Transforming Church

Jameson: Are we in a pre-Christian or post-Christian society?

Sweet: I like both. But we need the edge of "post-Christian." Pre-Christian means people don't know what Christianity is. Post-Christian says they've tried it and don't like it, that
Christianity to them is a failed religion.

Jameson: What's the difference in world view today?

Sweet: When my grandfather talked about the war years, it's something that happened to them, to our soldiers, to our country, to our people. When I talk about the assassinations of MLK, JFK, RFK, I talk about it in a whole different way. We ask each other, "Where were you?" We're living in a world where anything that happens, happens to me.

We're living in a mediated world. We're all connected in ways we don't even understand.

Jameson: Is there a limit to how much technology can improve lives?

Sweet: If I see a wooly mammoth and I'm hungry and all I have is a stick and stone, and you offer me a bow and arrow, that's a great improvement. If I've got a wooly mammoth and I'm hungry and you give me a gun, I'm really grateful and it's a big improvement. If I've got a wooly mammoth and I'm hungry and you give me an Uzi, I'm really grateful and it's an improvement. They're getting bigger bangs and things are getting better and better.

But there comes a time when you get to an issue of scale, and you enter a whole different world. If I've got a wooly mammoth and I'm hungry and I have an Uzi and you offer me an atom bomb, is the bigger bang an improvement?

Jameson: Are we overvaluing technology?

Sweet: Up to now technology has been a factor and a force. Technology is now a part of the warp and woof of everything, not a separate category. You can't escape or evade technology in anything. It is now a part of who we are. Technology is a reinvention of us as human.

Jameson: You've been writing twenty plus years. What do you feel best about?

Sweet: I feel best about the EPIC epistemology, where I wrote that the brain of this emerging culture was wired in an EPIC way. Experiential; Participatory; Image rich; and Connective. I was right about the shift toward EPIC, and I should have hit it more and harder. Anything that is working is getting EPIC. SoulTsunami was way ahead of its time. When I came out with it, my publisher said no one will know what it is. I said, "They will."

Jameson: Tell me about consumerism versus creating EPIC experiences in worship.

Sweet: Our culture collected things; this culture collects experiences. You can be as consumeristic about experiences as you can about things. That's why there is the phrase, "Been there, done that, and worn the T-shirt." The key to worship is that it has to be an experience--not an experience of experience--but an experience of God. And this is huge. An experience of God points people to the God of that experience. If you come away from worship and say, "Was that a great experience or what?" that's Baalism. If you come away saying, "Do we have a great God or what?" that's Christianity.

The point is not your experience of God, but God's experience of you. Is God taking pleasure in your life? And are you going to hear one day the best words you can hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant"?

Jameson: Is modern worship music helpful in experiencing God?

Sweet: My concern with praise music is not that it has the verbal grammar of a first grader. To me this music is an audio icon, a chant. Christians need to rediscover mantras. My problem is with the idea that we need to invoke God to come, to stir up the Spirit. That's not Christianity, that's Baalism. God is already present.

My second issue is this notion that what God wants from us more than anything else is our adoration and praise. Does God have this huge ego problem that God needs to be told he's worthy? You think he needs to be told that? That he needs our judgment? This is a time to bring out the prophets. God says to the old prophets, "I hate your solemn assemblies."

Today he would say, "I hate your happy clappy assemblies. I've got something bigger than you all putting your hands up and praising me. Get out there and get some work done."

Jameson: How do we communicate in the new way?

Sweet: Reframing requires a new metaphor. First, you don't do it with words because your mind is made of metaphors. You dream in images, metaphors, pictures, not words. Second, lift up big dreams, extreme dreams. You are not going to move people by challenging them with small stuff.

Look up Daniel Pink's Primal Leadership, one of the best books on leadership out there. You don't have change that is effective and lasting unless you engage the emotion. The new understanding of leadership is that leadership is primarily to change people's emotions. It's time to relearn the altar call.

Jameson: You use "perfect storm" analogy. Harbors and ships are ancient images. Update for us.

Sweet: We have lots of harbor-hugging churches. The harbor is the worst place to ride out a storm. When you're on the high seas, tack into the storm . . . face the future. What emboldens us to tackle the storm is that Christ is already there. He's been through it.

What does a captain at risk say during bad storms? "Steady as she goes." The first mate would lash the captain to the wheel so he could keep it steady as she goes. When navigational instruments went dead, the only thing that kept them steady was dead reckoning off the North Star. Our North Star--our guiding light--is Christ. It is more important than ever to be fixed on Christ. Jesus has command over the waves. To ride a storm, enjoy the waves.

We need to reframe the notion of sanctuary, from a place safe from risk, to a place safe to take risk. In the movie, why did they go out in the perfect storm? For the ultimate catch. That's what's waiting for the church on the other side of this perfect storm--the greatest moments in the history of Christianity.

Jameson: Tell me your theory on the "Well Curve."

Sweet: You know the bell curve: weak extremes, huge middles. That's how "massified" culture worked. We had mass communication, mass literacy, middle class, middle management. In this kind of world the best place to be a leader is in the middle. The art of negotiation is finding middle ground. But this is not the culture in which you're ministering now.

Now, it's a "Well Curve" world with strong extremes. We have strong ends, but the middle is weak and falling out. We have mitosis of the middle. Everything in the middle is either going one direction or the other. Ours is a world of dueling extremes, but varying middles.

In every other election you appeal to the middle. In a Well Curve, you appeal to the extremes. In the last election 49 percent loved George Bush, 49 percent hated George (nobody loved John Kerry). The election was won or lost on the 2 percent at the extremes.

General Motors is going under because they thought there was actually something like "general" motors. There is nothing general anymore. In the middle of the road you find only road kill, hit by traffic from both ways.

We are living in a world where opposite things are happening at the same time and they are not contradictory. Screens are getting bigger and screens are getting smaller. What's the largest web site? Amazon. What do they sell? Books. Look at Staples. We're living supposedly in a digital world, a paperless world. Staples stock went up because they came up with the No. 1 paper shredder. God is one, God is three. What is the truth? You hold onto both at the same time, and let go of neither.

It's not orthodoxy, but orthoparadoxy . . . God is transcendent, God is immanent. . . . What's the truth? Orthoparadoxical image. In many ways, Christianity was made for just such a time as this. Culture is going in opposite directions at the same time. Churches will get bigger and they will get smaller. Africa and Asia are leapfrogging modernity to postmodernity. We're living in a culture where part of the truth needs to be incarnated in an image, and guess who is part of that image? YOU!

Jameson: What are the prospects for postmodern evangelism?

Sweet: Pay attention, every bush is burning. We must move from ecclesiology to pneumatology; from a doctrine of the church to a doctrine of the Spirit; from hermeneutics to semiotics; from your interpretive posture to the art of sign reading. You don't get a driver's license until you learn to read signs. You can't do a checkbook until you can read signs. God's finger is still writing and we are absolutely clueless. We cannot read God's signs.

We all read signs naturally and don't even know we're doing it. When you buy a new car, you suddenly see your car everywhere. The only thing that has changed is you. You are now in a state of semiotic awareness. The church is NOT in a state of semiotic awareness.

Pay attention. You are the sum of what you pay attention to. You want your marriage to grow, you better pay attention to your spouse. Whatever you pay attention to grows and increases. Whatever you don't pay attention to diminishes. Evangelists have attention surplus disorder. We are people who are able to pay attention. Jesus is the ultimate sign.

First step: Find out where Jesus is, what is God up to, which means we have to pay attention. So, the first act of evangelism in the postmodern world is not doing anything, it's sitting on your hands and listening. Listen so you can discern what God is already up to. It's not a talking mode first; it's a listening mode.

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