Leonard Sweet - Viral: How Social Networking Is Poised to Ignite Revival

Praise for
Viral

There are plenty of books on technology by writers who dont understand Christianity. And there are plenty of books on Christianity by people who are lost in the world of technology. The genius of Leonard Sweet is that he navigates both worlds, and his insight into living as a believer in todays media-driven culture is not just helpful, its critical. Viral connects the dots between social media and our witness to the world.

P HIL C OOKE , P H D, filmmaker, media consultant, and author of Jolt! Get the Jump on a World Thats Constantly Changing

Viral is culturally astute, Christ centered, gospel focused, kingdom oriented. Tweet that! Leonard Sweet captures the zeitgeist of our age in a biblically subversive way that redeems our technoculture for Christ. He explores the promise and the peril of our brave new world of electronic connectivity, while showing Christians how to apply the gospel at the crossroads of modernity and postmodernity, individualism and community, rational and relational faith. If you are skeptical of TGIF (Twitter, Google, iPhone, Facebook) or want to learn more, you must read this book.

B RIAN G ODAWA , screenwriter of To End All Wars and author of Hollywood Worldviews, Word Pictures, and Noah Primeval

Leonard Sweet has always been Patient Zero for Spiritually Transmitted Dis-ease, and Viral transmits the pathogen of the Paraclete better than any other work I know. Sweet connects the incarnation to the web, taking readers beyond the vapid and introducing us to the layers of meaning behind the pixels on the screen.

D AVID M C D ONALD , author of The Undwellable City

In Viral, Leonard Sweet paints a fascinating picture of todays highly creative TGIF culture, while inviting the Gutenberg Generation into a new experience of Jesuss timeless campfire story. The Googler Generations passion for spreading the divine viral epidemic through their passion for social media and narratives, as well as their longing for connectivity and participation, provides fascinating challenges for all followers of Jesus. Christians need to become part of Gods viral revival. Sweet shows us how.

S TEPHAN J OUBERT , extraordinary professor in New Testament studies, University of Pretoria, South Africa; extraordinary professor of contemporary ecclesiology, University of the Free State, South Africa; research fellow at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; and editor of Ekerk / Echurch

The church has never been more equipped to reach people with the gospel. With that opportunity comes a tremendous responsibility to communicate the unchanging message of the gospel in an ever-changing, hyper-connected culture. Leonard Sweet shares how Christ-followers can spread this life-changing message and bring about a revival unlike any we have seen before. He provides practical ideas and pastoral insight into leveraging the exponential opportunities available to share our faith through social media.

T IM S CHRAEDER , co-director of the Center for Church Communication and editor of Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communication

V IRAL
P UBLISHED BY W ATER B ROOK P RESS
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations marked ( DRB ) are taken from the Douay-Rheims Bible. Scripture quotations marked ( ESV ) are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( JB ) are taken from the Jerusalem Bible, 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. and Doubleday & Company Inc. Scripture quotations marked ( KJV ) are taken from the King James Version. Scripture quotations marked ( MSG ) are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( NKJV ) are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( NRSV ) are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Italics in Scripture quotations reflect the authors added emphasis.

eISBN: 978-0-307-45916-9

Copyright 2012 by Leonard I. Sweet

Grateful acknowledgment is made for the use of The Mysting, copyright 2012, by Timothy Orton; A Prayer for When We Limit God, copyright 2012, by Craig Oldenburg; and the translation of Ephesians 2:10, copyright 2012, by Jerrell Jobe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

W ATER B ROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sweet, Leonard I.
Viral : how social networking is poised to ignite revival / Leonard Sweet. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Online social networksReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.
BR99.74.S94 2012
269.202856754dc23

2011039572

v3.1

To Aaron Linne,
who called me out and set me on the TGIF path.