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Soultsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture
Sweeping in from the cultural sea, a mountainous wave of change threatens to wash the church away. It's a postmodern flood of mind-boggling techno-culture, problems your grandparents couldn't have imagined, and religious pluralism that embraces everything except spiritual absolutes. Leonard Sweet calls it a SoulTsunami (sohl-tsoo-NAH-mee), and there's no outrunning it. We Christians can only choose one of three ways to respond to it. We can deny its existence -- and drown. We can fight it -- and lose. Or we can recognize the unprecedented opportunities it presents -- and chart a course across the waters toward reformation. If you're ready to exchange your current thinking for a church with the power to shape tomorrow, listen to this tape -- unlike any other you've heard before. SoulTsunami will shift your paradigm. It will give you vision for the Gospel that's radical, challenging, and true, and spark practical ideas for putting it in motion.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
7 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
About the author
Leonard Sweet
160 books137 followersLeonard I. Sweet is an author, preacher, scholar, and ordained United Methodist clergyman currently serving as the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School, in Madison, New Jersey; and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University in Portland, Oregon.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 8, 2007
i don't want to hear the word postmodern for the rest of my life.
April 6, 2021
A great book unexpectedly
Very rich content, writing with a burning cry for transforming the fainting mainline churches. Reading it is walking along a long winding river with a compatriot under changing weather. A lot of learning, skimming becomes a fine reading for me. Surf on it if you mean missionary for Jesus !
Very rich content, writing with a burning cry for transforming the fainting mainline churches. Reading it is walking along a long winding river with a compatriot under changing weather. A lot of learning, skimming becomes a fine reading for me. Surf on it if you mean missionary for Jesus !
January 11, 2017
Soul Tsunami is a whoppin’ big book (450 pages) by Leonard Sweet. It explores the cultural changes that present new opportunities for the Church in a postmodern world. If the Church doesn’t adapt, it will become irrelevant. It’s sink or swim time.
What is a soul tsunami? Leonard Sweet explains it this way: “A spiritual tsunami has hit postmodern culture. This wave will build without breaking for decades to come. The wave is this: People want to know God. They want less to know about God or know about religion than to know God.”
The book was loaded with brilliant insights and ideas for Christians to grapple with in terms of what is important to millennials and how that effects evangelism, the shape of our message, and even what our church services could look like to meet the evolving needs of new generations.
Sweet offers relevant insights such as, “Postmodern evangelism is recognizing that God is already at work in people’s lives before we arrived on the scene, and that our role is helping people to see how God is present and active in their lives, calling them home.”
People are leaving the church in droves because it doesn’t meet their need to experience God. The author says, “Postmoderns want something more than new products; they want new experiences, especially new experiences of the divine.”
Old models don’t work, but churches have been slow to adapt to the changing demands. For instance, “Postmoderns don’t want to be preached at; they want to be given a mission.”
I felt the chapters were heavy laden with cultural facts and observations, which grew wearisome to read. I would have liked to have seen fewer facts and more scriptural rationale for changing the status quo. Still, Church leaders would do well to read this book and explore ways to do church differently.
I, for one, am tired of the Church being a social club that does the exact same things, the exact same ways forever. As Leonard Sweet explains, “The church is bursting at the seams with rationality, decency, order, dignity, and predictability. What it needs is the holy intoxications of foolishness, humor, craziness, outrageousness, creative disorder, and passion.”
And these changing times—this New Reformation Era—call for creativity. The message, of course, will remain the same, but the delivery and methods will need to morph to ride the wave of change.
This review, along with additional book quotes, first appeared on my blog, ChristyBower.com.
What is a soul tsunami? Leonard Sweet explains it this way: “A spiritual tsunami has hit postmodern culture. This wave will build without breaking for decades to come. The wave is this: People want to know God. They want less to know about God or know about religion than to know God.”
The book was loaded with brilliant insights and ideas for Christians to grapple with in terms of what is important to millennials and how that effects evangelism, the shape of our message, and even what our church services could look like to meet the evolving needs of new generations.
Sweet offers relevant insights such as, “Postmodern evangelism is recognizing that God is already at work in people’s lives before we arrived on the scene, and that our role is helping people to see how God is present and active in their lives, calling them home.”
People are leaving the church in droves because it doesn’t meet their need to experience God. The author says, “Postmoderns want something more than new products; they want new experiences, especially new experiences of the divine.”
Old models don’t work, but churches have been slow to adapt to the changing demands. For instance, “Postmoderns don’t want to be preached at; they want to be given a mission.”
I felt the chapters were heavy laden with cultural facts and observations, which grew wearisome to read. I would have liked to have seen fewer facts and more scriptural rationale for changing the status quo. Still, Church leaders would do well to read this book and explore ways to do church differently.
I, for one, am tired of the Church being a social club that does the exact same things, the exact same ways forever. As Leonard Sweet explains, “The church is bursting at the seams with rationality, decency, order, dignity, and predictability. What it needs is the holy intoxications of foolishness, humor, craziness, outrageousness, creative disorder, and passion.”
And these changing times—this New Reformation Era—call for creativity. The message, of course, will remain the same, but the delivery and methods will need to morph to ride the wave of change.
This review, along with additional book quotes, first appeared on my blog, ChristyBower.com.
December 25, 2012
Soultsunami and Wisdom Hunter (Arthur) were the two books that set me onto a trajectory of hope. I was set free to question everything, challenge legalism and discover God in places outside of the box.
July 3, 2009
I read this book right after it came out - and it was great for me to start learning a new vocabulary for my theological thoughts.
January 5, 2013
Slogged my way through for a module. Didn't enjoy it at all.... Information overload and unconvincing 13 years on
February 5, 2016
Leonard Sweet is one of my favorite theologians. He writes in a style that makes me think, and sometimes I have to back and re-read it again and again.
January 17, 2016
One of the most influential books I have read as a young Christian several years back.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews