Leonard Sweet - So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church

What people are saying about

P RAISE FOR

Leonard Sweet combines theory and practice in life-changing ways. He not only makes me think, he spurs me to live. This book will not only help you cross the finish line strong, it will also help you bring others with you.

Mark Batterson , lead pastor at National Community Church
and author of In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day

In this book, Len Sweet has combined his distinctive form of theologizing with really wise, practical insight to concoct a unique typology of sanctifying relationships. Here is a book that will help us move toward a genuinely biblical form of holiness in a relationally unholy culture. One of a kind!

Alan Hirsch , author of The Forgotten Ways and
coauthor of The Shaping of Things to Come

P RAISE FOR T HE G OSPEL A CCORDING TO S TARBUCKS

Cultural barista Leonard Sweet serves up a triple venti cup of relevant insights to wake up decaffeinated Christians.

Ben Young , pastor and author of Why Mikes Not a Christian

Reading this book is a caffeine jolt. Get ready to be accelerated into the future, with Jesus a central part of the experience.

Dan Kimball , pastor and author of The Emerging
Church and They Like Jesus but Not the Church

I have a massive passion for passion. Its my favorite spiritual topic. And I have a nominal coffee obsession, Starbucks being my ritual more often than not. So what a treat to read Leonard Sweets extra-hot weaving together of the twoall in the hope that each of us will drink in the meaningful and passion-filled life we were designed for.

Mark Oestreicher , president of Youth Specialties

Sweets bottom line? Christianity must move beyond rational, logical apologetics, and instead find ways of showing people that it can offer symbols and meaningful engagement. This whimsical and insightful book offers a fresh approach to a topic of perennial interest.

Publishers Weekly

P RAISE FOR T HE T HREE H ARDEST W ORDS IN THE W ORLD TO G ET R IGHT

Leonard Sweet gets us to examine what it takes to live out love in this world, and he does it beautifully.

Tony Campolo , coauthor of Adventures in Missing the Point
and professor of sociology at Eastern University

Len Sweet has, in his inimitable style, tackled the three easiest-hardest words in the English language, wrestled them to the ground, hugged them, and then let them fly again. His imagination takes us on a journey, his mind is an encyclopedia of wonderful references, and his language is captivating.

Tony Jones , national coordinator of Emergent
US and author of The Sacred Way

Sweets work is thought-provoking, insightful, and a must-read for any postmodern thinker.

Margaret Feinberg , author of Twentysomething and
What the Heck Am I Going to Do with My Life?

Leonard Sweets book is a tremendous help in guiding us not only to say the words I love you with greater understanding of what they really mean, but also to live them with greater integrity and intention.

Ruth Haley Barton , cofounder of the Transforming
Center and author of Sacred Rhythms

P RAISE FOR S OUL T SUNAMI

Although Sweet believes that many churches are behind the times, he also notes that the postmodern world offers them new opportunities for mission. In places, these suggestions do little more than urge churches to use the best the culture has to offer. Sweet goes beyond such commonplaces and also speaks about the spiritual resources that churches possess. Sweets insistence that postmoderns need to be reminded of the Christian teaching on original sin and human fragility and his sense of the need for spiritual values, such as humility, to counterbalance consumerism are cases in point.

Publishers Weekly

P RAISE FOR S OUL S ALSA

As American culture attempts to find its footing during the transition into postmodernism, Leonard Sweet attests that Christians must do the same thing. By the end of the book, the Christian reader will want to strive to make worship a way of life, the outworking of grace a visible commodity, and his or her allegiance to Christ the revolutionary factor that causes the soul to dance.

Jill Heatherly for Amazon.com

This provocative exhortation to a more vibrant Christian life fairly sings with relevance.

Publishers Weekly

SO BEAUTIFUL

SO BEAUTIFUL
Published by David C. Cook
4050 Lee Vance View
Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

David C. Cook Distribution Canada
55 Woodslee Avenue, Paris, Ontario, Canada N3L 3E5

David C. Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications
Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

David C. Cook and the graphic circle C logo
are registered trademarks of Cook Communications Ministries.

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,
no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form
without written permission from the publisher.

The Web site addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These Web sites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of David C. Cook, nor do we vouch for their content.

See Bible-resource credits on page 297.

LCCN 2009900142
ISBN 978-1-4347-9979-1
eISBN 978-1-4347-0087-2

2009 Leonard Sweet
Published in association with the literary agency of
Mark Sweeney & Associates, Bonita Springs, Florida 34135

The Team: John Blase, Amy Kiechlin, Jack Campbell, and Karen Athen
Cover Design/Illustration: JWH Graphic Arts, James Hall

First Edition 2009

For Alan Hirsch
friend, colleague, and Sensei of the Spirit

Discover More Online

Check out interactive questions and insights, the books trailer video, and join the ongoing conversation on the So Beautiful Facebook page (search for So Beautiful by Leonard Sweet with quotation marks) and at www.DavidCCook.com/SoBeautiful.

This book is based on a haunting insight from an unknown, lost writer named Franois Aussermain:

Nothing is ever lost; things only become irretrievable. What is lost, then, is the method of their retrieval and what we discover is not the thing itself, but the overgrown path, the secret staircase, the ancient sewer.

If amnesia is the act of forgetting, anamnesia is the act of unforgetting, or remembering.

In the Eucharist, the technical theological jargon goes like this: In the Western church, after every epiklesis (invocation of the Spirit) there is an anamnesis (remembering the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ). Here it is in English: After every original movement of the Spirit, there needs to be a re-membering of the origins from which we came.

This book is an exercise in anamnesia, or re-membering, after years of talking and writing about epiklesia , or whats going on out there?

In the course of this books retrieval of memory, many people have helped me find the overgrown path, the secret staircase, the ancient sewer. Mike Oliver and Chris Eriksen, my graduate assistants at Drew, have thrashed through many thorny thickets in pursuit of secret staircases. My research assistant Betty OBrien has waded through more ancient sewers than she cares to remember, though she loves to taunt me with their stories and smells. But without her I would not have been able to open some old springs that had become dammed and neglected. For some reason my former doctoral student Ray Leach took a special interest in this book and kept pushing me down paths I hadnt seen. Im grateful for your interest and initiatives, Ray. Paul Newhall, of the United Methodist Ministries Credit Union, helped me to understand more of what an MRI entails from a patients perspective. And Professor Jeff Keuss, of Seattle Pacific University, helped me distinguish between some live wires and dead wood.