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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unpacking the Missional Nature of the Godhead, March 23, 2009
This review is from: So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church (Paperback)
Almost 3 years ago, I heard Len Sweet talk about the MRI Church during our first advance for my D. Min. program. In his new book, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, Len explores and explains the importance of this idea.
In the book, Len talks about the implications of practicing APC Churches: Attractional, Propositional and Colonial churches. APC churches create members, believers and consumers. However, the MRI Church (Missional, Relational and Incarnational) creates missionaries, disciples, and world changers.
The book is quite thick at over 300 pages. In addition, there are only five chapters, including the introduction. Each of the MRI topics are covered in an individual chapter, along with an introduction and epilogue. Each chapter, however, is broken up into sections that make it easy to take a break in the midst of 40-70 page chapters. I knew this book would be big back in September as Len told me at dinner that each of the topics were 100 pages each and his editor would have to get it down to a manageable size.
Despite it's size, however, it is not a difficult read. But you do have to put your thinking cap on. Len's verbal imagery is very real. He reframes word meanings based on origin and use quite a bit. It is will cause you to pause and consider how you use language yourself. In addition, this a book that draws from a great myriad of sources, as most all of Len's books do. You get a true education by reading Len's book, not just in ministry and life topics, but in science, literature, history, etc.
Content
In the book, Len calls on people and churches to blend together the three MRI strands into one beautiful life.
In Part 1: The Missional Life, Len speaks of God's "going". God is a God of motion, movement and mission. Mission is not an activity of the church but part of the character of God. He is a missionary God. Disciples of Christ are mission-shaped. Every vocation is a missionary vocation. In this section, he fleshes these concepts out in a clear and compelling way.
In Part 2: The Relational Life, Len describes a life where the primary reality is relations and relationships. All of life is about relationships: with God, ourselves, others and creation. In this chapter, he describes the primacy of Relational Truth over Propositional Truth. This is a particularly interesting and needed discussion. I appreciate greatly how he unpacks this concept.
In Part 3: The Incarnational Life, Len describes how instead of pulling people and concepts out of their context, we need to be entering other contexts and in doing so localizing the church within that context. One particular thought that I found very compelling and helpful was this: "Jesus was at home everywhere, but naturalized nowhere. The incarnational life pays homage to context by celebrating regionality, by honoring particularity, by domesticating the missional and the relational. God didn't choose to send us a Superman. God chose to send us an Everyman - `Joe, the Plumber,' `Jesus, the Carpenter' - one like ourselves in every way." (pg. 153) He speaks on how the genius of Christianity is its ability to integrate pagan customs with Christian faith and practice. It uses those customs to communicate itself through indigenous and local expressions of worship.
The final chapter, the Epilogue is practical. It gives you a mirror with which to look at your life and church to see if you are a MRI church. In the epilogue Len provides ten ways to know if your church is MRI. This is a strength of the book.
Additionally, the book is not anti-APC as much as it tries to note the primacy of the MRI over the APC.
Final Thoughts
In a world when most of the attention goes to large, attractional churches, who are by their sheer size considered successful, it is encouraging for someone with such influence noting the need for a different way of being the church. Len does a remarkable job in this book of reframing the idea of church and being vs doing church. It creates energy to infiltrate the world and the marketplace and be the church. It also creates the theological and practical energy for that as well.
Having gotten to know Len over the past 3 years, I admit a bias. But I truly believe that this is one of the best books on being the church and on being a church that influences the context in which we live. It would be a foundational book were I teaching a class on Missional Theology and Practice.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sweet or Not? Read the Book of Acts first., September 2, 2009
This review is from: So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church (Paperback)
So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church by Leonard Sweet comes with mixed emotions neither good or bad, just undecided.
To summarize the book with one quote from page 162, "When the one lung breathes in the Missional (God's Power) and the other lung breathes in Relational (God's Presence), the body comes alive and exhales the risen incarnate life of Christ."
Leonard paints a picture throughout the book of this DNA of MRI or Missional, Relational, and Incarnational. Nothing new, right?
Some think that this is a new way to look at the church or an old way recently discovered. Many people are searching for a meaningful body of Christ that not only worships on Sunday morning, but breathes with a mission, that extends to relational communities, and takes the message of Christ out into their everyday life or what Sweet calls MRI.
This is a very wordy book. I am not into repeating oneself. Sweet early on even mentions that if "you have not noticed I am saying the same thing in a different way (paraphrased)". One can simply turn to the book of Acts and read about this Missional, Relational, Incarnational way of the church. Sweet is humbly putting modern words into a language that some seem to have forgotten.
Keeping with the Sweet writing pattern he weaves multiple quotes throughout the book that unites everything together in a seamless manner. If you desire to have a renewed vision of the church reread Acts first and then read So Beautiful by Len Sweet. If you have not begin to ponder a deeper meaning for the body of Christ this may jump start your engine. Enjoy Len's words as he casts a vision that needs to be renewed for the body of Christ so others will begin to know, see, and hear that God is really among us (I Cor 14:25).
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Be Prepared to Be Challenged, Encouraged and Motivated, June 10, 2009
This review is from: So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church (Paperback)
Prolific author, speaker and professor of evangelism at Drew University, Leonard Sweet just keeps getting better. Widely lauded as one of the "50 Most Influential Christians in America," Sweet's disarming style and candid approach on matters of life and the church are both contagious and welcoming. His newest offering to fans and newcomers alike will delight, captivate and challenge formerly held assumptions about what it means to "do church" American-style.
Sweet opens his text with an introduction to acronyms...and very cunningly leads into his own, which describes the So Beautiful, or MRI, church on which this text is focused: "M" = Missional, "R" = Relational and "I" = Incarnational. Formerly (currently?), many churches operate under the APC Christianity style, or the ABC Church: Attendance, Buildings and Cash. As Sweet notes, "[S]ome things can be good for you for a short time but bad for you over the long haul." He spends the next couple hundred pages helping fellow Christ followers understand, define and take a much closer look at their faith lives and how it works itself both within and without the confines of a church setting.
The author quite engagingly admits that, through his travels he is finding, "God is 'up to something,' stirring part of the body very slowly to rouse the rest." Exciting. Daunting. Challenging. Eye-opening. Yes, to all of these adjectives.
Beginning with a description and overview of the Missional Life: God's "GO," Sweet tells believers that as soon as they become Christians and tell Jesus they're "in," he turns right around and tells them you're "out." This means to go OUT into the world, don't stay clustered inside a stuffy church building where members only congregate and bewail the woes of the larger world. Go, and be part of that world because we all belong together in it.
Sweet then shares the nuts and bolts of what a Relational Life: God's "YES" looks like...and yes, it's all about getting close to people and making life connections that count. He interestingly notes that to predict those with economic success, look for people who have strong social connections. To predict sound mental and physical well-being, look for close family ties and high-quality relationships. Similarly, those individuals who enjoy spiritual well-being also have tight-knit relationships. As Sweet notes, all of life is about relationships, one to another, and everyone to God.
Closing up this work, Sweet details the Incarnational Life: God's "NO," in which he discusses how "Incarnants" are "those who are in touch with the culture but in tune with the Spirit, embracing and estranging the culture simultaneously." Yet, this is a good thing as believers need to "disturb the world" but do so in love and with a commitment to serve, stand alongside, and bring redemptive repair.
Readers will find great value and a highly practical resource in SO BEAUTIFUL. Be prepared to be challenged, encouraged and motivated to start living an MRI lifestyle.
--- Reviewed by Michele Howe
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