SoulTsunami: Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture

by Leonard Sweet

Book Overview

Looks at the implications of the changing world on the church in the 21st century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0310227623
• ISBN13: 9780310227625
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company
• Length: 446 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Thought provoking, slow reading, and worth it!

Some books I read in days... a momentary tickle. Some books I read in months... they mess with my head and change my life. This is one of those, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to think about changes in our culture. I'd even recommend it to business people who want to understand their customers.So where are you? Modern? Post-modern? We take so much for granted (everyone must think like me!). I'm becoming more delightfully post-modern every day, and I like it! Armed with a new appreciation for culture, and a new appreciation for Jesus himself, I'm pondering these questions: * what am I doing now that's working, and why is it working? * what doesn't seem to work any more? * if we reinvented church from basic principles in our increasingly post-modern community, what would it look like?Now I've gotta go read those next two books in the trilogy: AquaChurch and SoulSalsa!

Fresh Winds For the Church's Sails

Sweet's soulTsunami is brimming full of creative energy for the church. Study and rumination over this book is crucial for any pastor, any Christian, any seeker of truth. Sweet articulates with such wit, quirkiness, and perception what postmoderns have been feeling in their hearts. I found myself in resounding agreement with each page, as well as provoked towards new thinking. The strength in this book lies in the "double-rings" and paradoxes (i.e. p. 89 "the problem with the church today is that it is 'too traditional'; the problem with the church today is that it is not traditional enough.")Sweet hits the nail on the head when he persuades us to remember that the same gospel message must be continually shaped to reach a new way of thinking that pervades our age. This can only happen by knowing and redeeming the culture. Thank you Leonard, for your prophetic inspiration. This book has become a part of me.

This book changed my life...

Technology and its uses in the Christian church is a subject that few have dealt with, and none have theorized as elequently as Sweet.Without sacrilidge, this book inspires me to use the gift of technology to better serve God's Kingdom.

Required reading for Christian leaders into 21st century

I give this work by Sweet highest marks. Sweet is the master of peering into the 21st century and reaping the implications for the church, today. His insights are convicting, inspiring and controversial -- with very practical suggestions for surviving the tidal wave of change that is sweeping our culture.

A gyroscope for the postmodern church

I purchased Leonard Sweet's SoulTsunami looking for a "road map" to postmodern culture. What I got was a gyroscope. But a road map is useless to one adrift in the strange and disturbing waters of postmodernism. That's exactly where we are, church, and that's precisely why we need a new tool - a gyroscope, not a road map -- to navigate through these uncharted waters.The terra firma of the modern world has given way to the fluid, amorphous culture of postmodernism. It is an ocean on which the "old ship of Zion" must set sail. This book's subtitle, "Sink or Swim in New Millennium Culture," aptly sums up the challenge postmodernism presents to the church.SoulTsunami is engaging (who could tell from Sweet's straightforward writing style that he's actually an academic?), comprehensive (well researched and chock full of facts), and disturbing (especially, for me, Life Ring #5, "Get Bionomic," a fascinating and soul-agitating glimpse into our future). Yet Sweet's appraisal of the postmodern predicament is honest and right on target. Approach this book with an open mind, accept Sweet's challenges (even if you don't agree with everything he says), and be prepared to "get over" any pre-conceived ideas of how the Christian faith ought to be.SoulTsunami should be on the reading list of every pastor, cell group leader, choir member, church organist, youth minister/worker, and pew-warmer.