A few weeks back I recieved So Beautiful by Leonard Sweet. I’m not sure what you think of Sweet’s work, but I happen to be a fan. So many of the books I read these days seem to be a rehashing of the latest greatest common wisdom of the day, but I never get that feeling when I’m reading Sweet’s material. Instead, you find a person passionately thinking through the issues within the church, sometimes pushing boundaries, but never boring. So Beautiful carries on this same tradition, but doesn’t rehash even Sweet’s own work.
The title refers to the description of the discovery of DNA and loosely refers to the three strands Sweet sees as essential to the Church: Missional, Relational, and Incarnational. If you’re expecting an extended reflection on the DNA metaphor, that’s not what you’re really going to get. However, if you’re interested in a tour of Sweet’s latest thinking on the Church, you’re in for a treat. In fact, the word that kept popping into my mind as I read this was, “conversational.” It was almost as if I was just listening to Sweet in a conversation, popcorning ideas from one moment to the next.
You can find a sample chapter here, if you’d like to explore the book a bit for yourself, or just follow Sweet on Twitter here (he’s consistently one of the better “tweeters” out there, by the way).
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