undergrowth of church life. My colleague and friend Loren Kerns kept my focus on beauty, the forgotten transcendental, and helped me to see beauty’s relation to the truth of goodness and the goodness of truth.

Novelist/physician Michael Crichton proposed a boat-building metaphor for the ideal collaboration between an author and an editor: At first you can see the entire ship, but then as you begin to work you’re in the boiler room and you can’t see the ship anymore. All you can see are the pipes and the grease and the fittings of the boiler room and, you have to assume, the ship’s exterior. What you really want in an editor is someone who’s still on the dock, who can say, ‘Hi I’m looking at your ship, and it’s missing a bow, the front mast is crooked.’¹ John Blase stayed on the dock and kept track of what was missing and what was crooked, while both of us listened to the music of Pierce Pettis as we built this boat.

Ernest Hemingway told Latvian journalist Elaine Dundy, after her first novel: I liked your book. I liked the way your characters all speak differently.… My characters all sound the same because I never listen.²

Thanks also to my students: (LEC 6) Janet Anderson, Eric Baker, Vince Beresford, Mike Berry, Phil Carnes, David Hutchinson, Todd Seelau, Nathan Swenson-Reinhold, Keith Tilley, Allan Wachter; (LEC 7) Kevin Bates, Karen Claassen, Libby Boatwright, Carla Dyment, Matt Dyment, Tim Gillespie, Sam Leonor, Ed Love, Mark McNees, Nate Mullen, John O’Keefe, Jon Olson, Tim Orton, Scott Ramsey, Joe Stanley, Jan Stevens, Henry Stewart, Susan Titterington, and Russ York.

The art of listening is one of life’s greatest artforms. Over the years, I have discovered in Alan Hirsch a heart skilled to listen.³ In fact, one of the secrets of Alan’s success as the doyen of missiologists is because of his highly refined sensory receptiveness, which enables him to listen and learn and not to judge. But Alan isn’t just good at listening to other people. His listening skills are of a higher order, as Thomas Merton testified about himself: My life is a listening. His is a speaking. My salvation is to hear and respond.⁴

I dedicate this book to Alan Hirsch. What follows could never have been written without Alan’s writings, or his friendship. Because his life is a listening post, his life has also become, for multitudes of us, a vast watering hole.

—Leonard Sweet

Christmas Day, 2008

INTRODUCTION

THE APC AND THE MRI

Got any Aches, Pains, Complaints?

Here’s an APC pill.

Ask anyone who ever served in World War II: Do you remember APC?

Sure, they will most likely say. It cured everything.

The acronym APC was widely used in the middle of the twentieth century to identify a pain medicine. When you had apc, or aches, pains, complaints, you were given APC to get rid of your apc. It was a combination of aspirin, phenacetin (fuh-NAS-uh-tin), and caffeine. Sort of like Excedrin or Aleve today, APC was such a favorite analgesic and antipyretic (fever treatment) that it became standard issue in the military.

There was only one problem: Long-term ingesting of APC tablets could kill you. Scientists didn’t discover this until the late ’50s and ’60s when phenacetin was found to cause renal problems, multiple blood disorders, and cancer.

Even with scientific proof of its long-term harm, APC’s short-term benefits made it difficult for people to stop using it. The discontinuation of APC production created a black market for the drug that thrived so luxuriantly that the military dispatched its limerick division to come up with something memorable that could haunt and taunt all continuing users. The limerick that got people to stop using APC as pain medicine went something like this:

An aspirin/phenacetin brew,

With some caffeine for good measure too.

It’s for fever reduction

But out of production:

Too much and your kidneys are through.¹

The only continuing use of phenacetin today is as a cutting agent to adulterate illegally supplied cocaine.

Perhaps we need a similar lyric to help churches stop practicing APC Christianity and become what I’m calling a So Beautiful or MRI church where M=Missional, R=Relational, and I=Incarnational. In APC Christianity (also dubbed the ABC Church: Attendance, Buildings, Cash), A stands for Attractional, P for Propositional, and C for Colonial.

An attractional/propositional brew

With some colonialism for good measure too

It’s for numbers production

This APC seduction

Keep using it and your church is through.

Some things can be good for you for a short time but bad for you over the long haul. In fact, some things can make your church grow fast and big in months and years, and yet over decades can have debilitating effects on the body of Christ, and even kill you if not kill your spirit. To misquote Paul, the wages of APC is death.

The attractional church thinks that if they build it, and build it hip and cool, people will come. Part of the appeal of the APC church is that we are living in an age of attraction. There are many ways of describing the world in which we are living: the Information Economy, the Knowledge Economy, the Empathy Economy, the Experience Economy, the Attention Economy. But one of the most unique is Kevin Roberts’ elaboration of the Attraction Economy and the implications of what he sees as the shift from attention to attraction. The attractions of attraction over attention include the shift from interruption to engagement, directors to connectors, one-way to two-way, one-to-many to many-to-one, heavy users to inspirational consumers, return on investment to return on involvement, and convergence to divergence.²

The church that is missional had better know how to attract people to Christ. Come is a good word. Evangelism is come to Christ and come to community, or best of all, evangelism is announcing that Christ has come to you. Goers had better be comers. Senders had better be summoners. But we best be clear about where the attractiveness resides: If I be lifted up, Jesus said, I will draw all to myself.³ Jesus is the attraction. Jesus is the draw, despite all our time spent at drawing boards drawing up this appeal and drafting that attraction.⁴ Dominican Gerard Hughes offers a useful rule of thumb in decision making and discernment: God draws, the destructive spirit drives; or, God always draws us and never drives us.⁵ A key test of the spirit is attraction.

The church that is relational can’t escape the fact that to say Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life is itself a proposition.

And the church that is incarnational prays every day a colonizing prayer: Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Every Christian is a colonizer: We are colonizing earth with heaven. We are creating colonies of heaven not Christian-coated mirror cities.

Just as a pastor can falsify Christ to a congregation, so can a church falsify Christ to the world. APC Christianity falsifies both Christ and the church to the world.

Notice how churched the first column looks? Ouch!

APC Christianity is the wrong default for the following reasons.

First, in a system that isn’t as healthy as it should or could be, the body is more susceptible to toxins, light fights, jealousies, doctrinal disputes, bad attitudes, etc. The APC is not that healthy of a system, so the APC life and church get infected more easily, require high maintenance, and demand constant APC injections to keep it going.

We cannot ask God to repair what we will not acknowledge and own as being broken. ⁶

—Alan Jamieson

Second, the church is now encountering the double whammy of postmodernity and post-Christendom.⁷ Postmodern culture is an anti-Christian culture. If you are reading these words, you are likely the last generation to be familiar with the Christian story and for whom churches have cultural significance. And you will die, leaving behind a culture for whom the Christian story will be completely unknown. This requires not only a new ability to tell the story but also a fresh way to reframe the story for a sinless society, a mission field where people don’t see themselves as sinners.⁸

We have never been this way before is something, of course, every generation can say. But we can say this with the realization that if we have been this way before, if we have dealt before with the enormity of change we’re facing today, we haven’t been this way since the fourth century (the Constantinian captivity), since the eleventh century (when East and West split), or at the very latest, since the sixteenth century (when the West split into Protestant and Catholic).

It is time to push the reset button on Christianity—the original operating system—not just back to Acts 2, which was another rebooting accomplished by the incarnation, but back to the original Genesis 1 and 2 operating system. Whenever you download a new program on your computer, you must reboot the system to actualize the change.

It is time to live out of the secret of life, the secret of the cruciform life: the double-helix divine design for life and the church.

When people say they want to be part of something bigger than themselves, it doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger church. The cutting edge of what the Spirit is up to is not mortar-happy churches, or megahappy churches, or emergent-happy churches, or revolution-happy churches, or bigger and better mousetrap churches. It is MRI churches. Not come-gather churches, but as-you-go-scatter churches. Not an in here church, but an out there church. In fact, maybe we shouldn’t even talk about church but about life, a life so beautiful.