(11 votes, average: 4.27 out of 5)
Loading ...Nudge by Leonard Sweet
What does Charles Sanders Pierce and Ferdinand de Saussure have to do with Christian evangelism. Leonard Sweet might give the short answer – “Everything.” Reviews are often given over to hyperbole. Sometimes they create unmet expectations. I will go out on a limb here and suggest Len Sweet’s new book on “evangelism” may be his most important work in his very prolific writing career.
Nudge is in one sense “classic Sweet.” Thorough and amply illustrated. In another sense, it may be one of his boldest moves. Appropriating an accessible understanding of “semiotics” – the art and science of sign-reading – Sweet contends we need to learn “Nudge evangelism.”
Combining the Celtic Fives with human sensory experience, Sweet points to evangelism beyond the evanga-script. Nudge evangelism moves from tract to following the tracks of the Spirit. Rather than assuming we “bring Jesus to anyone” Sweet points to our need to follow Jesus who has “gone ahead of us.”
Nudge may well rescue the idea of Christian evangelism for many.
About the Author
Currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew University, Madison, NJ and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University, Portland, Oregon, Len has been Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Theological School at Drew University for five years, Previous to Drew Len served for eleven years as President and Professor of Church History at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio. Prior to 1985, Len was Provost of Colgate Rochester/Bexley Hall/Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York. Involved in leadership positions in the United Methodist Church, Len has been chosen to speak at various Jurisdictional and General Conferences as well as the 1996 World Methodist Congress in Rio de Janeiro. He also serves as a consultant to many of America’s denominational leaders and agencies. He is a member of the West Virginia Annual Conference.
Author of more than two hundred articles, over twelve hundred published sermons, and dozens of books, Len is the primary contributor (along with his wife Karen Elizabeth Rennie) to the web-based preaching resource, sermons.com. For nine years he and his wife wrote Homiletics, which became under their watch the premier preaching resource in North America. In 2005 Len introduced the first open-source preaching resource on the Web, wikiletics.com.
Len has served a term on the council of the American Society of Church History, was an associate editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion for ten years, and is a member of numerous professional groups. An honors and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Richmond, he earned his Master of Divinity degree from Colgate Rochester Divinity School and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. The recent recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond (Virginia), Baker University (Kansas), Otterbein College (Ohio), Coe College (Iowa), and Lebanon Valley College (Pennsylvania), Len has held distinguished lectureships at various colleges, universities and seminaries, and has presented academic papers before major professional societies. He is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences, state conventions, pastors’ schools, retreats.
Len is increasingly being asked to lecture around the world, and has spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, England, Wales, South Africa, South Korea, Iceland, Scotland, and most recently, China, Indonesia, and Latvia.
When you post your review, help the wider community by adding the hashtag: #vb-nudge
wdphillips
Len Sweet, in his classic, imagery-intensive writing style provides the church the best understanding of evangelism as discipleship I have ever read. Indeed, Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There may be the most important book on evangelism you will ever read. Without question.
I’ve read a lot of Len’s books; some I loved, some I liked, and there may be one or two I didn’t care for. His new book, however, may just be the most important book he has written to date.
Nudge is a mixture of evangelism and semiotics. What is semiotics? “Semiotics is the art of making connections, linking disparate dots, seeing the relationships between apparently trifling matters, and turning them into metonymic moments.”
The Greek word for signs is semeia (from which we get semiotics). The world is ruled by signs. And we all do semiotics, whether we know it or not. Waiting on tables is semiotics, with every interaction an exchange of visual and verbal markers. For instance, the crumpled up napkin in the plate? A sign that we are finished with our meal.
Semiotics is a Jesus word. In fact, Jesus told us to learn and do semiotics. He said in Matthew 16:1-4:
Some Pharisees and Sadducees were on him again, pressing him to prove himself to them. He told them, “You have a saying that goes, ‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning.’ You find it easy enough to forecast the weather—why can’t you read the signs of the times? An evil and wanton generation is always wanting signs and wonders. The only sign you’ll get is the Jonah sign.” Then he turned on his heel and walked away.
We are directed to learn to read the signs of the times and the handwriting on the wall. God’s hand is still writing on walls today and evangelists are people with red-sky-at-morning sensitivities.
The “signs of the times,” Sweet says, are “the signs of the Spirit’s activity in the world. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because it could not read the signs: ‘You did not recognize the time of your visitation.’” Nudgers are those who can connect signs and their significance.
Nudge is the “invitation to move beyond church-centric Christianity to a holistic, omnipresent theology of the signified reign of God.” If God can speak through a burning bush, through plagues of locust, through Balaam’s ass, through Babylon, through blood on doorposts, through Peter, through Judas, through Pilate’s jesting sign hung over the head of our Lord, and through the cross itself, then God can and will speak through art deco architecture, abstract expressionism, classic literature like Virgil’s Aeneid, mass media, disease, Disney, hunger, Twitter, etc. The question is never, “Is God using this?” Rather, the question is, “What is my/our invitation upon hearing?”
The prophets were semioticians. In fact, the prophets were often signs themselves as God used them to demonstrate his love (Hosea marrying Gomer), his displeasure, and his judgment. They also interpreted God’s activity through the signs (Daniel’s handwriting on the wall).
Nudge is not an attempt to build a theology of semiotics. It is to remind Christians that Christianity is a symbol system; a semiotic network of stories and images, rituals and concepts, embodiments and enactments. The key to any symbol system is the semiotic ability to read signs.
By nudging, evangelists are constantly scanning the environment (religious, cultural, economic) for evidences of divine activity. Nudge is helping other people see the activity of God in their own life, manifesting Christ in a moment of mutual knowing. Nudging is the natural consequence of being with someone in a moment and wishing them to join you in recognizing a God-moment. Sometimes that recognition results in “bringing in the sheaves.” But nudging is primarily about planting seeds.
Evangelists nudge the Jesus in people to sit up and take notice. Everyone is created in the image of God, and in nudging, we help people see the divine activity of God in their life.
Aug 14th, 2010
dckludt
Leonard Sweet’s new book Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There operates on a few basic assumptions.
* Evangelism is for everyone (and not just a few, gifted extroverts).
* Evangelism should be fun and life-giving (not ‘scary’ or a turn-off).
* Evangelism is about explaining what is happening in the here and now (and not just telling what will happen in the future).
* Evangelism should not be a one time event in anyone’s life (but should be a continuous process, for those who do not follow Jesus and those who do).
The book is broken in two parts. The first deals with theological semiotics – signs that God is alive and active in the world. In this section, Sweet lays the foundation for his understanding of evangelism – the above assumptions, along with a host of other ideas that encourage the reader to “pay attention” to what is happening in the world on a spiritual/theological plain. The second part contains five chapters, one for each of the five senses outlining how a “nudger” (Sweet’s term for an evangelist) might recognize the many ways in which one can hear, taste, see, touch, and breath/smell Jesus in the world.
Sweet’s approach in Nudge is more about information/idea overload than a careful and precise structured argument. This is not a bad thing, in my opinion, though it may frustrate some readers who are looking to start at Point A and be taken to Point B. Instead, Nudge (not unlike Sweet’s recent co-written Jesus Manifesto), offers a flood of ideas, one more quotable than the next (and some more odd and bizarre than others!), all pointing to the basic premise that evangelism is part of what it means to be alive in Christ. Followers of Jesus should ‘wake up’ and recognize the signs around us that point to God’s activity in the world and encourage others to sense the presence of the divine in all areas of life.
On a personal level, I appreciated this broad and accessible approach to evangelism. While Sweet does not shy away from talking about the connection between evangelism and salvation, he provides a much needed response to the somewhat myopic understanding of evangelism as a one-time, one-way, “close the deal” kind of activity involving signs, tracts, and street corners. Given the church’s place in an increasingly post-Christian context, the sorts of ideas and insights collected together in Nudge serve as a great resource for understanding, teaching, and practicing evangelism.
Sep 13th, 2010
Michelle Van Loon
Leonard Sweet’s newest release, Nudge: Awakening Each Other To The God Who’s Already There (David C. Cook, 2010) will make you fall in love with evangelism again. Or more likely, for the first time.
Many of us who follow Jesus have been exposed to evangelism as hard-sell, complete with tips and techniques. Or it’s a scary guilt trip, as in “I should do this”, or its corollary, “You’re going to hell”. Or we lean into the hopeful, beige-tinted “I hope they ask why I’m different”.
Leonard Sweet wants us to know that evangelism is so much more than a single-dimensional program, a guilt trip or a wish. The title Nudge sounds like it might shrink evangelism to little more than a tiny shove in the right direction, but Sweet’s book is a celebration of evangelism in ways that most of us have never explored. He believes we’re to become students of the world around us – the world God in which God placed us – and learn to “read” the signs and symbols around us in order to speak to those around us. He translates the work of Umberto Eco (and others) in the study of semiotics into the language of the kingdom of God in an accessible, winsome way:
“Nudge evangelism is the planting of seeds. With a motivation of love, nudges meet people in their context and nourish their souls in some way. As in Jesus’ parable of the seeds, planting frees us to be extravagant in love, yet leaves the results for God to germinate and grow. Nudging is an open-ended enterprise God may undertake directly. God may use others, and time and circumstance to grow. Or God may even employ a continuing involvement from us. The main thing is that nudgers are free to love without consequences. Nudgers are free to invest in the lives of others through the generosity of life as a conduit of love from God…Nudge is a a call to evangelize life and to face death so others may live.”
The first section of the book explores what it means to pay attention in order to both witness and to bear witness. The remainder of the book invites us to realize how God moves and speaks through each one of our senses. Sweet’s playful, encylopedic presentation is meant to both spark our imaginations and provoke each one of us to action in our own context through word and silence, touch and taste, scent and sound.
Nudge is great news about the Good News. This is a rich, lovely, inspiring read – and one that connected me more fully to my own humanity, to the One who made me, and to the world he loves. Highly recommended.
Sep 15th, 2010
mattappling
I’ve always got a stack of books on my desk waiting to be read, and lately Leonard Sweet’s new book, Nudge has been at the top of the stack.
Like many Christians, I find evangelism to be a subject surrounded by a ton of anxiety. Many of us don’t know how to share Jesus with others, we’re scared to death to do it anyway, and we just aren’t satisfied with the few ways we’ve been told evangelism works. To many, the word “evangelism” is absolutely equated with door to door salesman tactics, a method most people cannot and will not perform. Thus, people feel guilty for not sharing Jesus (or feeling like they don’t share him enough), and attempt to alleviate their guilt by sharing Jesus through more subtle means, such as wearing t-shirts and bumper stickers.
Sweet feels your pain, with a much more subtle and human approach to evangelism, which is why I presume the title is “Nudge,” and not “Shove,” “Yell,” “Protest,” or “Make Everyone at the Party Really Uncomfortable.” Sweet talks about how God can actually be detected with our five senses, if we are just tuned in. The book is divided into chapters about seeing, tasting, hearing, touching and breathing Jesus. It’s also about how God is very active in our world, and how evangelism is simply “awakening each other to a God who’s already there.” The whole package is couched in stories and almost poetic prose that makes the reader feel excited to share Jesus again.
If you’re sick of feeling guilty for not doing evangelism because evangelism makes you sick, or if you need to be reawakened to God’s presence yourself, this is a great book.
Sep 16th, 2010
cfalvo
I’m a fan of Leonard Sweet. I’ve heard him speak before. In fact, the church I worship at is using his keynote from our synod’s 2009 assembly as a starting point for a conversation on mission.I’ve read a few of his books. I liked Aquachurch 2.0 and I loved Jesus Manifesto with Frank Viola. But for some reason, I had a really hard time getting into Nudge. I was reading the words on the page, but nothing really jumped out at me or stuck with me.
According to Sweet, there is a disconnect between evangelism and discipleship, thus the need for Nudge. In Nudge, “evangelism is discipleship.” (21) Nudge evangelism is paying attention to God and reading the signs. It is about meeting people where they are, hearing their story, planting the seed, and watching what God does with that seed.
The book is broken down into two section. In the first part, Sweet lays the ground work; discussing semiotics and reading signs and how this relates to nudge evangelism. In the second part, Sweet discusses the semiotic 5 (Pause, Presence, Picture, Ponder, Promise) in more depth, spending a chapter on each one.
As I read through the first part, I felt overwhelmed at times seeing all the “Nudgers do…” and “Nudgers do…” There’s no way I can possible remember all of what nudgers do. I felt that there was too much information at once. I was suffering from sensory overload.
Deep down, I feel that this book is needed in the church today. For that reason, I plan to revisit this book in the future.
Disclaimer:
I received this book free from theOOZE.com as a part of the Viral Bloggers program. Providing me a free copy in no way guarantees a favorable review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
Sep 18th, 2010
Dan
Until a year ago I had never heard of Leonard Sweet. No, I don’t live under a rock, just a small town in Iowa. The first book I read by this author was So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church. It opened my eyes not only to the subject, but a writer’s voice that intrigued me.
Odd story: I was on vacation and in a book store looking desperately for something to read (My family was waiting patiently for me to find something). I was looking at So Beautiful (the book), and at exactly the same time So Beautiful by Manafest (the song) was playing in the background. I heard a hillbilly-like voice in my head say,”Here’s your sign” (that part didn’t happen). Now normally, I am skeptical about “signs”, but I bought the book and quickly fell for this author’s writing style. Almost poetic and seemingly random at times, but packed with jaw dropping thoughts and a deep love of his first love.
Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s There continues that Sweet tradition. I can judge a book by how often I put it down. The ones I read straight through with nary a pause means the book was good, but shallow. Usually, the good and shallow ones rarely leave an impression or require further thought. Nudge on the other hand has been a bugger to get through (for me), but only because I love to savor the flavor. I enjoy the brain strain. Don’t get me wrong here though this is not an intellectual’s dry tome. It is more like a feast served in courses.
I could give away parts of the book, but others do so much better than me. Therefore, I can just say that it is a book on evangelism. However, like no other book on the subject, instead of “bringing people to Jesus”, it urges us to join Jesus in what he is already doing (I got that off the back cover… see other people can say it better). I enjoyed reading this book and look forward to more Sweet treats in the future.
Sep 19th, 2010
gdeitz
I am currently working my way through the book Nudge by Leonard Sweet. Overall, I am enjoying the book. It is a book that addresses evangelism from the perspective that I have come to believe is more in line with the New Testament than what I have found in the west. The book focuses not on going to the nations and being centered on finding the lost and converting them, but it desires for believers to find Jesus in everyone. Overall I would recommend this book to a believer, but the manner in which a few topics are written, it’s target audience would appear to be somewhat on the intellectual or mature side.
For me this is the only deterrent from recommending this book emphatically. I found that at times, it addressed the ideas behind evangelism beautifully, but at other times, the topic would be lost in it its own cerebral descriptions. If someone is apprehensive or looking to find out what true evangelism looks like, to have to wade through heavy concepts and ideas that lack exposition, it would cause one to put the book down. As I have read the book, I have found myself engrossed and encouraged by the words on the page, only to find that moment broken by having to google a term or look it up in reference materials.
That though is a minor fault, when I look at all that book has to offer the believer looking to break away from the systems and ideologies that exist to describe how to save the lost. At many instances, I found that this book was fantastic because it reminds the believer, that they must be evanagelizing themselves. That is to say they must be looking for Jesus and not looking at people as projects. Evangelism is something that takes place daily in every interaction that a believer has. They are sharing Christ by how they live their lives.
For me, while this book has a few minor shortcomings, this is the best book on evangelism that I have read. I would recommend this to any individual, but would really encourage groups to pick it up and read it together. This book will not simply help in evangelism to the world at large, but to each other within our own faith communities.
Sep 20th, 2010
CindyW
just finished: Nudge by Leonard Sweet
I received a review copy of Nudge by Leonard Sweet from The Ooze at the busy beginning of this fall term and have been working since then to get through it. I finally finished this weekend, thanks to some travel reading time.
The central contention of Nudge is beautifully compelling: evangelism (the sharing of Good News) isn’t about browbeating, convincing, arguing, or making something happen; it’s about opening ourselves to the wonders of God’s presence in the world and nudging others into a similar noticing: “The purpose of a nudge is to manifest Christ in a moment of mutual knowing” (29).
Sweet approaches this project of a redefined evangelism through a brief fore into the field of semiotics, and he relies heavily not only on the central metaphor of the nudge but also on the attitude and practice of attention. This emphasis on attention and semiotics expresses itself in the book’s second half in a series of chapters on the five senses.
Needless to say, the book appeals to me on a variety of levels: on this blog, I practice a similar awareness of the five senses each Friday; I am writing a dissertation that similarly takes “attention” as one of its central concepts. Even more, I am encouraged by the very fact of a seminary Professor of Evangelism is describing evangelism in this way, not as rational argumentation about facts, but as relational sharing in the wonder of the Spirit’s presence and activity in the world: “What counts in evangelism is not cognition, but recognition. Can we identify the face of Christ when he shows it to us? What is our receptiveness to the Spirit, who appears in others and in each other?” (69). It seems to me that in our contemporary culture, belief in God–and in the profound mystery of the Incarnation–is never a matter of straightforward intellectual assent; it is a matter of interpretation (or as philosopher Paul Ricoeur would say, hermeneutics): through what rubric do we interpret our experience of the world? Sweet’s version of evangelism in this book, I think, is all about sharing an interpretive paradigm of a certain kind of Christian faith (a sacramental paradigm?), and all the depth and joy it offers.
Despite my glowing praise, I must say that as a whole, I think Nudge undermines its central claims. Sweet’s energy is at points enlivening (and enviable), but despite frequent recourse to numbered subheadings, the book’s argumentation is often hard to follow because it jumps so frequently from topic to topic. The text is full of metaphors, aphorisms, and acronyms, some of which work beautifully but the bulk of which are just a little distracting. The type of attention performed by this book is a surfacey, jumpy, almost schizoid flitting from one thing to the next, a caricature of pomo bricolage.
I understand that this breadth of attention–from classical theology to contemporary poetry to cutting-edge science to Latin etymology to pop-culture references–makes a very strong point about the whole-world scope of the Spirit’s activity, if we’re looking. But the result is not only a participation in the lack of focus Sweet himself seeks to counter in chapter two-and-a-half, “Watch, Witness, and Bear Witness,” it is also a tendency to oversimplify, misinterpret, and even misrepresent. Thus, Sweet’s explanation of semiotics seems (to a student and teacher of literary theory) rather thin. His description of Simone Weil as a “factory laborer-turned-philosopher” (104) inaccurately spins the truth for rhetorical purposes about everdayness (Weil was a teacher who chose for political reasons to work in a factory for a while). A number of repetitions and awkward sentences in the book give the sense that it was composed in a rush (not surprising: the life of a professor / writer / public speaker can be a frantic one). My advice to Professor Sweet, if I may quote him: “Slow down. Pay attention.”
Nudge is certainly worth a quick read, and it participates in a key conversation about the contemporary need for a spiritual discipline of attention. (For a more sustained treatment of this topic, I’d recommend Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, particularly the essays in its second half.) I hope this book will continue to challenge old models of proselytizing that fail to consider what’s good about the Good News and a Protestant propensity to underacknowledge signs of God’s goodness in the world.
If you decide to buy it, please go indie!
Sep 28th, 2010
mickmurray
Yesterday I started reading Leonard Sweet’s Nudge. Not to often am I captured by the preface, but Sweet hits a topic that I have given my thoughts to lately. Recently, much dialogue has consisted of how Crossroads is in a season of discipleship rather than evangelism. Together, we are on a journey learning how to be better followers of Jesus.
As a church-planter, I can sometimes be so focused on trying to discover and utilize new ways to share the message of Jesus. Though discipleship is always important and a part of the process, it sometimes does not get the same emphasis as evangelism.
In Nudge, Sweet discusses how “evangelism is discipleship.” I wanted to share a paragraph from the preface that really caught my attention, and is now completely highlighted in my copy of this book.
“Nudge evangelism is the planting of seeds. With a motivation of love, nudgers meet people in their context and nourish their souls in the same way. As in Jesus’ parable of the seeds, planting frees us to be extravagant in love, yet leaves the results for God to germinate and grow. Nudging is an open-ended enterprise God may undertake directly. God may use others, and time, and circumstances to grow. Or God may employ a continuing involvement from us. The main thing is that nudgers are free to love without consequences. Nudgers are free to invest in the lives of others through the generosity of life as a conduit of love from God.” (Sweet, 23)
Though I have just barely scratched the surface, I look forward to the journey that Leonard Sweet is about to take me on.
Oct 1st, 2010
for “Nudge by Leonard Sweet”
You must be logged in as a VIRAL BLOGGER to post a review.