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).

Sweet refers to the 3 strands of the church as MRI: “M= missional, R=relational, I=Incarnational. He contrasts this with CAWKy church(church as we know it) or the APC church. Here A=Attractional, P=propositional and C=colonial. He points out that the APC church produces: A-members, P-believers and C-consumers. Where as the MRI church creates: M-missionaries, R-Disciples and I-world changers.

The book is separated into 5 parts; Introduction, 3 parts for each of the strands of MRI and an epilogue. The 3 parts for MRI are each separated further into 23 sections/chapters. Sweet is characteristically heavy on references and quotes. There are 45! pages of notes at the end of the book.

I am thankful the book is split uplike it is. With the profoundness of each chapter and Sweet’s creativity and wit with the English language (i would like to be a fly on the wall if he and Brad Sargent ever should meet…and they should). I found that I prefer to only read a chapter or 2 at time. Letting the DNA/MRI get in my blood.

As profound as Sweet is he writes with clarity. So Beautiful is exactly that. In my opinion it belongs on every Christian shelf. I will find myself coming back to this for devotion and for reference over and over again I am sure.

So anyhoo, go buy it already. Go.

The basic idea of So Beautiful is that just as the building block of all biological life is DNA, the building block of all spiritual life is MRI. The church is a beautiful double helix of mission, relationships, and incarnation.

The book is broken up into three main parts, aptly entitled “Missional,” “Relational,” and “Incarnational.” Sweet credits Alan Hirsch with the majority of credit for the ideas presented in So Beautiful. If the content of this book appeals to you, you might consider reading Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways. Of course, Sweet adds his typical plethora of quotes that begin each subsection within the three parts of the book (kind of like mini-chapters, each signified by an ichthus at the beginning).

Sweet isn’t interested in pleasing anyone. He may easily offend conservatives with his appeal for organic church life and postmodern-friendly thinking. He appeals to those who have grown up, relating more to pop culture than to the Bible. At the same time, he does justice to Christian orthodoxy with strong statements about Jesus’ uniqueness among other world religions (obviously, not desiring to appeal to contemporary liberal theologians). He is in a class all by himself.

As an academic, Sweet wrote So Beautiful as he might teach a class of grad students. The challenging thoughts on the mission of the church he raises are compelling, but I was disappointed in the lack of practical examples Sweet could have used to illustrate his theories. Nonetheless, So Beautiful is a treasure to be cherished by pastors, lay leaders, and spiritual pilgrims longing to find deeper meaning in church and the world in which they leave.

The analogue used throughout from which the book draws it’s title is that of the double helix DNA strand. The secret of life at the most basic biochemical level, for which a Nobel prize was rewarded for discovering, is not that we have DNA; instead, it is the structure of the DNA makeup. Two strands twirl around a central core. No part can create life without the other two, regardless of the fact that all the necessary information (like doctrine or mission) is contained within one element. For life to form, the three have to coexist simultaneously. Three is everywhere, in fact.
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So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, Leonard Sweet.
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So Beautiful has a writing style won’t sit well with those wanting a linear case-building project. The best way I can describe Leonard Sweet’s writing style is that he is much more like a painter than a writer; each chapter has its overarching theme, but is replete with allegory and quotation. Barely a page goes by without two or three quotes from across the theological spectrum (quoting Talmudic Rabbis, Augustine and Aquinas, Karl Barth, Gandhi, and even Rick Warren) and an allegory in vague parabolic fashion making it’s own point without his explanation. He does an excellent job of painting his point from every conceivable direction in order to drive the image home.

His central thesis is that the Church, which tends to function as an APC program (Attractional, Propositional, and Colonial), will die into itself without a shift to become MRI (Missional, Relational, and Incarnational. In its lust for success, the Church creates all sorts of programs and marketing ploys to gather numbers (attractional). The core is doctrinal purity, with the defense being that it is not Christian if it is not correct belief first and foremost, making this the crucial tenant of inclusion (propositional). In turn, the Church becomes colonial, transforming peoples and culture where they are found. To understand this, look no further than Rwanda, in which nearly 90% of the population by the early nineties had been converted to Christianity (numbered, doctrined, and colonized), but had failed to emphasize incarnation and balance. As a result, when the 1994 genocide broke out, churches killed churches, converted Christians raped and killed other converted Christians. Nevermind the neglect of Christian nonviolent teaching; we went to Africa (much as we teach our suburban congregants) teaching that belief in Christ is what makes one a Christian. Correct action, while important, becomes a second tier issue. Action is crucial, we say, but independent of your eternal destination. The violence of colonial conversion removes the soul of a culture and replaces it with something far more insidious, all in the name of the gospel.

Instead the Gospel is a never-ending call for mission. We are not called to “Go and convert people to your beliefs.” Instead the Commission correctly translates as “As you are going, make disciples.” A correct praxis cannot help but create interest in this way as it is seen. Secondly, the Christ never created all our wonderful doctrine and position statements. For example, when he came across a Roman centurion and his homosexual servant, he challenged neither to change his ways in that moment. He could have told the centurion to stop his violence and oppression; he could have told the servant to stop his adultery. Instead, Jesus healed the servant and left the inspiration to do its own work. This is not to say that we don’t have discussions about beliefs (I’m quite a fan of that, in case you have not noticed), but that it is not the driving part of invitation into a way of life. Lastly, we must become incarnational; we become salvation. We are not called to convert and colonize indigenous cultures into a quasi-Western construct. There is a reason that pictures of the Christ, at their best, are of a white Jesus in North America, a black Jesus in Africa, and an Asian Jesus in China. The sad truth is that, just as Jesus is often white in colonized Africa, we made it our mission to be more concerned that African tribal women covered their breasts when we took the “gospel” to the nations. What I mean to say is that we were more concerned with transforming them to a Western culture (with all our hang-ups and shortcomings) than teaching about justice and reconciliation. Again, recall Rwanda (or Uganda, or Darfur for that matter). “Speading the gospel” is not, as so often misunderstood, supposed to be about creating doctrinally similar proxies who will in turn create more believer proxies. Such action can be remarkably destructive. And anyways, our job is not really so much to teach someone something that they did not know; it is much more our mission to help them (especially Christians) see what they already know but have suppressed.

This is not to say that attraction is a bad thing. Sweet notes that a key test of spirituality is attraction. But attraction by a church can be driven by numerous factors, many consumeristicly impressive or self-servingly counterproductive. Sweet likens this common issue to a bird that, in the turn of evolution, acquires all sorts of colors and qualities to attract a mate. But in its genetic drive to creative attractions for a mate, it seals its own fate as a target for predators. We too create all these attractions to grab people in the church, without asking why we want so many people who come because our church makes them feel a certain way.

“There is always an easy solution to every human problem- neat, plausible, and wrong” -H.L. Mencken

“Philosophy is not so much a matter of acquiring beliefs as of turning the soul away from fantasy and towards reality.” – Plato

In our beliefs, Sweet writes that we need to embrace, not solve, paradox. “Dualism, either/or exclusionism is… plug ugly. Nondualism, both/and nonlocalism is… so beautiful.” We make a joke of the Scriptures when we vie to solve our every paradox or discrepancy. When we harp on an item of belief as a requirement for inclusion (fill in your particular crucial belief), we come dangerously close to making a god of that belief. Most Christians would even affirm that last sentence, but without noticing that they too have their beliefs they are not willing to budge on (and I have those too). Truth is not what changes us; it is the journey of seeking Truth that alters our perceptions and matures us. Sweet writes, “Our idolatry of propositions is so severe that we have even made “affirmations” into principles, not people.” In turn, we tenaciously say “I believe in absolute Truth” while living as if we are the only people living on the Earth, consuming and destroying as we go about converting. This is our “absolute Truth”; this is where this perspective leads us.

Len Sweet opens his section on Incarnation with thoughts on the sermon. He writes of how poorly his messages often came across when he was speaking to an audience he rarely spoke to. At first, he thought it was his error, but he came to realize that if a message is incarnated into a culture, it should not travel so well. It reminded me of a time I was at an Acts 29 conference (stereotypically full of hipsters trying to prove how cool they are by how many obscure indie bands they can name-drop) and the speaker, a pastor from a crime ridden neighborhood in Philadelphia, starts mocking us for it. He ranted, “ ‘Oh, look at me, I’m an indie-pastor and we are planting a church in the ‘artsy’ part town.’ I don’t care! That doesn’t matter; being cool is not the goal!… if you have a church full of rednecks, you should sound and look like a redneck.” Sweet writes that perhaps a test of incarnation is whether or not our message travels well. Now, this is not a section about sermons, but it does present an analogue to the greater message for Incarnation. We are to become salvation, not just hand it out. We are medium and message. If we are not deeply concerned about living like Gospel in our own contexts, then it does not really matter how many people we convert or how much money we give to Africa. It has been said that the image of the Cross is not complete without the crosses of the two criminals next to the Christ; in lived and died among the outcasts, putting flesh/action on his message even as the religious despised him for doing so. I think a lot of Christians don’t realize that when Jesus was partying with the drunkards, that sort of implies that he drank right along with them. If your circle is uber-Christian, you might have to use a lot of Evangelical sub-culture language to communicate the Gospel with them or go with them to converse as they hand out tracks. If your circle smokes, then you enjoy nicotine and conversation right along with them. If your culture is highly Pro-(whatever the nation or issue that fills in the blank), then it does little good to perpetually rant for or against this. Be Rescue and Redemption in your context. To “go out” and bring the “sinners” to the church for saving is colonial. To live in a reconciled way in your context is deeply good.

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This has been summary. Now for my perspective on this book: I loved it, but it wasn’t so much written for me. It was good, and challenging, but I feel it is far better suited for someone who is just beginning to ponder why their church, or even personal doxis/praxis (belief/action) has gone stale. It is a book for the pastor tired of what his church is quickly becoming, with the incurable requirements for congregant numbers and position statements and conversion counting. If you brag about numbers and the general fanciness of your church (or are under fire to generate more numbers and fanciness), then this is for you. If you have a list of beliefs that you will not budge on, and perhaps even judge whether someone is a real Christian based on said list, then this may be for you. If you feel that the gospel can be summed up as a call to convert as many people as possible to “belief in Christ,” as you may put it, then this may be a book for you. It’s for those that are just beginning to realize that their Christianity is not, in fact, worth believing at all, and nor is it transformative or good for the world in which they find themselves.

If that is you, then you may be interested.

The book is not short in sharp, articulate, precise observations and insights. I am not sure if Mr. Sweet calls himself a theologian, but his book reflects substance of the type.

Perhaps the biggest message I take away from this book is the proposed shift of church culture from attractional, propositional, and colonial to missional, relational, and incarnational; an idea that resonates deep within my being. Throughout the book he describes in captivating detail what that looks like, often providing extremely relevant practical examples, wisdom gained throughout his journey and the church’s journey, and a plethora of brilliant quotable material. I would be in erring to not grace you with some of them.

“Our holy texts reveal the divine as being-in-relation. The two key components of Trinitarian thinking are relationally and difference: the two key challenges of the 21st century. A missional mind-set is less about acquiring more information than entering into a deeper relationship with God and man.”

“To be sure, the MRI (missional, relational, incarnational) paradigm is a shift from institution to movement, from ‘withinforth’ to ‘withoutforth’ (medieval language for the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’), from planning to prayer and preparedness, from strategic thinking to prophesying your way forward, from invite them in to interact with them out there, from increased market share to increased world presence, from living in to living out the gospel.”

“When a church is not on a journey it becomes a relic. When a church is on a journey, it showcases its relics.”

“It is not religion and reason that go together, but religion and relationship that go together.”

“The ultimate in reality is not substance, but relations. For Jesus, there can be no such thing as the person as individual, only the person as relation.”

I could literally go on and on with amazing nuggets from this book. To be truthful, I ear-marked pages that I wanted to go back to after I was done reading the book entirely so I could revisit some of the highlights, but I ended up ear-marking about 50% of the book.

Sweet continues in the mold of many other progressive thinkers, in promoting that the Christian life as we know it now and the church at large, needs a face lift. He is going back to the basics (what he poignantly points out is our DNA), yet is supporting something which seems to be new to most. Which begs the question: how far have we traveled away from the life we were intended to live: one of self-sacrifice as opposed to consuming, one that finds true meaning in relationships not in ideas or theory, and one that builds unity through love and acceptance, not tearing down bonds by divisions and tunnel vision.

If I had one minor critique of this book it would be that Sweet is so brilliant that he often jumps quickly thematically and because of this the book can at times lack flow. But this hardly has to do with content as much as it does with writing style.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is searching for an insightful, thought-provoking, intense, deep insight into the seismic shift happening in Christian culture in the 21st century.

http://www.ordinaryradical.com

So, I began So Beautiful with much expectation and excitement. That’s where I have run into some problems. It was interesting to read a quote one of the other reviewers left that I felt resonated with some of what I felt. TGOTK said, “I felt that I was thrown a textbook with little personality, but a series of quotes and anecdotes with little exegesis or personality.” I am only half way through the book, but have felt that So Beautiful lacks much of the personality and character of Mr Sweet’s previous books, a point that so far has disappointed me, as well as make So Beautiful a challenge to read.

That being said, I was excited to read The Jesus Manifesto that Mr Sweet recently co-wrote and released with Frank Viola, where they both place their recent books, So Beautiful by Mr Sweet and Viola’s From Eternity to Here, as a continuation of the discussion. So Beautiful is a wonderful exploration of the manifesto, albeit harder to read than his previous books. I asked myself if that was because of different life circumstances or other conditions, but have not come to any conclusion.

So Beautiful, alongside Viola’s recent books, challenges the church, including legacy churches and simple churches, with the premise that the old inherited approach of Attractional, Propositional & Colonial (and ABC – Attendance, Buildings and Cash) no longer works for our time, and that in fact it is not the original design. Mr Sweet is fond of acronyms to expand ideas and in So Beautiful, he uses the familiar medical acronym of MRI to explain the ethos of churches as the bride of Christ, and individual followers of Christ as Missional, Relational & Incarnational.

The bulk of So Beautiful is an exploration of Sweet’s MRI in great detail, and using Mr Sweet’s wonderful use of a multitude of references and sources, something that I particularly love about Mr Sweet’s writing. At a few points I found myself rehashing a few ideas from Hirsch and Frost’s groundbreaking books (hence the dedication?), some of Sweets references. However, on the whole, while difficult to read, So Beautiful is a wonderful exploration of how beautiful the bride of Christ, the church could be in life.

Read alone, So Beautiful is difficult to read, but coupled with Viola’s materials and the ensuing discussion and material from these and other contemporary theologians, makes a wonderful companion and voice, further exploring these issues. Grab a copy, you won’t be disappointed. Look past the style to the substance. It’s beautiful.

For his book, “So Beautiful,” I found myself again in the same position. I totally agree with him that churches should be more Missional, Relational, and Incarnational. However, I found the book neither missional, relational, or incarnational. By the end of the book, I didn’t really have a lot of impetus to change (mission). I didn’t know the author any better (relation). I didn’t feel that the book spoke at my level (incarnation). I felt that I was thrown a textbook with little personality, but a series of quotes and anecdotes with little exegesis or personality.

But again, with what I could glean, Dr. Sweet said good things. I agree with his message; it’s simply his medium that I’m unsure about.

The churches in our county expect people to come to their buildings to find Christ. While the costs of mortgages, utilities and maintenance have increased, giving has decreased. Perceived as discretionary, the “missions” budget is cut. If mission is an attribute of God, why is mission not the primary activity of the church? As A. Scott Matheson relates (p. 67), “The question is not a non-churchgoing community but a non-going church.” Whether it’s BBB (Building, Budget, and Butts in pews) or Sweet’s ABC (Attendance, Building, and Cash) the priorities are the same, and mission is not a priority.

Attractional churches in Jefferson County proclaim that they are “come as you are.” As Sweet observes (pp. 20-1) “The cutting edge of what the Spirit is up to is not … come-gather churches, but as-you-go-scatter churches. Not an ‘in here’ church, but an ‘out there’ church.” Our churches are full of programs for reaching the lost—Sunday schools, Vacation Bible Schools, special music productions, Alpha programs, youth programs, apologetics programs, Christmas programs, Easter egg hunts, etc. All of these programs are within the compound of the church. We want people comfortable coming to church. But what are we doing to get people within our churches comfortable going to their neighborhoods and community? The one church-based program blatantly missing: prayer.

Rather than buildings and beliefs, the church should be a network of relationships—with God, with His Word, with others, and with His creation. The truths of Scripture are not found so much in principles as in stories. Jesus often began with “I tell you the truth;” and then He would tell a story. Christianity is not an ideology, it is a relationship. As Sweet observes (p. 135), “The point of Christianity is not a point but a person.”

The relational aspect of the church speaks powerfully to me personally. I find I am a much better discipler of my computer than I am of individuals. I prefer sitting behind my computer writing and responding to e-mails, blogs and facebook, than going out and meeting people. Why can’t I be more like Jesus who “enjoyed being around sinners because he took pleasure in people, all people, including bad people and troubled people” (p. 137)? If I believed as Sweet (p. 85), “that everyone I meet has something to teach me, [and] the most important people in my life I haven’t met yet,” why do I find my computer so convenient?

One critical issue in the relational life which Sweet overlooks is prayer. We relate to God by prayer through His Son Jesus Christ, in the power of His Holy Spirit. Prayer is the key that characterizes our relationship with God. What happened to “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17)? Not only have we taken prayer out of our schools, we have taken prayer out of our churches! Is prayer a relic of modernism that we post-modernists have left behind? I resonate with Rafael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church (Sunday sermon, May 3, 2009): “Why is it that the single activity in the church most likely to draw the least number of people is the prayer meeting?”

Instead of living the incarnational life in society, churches in Jefferson County try to provide buffer zones of Christian culture. Jefferson County’s evangelical churches are tiny islands of red in a vast sea of blue. With their strident ultra-conservative political views how can believers in evangelical churches find common ground with the ultra-liberal political views of Port Townsend? As Sweet observes (p. 194), “The essence of the incarnational is that we dwell with culture until we can find our dwelling in that culture.” How can the church learn to be “all things to all people so that by all possible means [it] might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22)? Why can’t the church listen to the people around us and try to gain some empathy for why they hold the political views that they hold? Our churches need to so incarnate the gospel within our culture that it pierces the heart of the culture with the “crossbow of love” (p. 178). We need to impregnate our culture with the seed of the gospel.

Our churches desperately need to get beyond the ABC’s and BBB’s. When the church follows the world’s path to success the gospel is compromised. Rather than determining how much money we take in, we should ask how much money we give away. Rather than asking how many people are coming to our churches, we should be asking how many more hungry, homeless and hurting people we are touching. As we feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and visit the prisoners we manifest God’s love to the world. In churches that are struggling financially how sensitive is our rage against poverty, injustice and oppression? And let’s put prayer back into our churches.

There is so much in the 3 chapters that it would take me pages and pages just to share what spoke to me in each chapter. As I said before the book is separated into 3 chapters, 1 chapter for Missional, 1 chapter for Relational, and 1 chapter for Incarnational.

Here is a smattering of quotes from each chapter that stood out to me.

“Sometimes missional is not going anywhere but being missional where you are.”

“Which takes more bravery and initiative? Knock unannounced on the door of your next-door neighbor’s house? Or travel halfway around the world to build a house for a stranger as part of a church mission trip? The closer you get to home, the more ingrained the inertia and expected rules of behavior.”

“The mission of the church is to continue Christ’s ministy on earth.”

“The question is not a church-going community but a non-going church.”

“To build a non-going church, you make sure that the bond with Jesus is weak, that every decision is tepid and triple-checked, and dissuade people from taking risks.”

“The church can never be “on a mission” because that presupposes an “off” switch, and you can’t be “off mission” and still be a church. The church is mission.”

“The ultimate story of the Bible, the metanarrative that unlocks the whole story, is that God is on a mission, and we are summoned to participate with God in that mission.”

“We are more concerned with winning arguments and battles than winning friends and losing the self in truces of truth.”

“A Jesus disciple is a channeler of truth, beauty, and goodness, one who lives Christ’s life into the world, one whose being is a convection current of love with high conductivity.”

“We don’t serve a propositional, attractional, or colonial God. We serve a missional, relational, and incarnational God.”

“I find that my faith suffers nothing by leaving a thousand questions open, so long as I am convinced of two or three main lines.”

“Hold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.”

“It is extremely difficult for the church to think of church less as a place and more of a set of relationships, a network of networks that can be nourished in multiple spaces. The church is not a set of propositions, buildings, or beliefs: The church is a network of relationships…with God, with the Scriptures, with each other, with creation.”

“Our starting point is not telling people where they should be, but being with people where they already are ‘while going’ and catching up to the Spirit.”

“But the incarnation blows the distinction between the sacred and the secular out of the water.”

“It is wisely said that Christians who marry the spirit of the age will soon find themselves widowed, but it is equally wisely said that those reacting against this temptation might find themselves simply opposing the spirit of the age with the spirit of a former age.”

“When Paul addressed the crowd at Athens in Greece, he never quotes a scriptural text, but takes a page out of their own books and calls them to ‘repent’”

“You are the body of Christ: that is to say, in you and through you the work of the Incarnation must go forward. You are meant to incarnate in your lives the theme of adoration- you are to be taken, consecrated, broken and distributed, that you may be the means of grace and vehicles of Eternal Charity.”

I could probably keep going as they is much in the book that really connected with my reality of planting Veritas as “A Missional Community of Authentic Worshippers.” I would recommend getting this book if you have interest in the missional conversation.

On average, I’ve been mowing my lawn two times each week just to try and keep it somewhat under control. Any less and I’d run the risk of losing a kid or a dog in the “beauty” of nature.

A couple of weeks ago, while I was mowing, one of my neighbors asked me if I could help him maintain his lawn. His work schedule is crazy during the summer, and he honestly doesn’t have time to mow for a couple of weeks. The first time I mowed his lawn, my mower finally died. I knew it was coming. It’s been having troubles since the beginning of the year. I couldn’t get in touch with him, so I went to another neighbor’s house and asked if I could borrow his lawn mower. And the mowing saga started.

All in all, in the past few weeks, I’ve used four different lawnmowers, mowing two lawns twice a week. My allergies have reached new highs. My farmer’s tan is back in full swing. And I’ve made four new friends and still haven’t had to invest in a new mower.

And that’s what the second part of Len Sweet’s So Beautiful is about. Living in relationship with God and others. Here are a couple of quotes that are, well, beautiful.

“What I believe is absolutely unimportant. The only thing that matters is whom I belong to.”

“Well-being has everything to do with the quality of relationships.”

“Love is what makes life a success.”

“The point of Christianity is not a point but a person.”

We follow Jesus together. We don’t live by propositions or proofs, but in the messy dynamics of relationships. We have been sent to live this missional life wherever we go making new friends along the way.

I was talking with one of my friends recently, and he said he could go weeks without ever meeting someone new. It honestly broke my heart.

It is imperative that we constantly be looking for new friends on the journey, for the voice of God and the hands of Christ are most often revealed through others.

Len Sweet’s latest book, So Beautiful, wonderfully describes the necessary future of the church. I cannot wait for others in my church to read this as well, as Sweet wonderfully articulates the heart, vision, and passion of God’s design for the church. Moving away from thinking of “successful” church as quantifiable (attendance, budgets, cash), Sweet contends that the church–that God’s Kingdom–grows as we learn to live missionally, relationally, and incarnationally.

Because of the depth and scope of this text, I’ll take a couple of blogs to work through it. The 35 page introduction quickly catches the attention, before Sweet introduces the first movement–the missional life.

“If you are reading these words, you are likely the last generation to be familiar with the Christian story and for whom churches have cultural significance.”

“God has had it with cawki (church as we know it).”

“Your church exists to love the world and to commission you for a mission of expanding beauty, truth, and goodness upon the earth.”

We discover who we are in Christ as we go and follow him, making new friends. We have been sent with a mission for the sake of the world, which is completely different from thinking that we need to separate or shelter ourselves from the world. The missional lifestyle “loiters with love’s intent,” living in the fullness of the moment, confident that the Way leads home.

A local grocery store has a neighborhood café, with free wi-fi service. I spent the morning reading the first movement of So Beautiful, meeting new friends Debbie and Winston, and trying not to eavesdrop on too many conversations. I helped remember an artist’s name, solve the answer to a crossword clue, and share a few laughs. This is what happens as we grow into our missional calling, we lean into the Father’s “Go” and trust that we’ll be told what we must do on a need to know basis.

The missional life is a life characterized by Mother Teresa’s words, “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”

The first step is to go. Going is faith in action. Going develops calluses on our beautiful feet, making it easier to take that first step the next time.

I haven’t finished reading Leonard Sweet’s new book So Beautiful but, as soon as I dove into it I new my reviews would have to span over a couple of blog entries.

So Beautiful is a challenge to the church to realize their DNA. “Just as DNA’s three strands make life possible, three other elements work in harmony to make life not just pretty, but beautiful. And it’s in the church where we find the greatest expression, the ultimate fulfillment, of these three components to a beautiful life”.

The three components Leonard is taking about are easily remembered as M.R.I. (M=Missional, R-Relational, I=Incarnational). These are in contrast to the more common A.P.C. model of church (A=Attractional, P=Propositional, C=Colonial). One might do well to understand that while APC is a model, MRI is an already existing unrealized way of being.

In unpacking the Missional strand of our undiscovered DNA strand it’s said that “Being missional is not something you do to get something done, like grow a church or sign the suceed-creed. Missional is who you are, because it is who God is.” Therefore since we are all created in the image of God and God is missional we are indeed missional. We must simply unlock these aspects of our already existing DNA.

This is just a quick look at a portion of So Beautiful. I can’t wait to see where the rest of this journey takes me.
POSTED BY MICAH ANDREW HASTY AT 7:48 PM
LABELS: BOOK REVIEW, DNA, FIRST IMPRESSIONS, LEONARD SWEET, MISSIONAL, MRI, RELATIONAL, SO BEAUTIFUL

In the book Sweet talks about two types of Church, the APC Church (Attractional, Propositional, and Colonial) and the MRI Church (Missional, Relational, Incarnational). The book is laid out in 5 chapters. The first is the Introduction, followed by one chapter for each part of the MRI, and the epilogue. Just like every Sweet book I have ever read So Beautiful is amazingly researched (you should see the footnotes at the back of the book..I think they go on for 45 pages.) He also loves acrostics….MRI, APC, EPIC.

There is so much in the introduction but here are a few quotes that stand out to me:

“The attractional church thinks that if they build it, and build it hip and cool, people will come.”

“The church that is missional had better know how to attract people to Christ.”

“APC Creates A- Members, P- Believers, C- Consumers. MRI creates M-Missionaries, R-Disciples, I- World Changers.”

“Jesus gave us ‘the form of a religion without religion’ or alternatively, an ‘irreligious religion’ or an ‘antireligion’ Jesus didn’t do establishment church.”

“Christianity minus Christ equals religion”

“These are the best of times to be the church. These are the worst of times to be a church”- Reggie McNeal

“We become imago Dei by participating in the Missio Dei”

“There is no spiritual life. There is only life. One life where the spiritual is not separate but the whole.”

“Missional is not a program arm of the church or a line item in the budget. It is living a life born in the very being of God.”

“You can’t program MRI into the church anymore than you can program missional or program relational or program incarnational. The words missional, relational, and incarnational are not tag phrases in the slanguage of faith but the operatic sweep of the gospel in brevity, beauty, and threeness.”

I’ll share more from the introduction and the chapters over the next few days. It’s a good book so far and one that I would recommend to anyone.