Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who's Already There [Hardcover]

Leonard Sweet Ph.D (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2010

Evangelism is about reaching out to others. Really? You think?

 

Brace yourself. In Nudge, author Leonard Sweet sets out to revolutionize our understanding of evangelism. He defines evangelism as “nudge” – awakening each other to the God who is already there. Sweet’s revolution promises to affect your encounters with others, as well as shaking the very roots of your own faith. So brace yourself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Startled me with insight and made me think harder about vital issues of evangelism than any recent book I’ve read. This book is meant to revolutionize our view of evangelism—and I think it just might.”
-John G. Stackhouse Jr., Sangwoo Youtong Chee professor of theology and culture at Regent College, and author of Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

About the Author

Leonard Sweet is the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Fox University, and a chief contributor to Sermons.com. Sweet is the author of hundres of articles and numberous books, including The Gospel According to Starbucks, 11, So Beautiful, AquaChurch 2.0,and SoulTsunami.  To learn more visit www.LeonardSweet.com.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: David C. Cook; New edition (August 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1434764745
• ISBN-13: 978-1434764744
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #642,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Len Sweet was born of a mixed marriage: his mother was a fiery Pilgrim Holiness-ordained preacher from the mountains of West Virginia and his quiet father a Free Methodist lay leader from the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. After a deconversion at 17, when Len set about less sowing wild oats than planting prairies, he became an atheist intellectual and scholar dedicated to exposing the nincompoopery and poppycockery, if not tomfoolery and skullduggery of all religions. After this seven-year period of liminality, Len came back to the faith of his ancestors, where he has been ever since, exploring the "insterstices" and "semiotics" of religion, culture and history. He uses two words to describe himself: semiotician and interstitial. In other words, he is obsessed with two questions: "Where have you been?" and "Where are you going?"

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nudge, August 24, 2010

By 

Virgina Garrett (Scottsbluff, NE, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who's Already There (Hardcover)

It seems I often get what I call "spiritual nudges". You know, those times you have a thought flit through your head and instead of flitting right out again, it stays. It consumes your every waking moment.

Sometimes they happen when you're in the drive-thru line at McDonalds, the thought that says, "Pay for the car behind you. Tell the worker to say, 'Jesus paid for your meal'" type of thought. Or sometimes you're nudged to tell the cashier at the bank, grocery store, gas station, or just your neighbor, "Hey! Did you know Jesus loves you?!"

Those nudges that you can't escape and can't ignore. But seem so very hard to do, so hard it is almost impossible? Those nudges that when you've moved on and haven't done what you know you should have, you feel a tremendous sense of loss?

We traveled last weekend to visit family and since finances are tight, we took our supper of ham and cheese sandwiches and chips with us. As I was getting on the interstate (I'm more of a highway driver, I like to see the sights no one sees anymore because everyone is in too big of a hurry on the interstate), there was a couple with a sign. I have no idea what the sign said, but they looked like they could use a good meal. I felt the nudge to stop and empty our supper cooler at their feet, apologize that it wasn't much but it was all I had. And instead I kept my supper and zipped onto the interstate. All the while feeling, I had somehow failed miserably the test I had just been given. I could have been the flesh-and-blood Jesus for that couple and I chose to keep my meager meal.

Leonard Sweet wrote in his latest book, Nudge, about this very thing. Nudge is about being awake and aware of all the times we are nudged by God to evangelize, even in some small way, those around us. It is about being aware of God working in, through and with us to reach a lost and dying world.

I had the privilege of sending messages with questions about certain things in the book to Leonard Sweet and forgive the pun but he was sweet to answer. To say the book is not without controversy would be to say the sun is without heat. Or maybe it was just so radical to me it appeared controversial. It is to say the least, revolutionizing. It will revolutionize your thinking and how you view evangelism.

Here is a quote I found especially convicting.
" Evangelism is more being the good news than telling the good news. But sometimes you tell. In fact, the first postresurrection of Jesus contains the whole of nudge: 'Go quickly and tell." 'Go' means to get off your seat, on your feet, and leave your secure world to venture forth into where God is up to something. Forget about hijacking people into holy places. Fish where the fish are. But go fishing."

I first discovered Leonard Sweet about 10 years ago when I read "A cup of coffee at the Soul Cafe". A book I still, a decade later, highly recommend. I loved "Soul Salsa" and "The Gospel According to Starbucks". This book, though had me really questioning why I liked those books so much. I mean they seemed to agree with me and my thoughts, my theology, if you will. While Nudge seemed to be so "out there" for me. Nudge stretched me in places I had no idea needed stretching.

So when you read this book, prepare to be stretched.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Awakening Each Other To The God Who's Already There" by Leonard Sweet, July 24, 2010

By 

Real4truth - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who's Already There (Hardcover)

Leonard Sweet's "Nudge" is an artistic masterpiece that challenges, de/constructs, defamiliarizes, fractures, opens up, expands, nudges and Pneumafies our contemporary and anemic understanding of evangelism. Leonard Sweet's masterful metaphors, sacred stories, awe-inspiring anecdotes, wondrous wordsmithing and exceptional wit invites us to a profound new out/in-look on evangelism or what Sweet calls, "Nudging". "Nudge" seeks to, "awaken each other to the God who is already there". It is a book that I believe should be a standard textbook in all evangelism classes throughout all seminaries seeking to grapple with what it means to be followers/livers/lovers/proclaimers/planters/sanctified semioticians of the Grand Signifier Jesus Christ.

For me Sweet is a de/constructionist; one who shakes, rattles and roles-over the average person's understanding of evangelism at the same time constructing something that is beautiful, helpful, hopeful and sensational (encompassing all of the senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight). In "Nudge," Leonard Sweet becomes an iconoclast; chipping away at the false pictures, images and old, archaic, outdated and sometimes just purely unbiblical conceptual contemporary understandings of evangelism.

For example, it is typical in many churches to speak of our task as Christians, "to bring Christ to the Nations." It is a common understanding that until we bring God to people groups and locations then it is naively assumed or declared that God is not there (so much for His omnipresence). Sweet aptly and boldly writes, "If you think about it, isn't it the height of theological arrogance the notion that you and I take Jesus to anyone? You mean Jesus never arrived on the scene until you got there? You mean Jesus wasn't present until I showed up?"

There are so many golden nuggets that are in this book that could be mined by individuals, small groups and whole churches. Between Sweet's writing about Semiotics, the Semiotic 5, physics, music, relational, communal and Jesus immersed evangelism, his "decelerating rites," and many other evangelistic insights, "Nudge" is a must read.

I want to end with a main thesis of this amazing book:
1. Jesus is alive and active in the world.
2. Followers of Jesus "know" Jesus well enough to recognize where he is alive and moving in our day.
3. Evangelists nudge the world to wake up to the alive and acting Jesus and nudge others in the ways God is alive and moving

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nudge - Rebirthing the Idea of Evangelism, November 19, 2010

By 

Chad Miller - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who's Already There (Hardcover)

I fondly remember sitting in Bible college, listening to my Personal Evangelism professor tell stories about he led people to pray with him. I remember all the times I led someone down the "Roman's Road". A few years after Bible college, I realized that the "road" did not work for me anymore. I guess I quit believing it maybe ever worked at all.

Throughout my years as a follower of Jesus, I have heard of relationship evangelism. Although a lot of people thought it was a cop out, I started many more conversations started about having a faith in Jesus.

Nudge by Leonard Sweet is the next phase of "evangelism" or the spreading of the good news.

The book brings up two areas, shining and sensing. My heart resonated more with the sensing. Leonard talks about every sense and how we can experience the living God and therefore help others to experience who God is. He writes in a way, that I like to slowly and methodically read through his writing, as it is full of good short stories and quotes. He backs up a lot of what he says with other's thinking.

This book also made me think a lot about semiotics or the signs of messages coming. It is incredible to think of all the imagery that Jesus used as he lived and also told stories. I could tell you so much more about this book, but I would hate to ruin it for you. Much of it was new to me, and the depth of the content was really interesting.

Congratulations again to Leonard Sweet for yet another book that has helped me make more sense of my faith in Jesus.

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