Rings of Fire: Walking in Faith through a Volcanic Future

by Leonard Sweet, Mark Chironna (Contributor)

What Lies Ahead for Christians around the World?

If you follow the works of bestselling authors Malcolm Gladwell, Faith Popcorn, Daniel Pink, and other trend forecasters, you’ll appreciate learning about over 25 rings of fire that lie ahead for Christians around the world.

Len Sweet once again maps the future for the church in this sweeping survey of the twenty-first century. In the face of eruptive and disruptive culture changes from economics and communications to bioethics and beyond, how do we fight fire with fire, not only catching up to our culture but leading our friends and neighbors toward the feet of Christ? No one has done more to startle the church from its slumber than Len Sweet, and no one has equipped the church as effectively. This is a benchmark book from a seminal leader of the modern evangelical movement.

Mark Chironna provides incisive questions to stimulate creative thinking for individual or group study and an afterword that ties Len’s expansive work together and sets us on the right course for decades to come.

Genres: Christian, Theology, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

Published November 19, 2019

About the author

Leonard 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.

Reviews

[Norbert Haukenfrers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rings of Fire left me in tears. It shook and rattled my complacency and longing for what was, prodding faith, hope, and love for such a time as this. No fear of the future is encouraged, what we have here is a relentless urging to look and see, to pay attention, the God of the future is drawing us forward, calling that future to be present in us.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonard Sweet is a well known Christian author. This book is intended for Christians in a post Christian culture, particularly in Red America. It is part way between secular prophets such as Malcolm Gladwell and charismatic prophets. It describes ten trends in popular culture-who wouldn't like "Chinafication, Sexularism or Solutionism". He writes as well as ever and would be worth reading by a secular audience. At times, he tries to shock, "We spray the fields and scatter the poison on the ground' is indeed a quote from John Betjeman but surely not the only point of note. I also come to the end with a fog of vague guilt. This book has a comprehensive bibliography but needs an index.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book of the future in the coming century. As we could not have imagined the time of social distancing, covid -19, and all the changes in church services, media, entertainment, and wild new learning curves we never imagined that pushed us to think of possibilities of the future. Leonard Sweet, the author of “Soul Tsunami” (1999) and many other future books, will also shake you out of the common, into the spiritual hot zones, that await us. “He asks questions and looks at past, present, and into the future to challenge the church to choose faith over fear and become all God mean for her to be”, says Dave Ferguson, another religious visionary.
The format of the book is simple and straight forward, with 25 10 page themes, complete with many historical quotes, Bible verses, and examples of the volcanic future, and ends with several questions for a group or you to ponder in the section walking in faith. It is well documented with footnotes. Leonard divides his book into three parts, Hot zones, Hot topics and Hot church. It is hard to imagine the future he draws us into. This is not a political one theme book but a fire hose of new themes and thoughts of the future and what that means to the way you believe and do life.
Step out into the possible future of global refugees, chinafication, acid baths of irony and disuniting states of American for the taste of the part one Hot Zones, in the first 75 pages. Then he hits, tolerance of diversity, identity crises, secularism, gendering, suicide culture, steamy incarcerations, ecological extinctions, robotics, and rapidification. As you can see these as not tired discussions of old themes, but brand new ideas of our future. Perhaps this is the perfect study book for now as you have been shaken to your roots by the new ways that are possible to do business and the business of the Lord and are open to ideas.
This book may frighten you, it certainly will give you pause for what the future holds. No more” we have always done it that way”. This is still the future where God reigns in justice and in peace. Wake up! Sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you, Ephesians 5:14. We in the church can get ahead of social change, the handwriting is on the wall, using Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” begin to explore the new future.
If this is not enough, the last section “Hot church” explores reproduction crisis, sacralization, #church too, purgatory or paradise just for a few mind-boggling ideas. Leonard says let every question in the tome lead you to a glorious quest. “Even so, come. Lord Jesus” Open your mind !!!!!

[David Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leonard Sweet: theologian, public intellectual, and futurist, shares with readers his 25 different "Rings of Fire" which could be cataclysmic for the church in a volcanic 21st century culture. Be prepared to discover more than you ever imagined you would find in a single volume about China, world religions, divisive political culture, sexuality, genders & gendering, race relations, ecology, genetic engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, informational technology, nanotechnology, hell, heaven, and many more topics!

This book reads a little bit like an encyclopedia of potential future disasters. Every chapter is filled with surprisingly informative explanations of topics the reader may only vaguely familiar with. The information isn't exhaustive, by any means, but it's comprehensive enough to inspire grave concern for the future of the church as we currently understand it. I dare say the vast majority of well-intentioned and devout followers of Christ are not adequately prepared for the volcanic upheavals of the near future described in this eye-opening volume, upheaval which have the potential to spectacularly disrupt the church as we currently know it.

Rarely have I encountered a book which taught me so much and gave me so many things to ponder. I'm reminded of the 80s hit, "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades" by Timbuk3. Only this time, the idea is more like the future is explosively volatile, I've gotta examine everything I thought I knew about being the church of Jesus Christ in a rapidly changing culture.

Thank you to Netgalley.com and NavPress for the electronic advance review copy.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Signs of the Times

If I had read "Rings of Fire" last year, I probably would have taken the whole book with a grain of salt. Having read it in 2020, one year after being published, I can say that I'm more inclined to think that Sweet is truly discerning the "signs of the times."

I'll admit that I tend to get anxious when thinking about the future. Sweet quotes Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved" when describing how we might respond to new information: we can believe the worst, believe none of it, or think it through. As a follower of Jesus, Sweet provides an example of "thinking it through."

If you are interested in faith, social trends, globalization, new technology, and futurology, then this is the book for you.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to hate this book...and I did for the first few chapters. College may have been the last time I used a dictionary this much to read a book. Mr. Sweet is not above making up words to add to the challenge. I have to say, though, that his observations are brilliant, sometimes snarky, and usually thought-provoking. This book was released last year but his “predictions” are currently playing out before us. My only wish for this book is that it would have offered as many solutions at it did observations.

[Tim Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a great job of explaining what is going on it America today and how Christians should respond. I didn’t agree with everything he was saying. I think he was leaning more toward the “just love your neighbor” mentality than I would go but he made some good points either way.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't handle this book right from the beginning. It's a very exhausted reading of trends going into the future.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would you like to read the equivalent of a collection of Wired articles, tracing current cultural and technological trends and their possible future trajectories? And would you like the author to constantly relate these things to the task of Christian mission? If so, then this is your kind of book. More a wide-angle lens than very closely focused on any single thing, it’s a helpful briefing document and always entertaining, pithy and teasing in its style and tone.