Quotes and
Excerpts
Redeem an
Incarnational World
Stuck in a closet with Leonard Sweet:
"Rain pelted the campus of the small Baptist university where
futurist, historian and author Leonard Sweet... was speaking at a regional pastor's conference.
... There, with only a few interruptions, we discussed pop culture....
"[RELEVANT magazine:] You've said a bit in the past about the church needing to use the medium of pop culture as a vehicle for the Gospel. Why is that?
"[Leonard Sweet:] Because it's the Roman road; it's the road people are traveling on; it's the dominant global culture. For the church not to speak to pop culture, not to use images that come from it and sounds that come from it, smells that come from it, well ... that's not being very
incarnational ... In order to incarnate Christ into the culture that is there, then we have to look to
redeem pop culture.....
"[RM:] But the church in the last hundred years hasn't changed much.
"[LS:] And that's the reason it's been dying. It's been feeding off fruit that's decaying and rotten; nobody wants to touch it except for a few die-hards that have grown used to the rancid odor."
Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim in the
New Millennium Culture, by
Leonard
Sweet (Zondervan,
1999). In his endorsement on the front cover,
Rick Warren praises the message: "Soul Tsunami
shows us why these are the greatest days for evangelism since the
first century."
CHANGE OR BE CHANGED — In the old ecology of nature, change was
seen as abnormal. In the new ecology of nature,
change is life’s natural,
normative state.... What
works today won’t work tomorrow.
"One book on 'change management' theory opens with this quiz:
'Try to think of a major industry that is not experiencing
profound upheaval.' The wonder is that churches are not in more
disarray. ... They are standing pat, opting to uphold the status
quo rather than undergo the upheaval....Postmodern culture is a
change-or-be-changed world. The word is out:
Reinvent
yourself for the 21st century or die."
(p. 74-75)
From Quantum
Spirituality by Leonard Sweet
"A quantum spirituality
challenges the church to bear its past and to dare its future by
sticking its big TOE into the time and place of the present. ...
Then, and only then, will
a
New Light movement of 'world-making' faith
have helped to create the world that is to, and may yet, be.
Then, and only then, will earthlings have uncovered the
meaning... of the last words poet/activist/contemplative/bridge
between East and West
Thomas Merton
uttered: "We are already one. But we imagine that we are
not. And what we have to recover is our original unity."
(page 10)
"Mysticism, once cast to the sidelines of
the Christian tradition, is now situated in postmodernist
culture near the center. In pram, the physics of David Bohm and
Fritjof Capra are ways of
responding to culture's having pushed it there. In the words of
one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, Jesuit
philosopher of religion/dogmatist
Karl Rahner, 'The Christian
of tomorrow will be a mystic, one who has experienced something,
or he will be nothing.'... Mysticism... is
metaphysics
arrived at through mind body experiences. Mysticism,
begins in experience; it ends in theology." (page 76)
Note: Yes, mysticism leads
to new belief systems -- but the spiritual guides behind those
beliefs are the enemies of God and tormentors of humanity.
Now Ready for Prime
Time Players:
"The
Emergent church
is carried by its
mission for change -- for
Christians and the church. ...a new leadership that is
focusing on our youth is intent on
changing the church, updating it for our times.
Many of the youth are on an active search to experience
their faith. While we cannot fault them for wanting this to be
more real, they are listening to leaders who are apt to lead
them astray by the simple fact that they are
using other religious practices for the answers to their
searching, not just the Scripture...
The
youth are often more than willing to reject the old doctrines
and redefine what Christianity is.
In this process of discovery, we see a
deconstruction
and what emerges is a
reconstruction
of their Christianity... Thus, they believe they are
making their faith their own, personal and in some cases unique,
even to what the Bible presents.
"Others
have adopted a
wider openness for other beliefs,
that are originating in other religions and alternate spiritual
beliefs and practices indicative of the new age movement
(Leonard Sweet has this in his book Quantum Spirituality).
....We hear that we are out of touch with the times, the
culture, and the consciousness change. All these sentiments are
echoed by mystic universalist
Matthew Fox
who has said “Christianity has been out of touch with its
`core,' its center, its sense of mystical practice and cosmic
awareness." (The Cosmic Christ, p. 7, by Matthew Fox) ...
" As
Dan Kimball says “we must rethink virtually everything we are doing
in our ministries.” On Rick Warrens internet site Dan Kimball writes
“So, the emerging church is about is a
re-imagining: re-imagining our preaching, our evangelism, and our
worship services. A re-imagining
of new types of churches and an
opportunity to be rethinking all we do because we recognize that the
next generation is at stake if we don't. (Ministry toolbox Issue
#110 7/9/2003 Three Things to Know About the Emerging Church by Dan
Kimball) ...
" Henri Nouwen, a promoter of
contemplative prayer and a universalist is referenced by Rick
Warren in his book Purpose Driven Life (page 269). Henri Nouwen
- “Through the discipline of contemplative prayer, Christian
leaders have to learn to listen to the voice of love ...
"For
Christian leadership to be truly fruitful in the future, a
movement from the moral to the mystical is required” (In the
Name of Jesus, p. 6,31-32). We should expect more Biblical
discernment from national leaders. ...Leonard Sweet in his book
Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture says:
“Postmoderns want a God they can feel, taste, touch, hear and
smell--a full sensory immersion in the divine.”
Since Leonard Sweet often quotes David Bohm, this quote is significant
to church transformation:
Karl Rahner: A Brief Biography:
"Rahner argued that we can know of God by attending to the movement of our knowing itself towards its objects.... Hence, the movement of our knowing, and the ultimate goal towards which it reaches, can be grasped only indirectly (or "transcendentally") as our thinking turns back on itself. Rahner identified the elusive and final "term" of this dynamism with God and contended that the same movement towards God is entailed in freedom and love. By conceiving
God, who always exceeds our reach, as the horizon presupposed in the movement of knowing, freedom and love, Rahner provided a way for talking and thinking about
God as "mysterious," that is to say, as a reality who is known, but only reflexively and indirectly—and perhaps not even consciously—as the ever receding horizon of the human spirit.
"For Rahner,
we are 'spirits' (oriented and able to know God) only through
our being 'in the world.'...
Conversely, God is rejected to some extent in every refusal of truth, freedom and love. In these cases, since
the affirmation or denial is of a particular being and not necessarily directly cognizant of God or Jesus, it is quite possible that the true nature of the
'fundamental option' implicitly taken toward God’s self-communication (at the tacit or transcendental level) might be hidden or even denied (at the explicit or categorical level) by the person taking it."
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