Photo via leonardsweet.com

Leonard Sweet: It's time for Christians to take the lead

According to your opinion, does the fact that Christians don’t use high technologies slow down the revival in the world?

I think it is has a major negative effect. And what the book was for the modern world, the Internet is for the new world. And the Internet is still in its infancy. I mean I’m doing classes in the Second Life. I teach in Second Life. I created a university and they are all learning. It is their natural language. It’s like Web3.0. But by merge the church doesn’t understand what I am doing or even like what I’m doing. Every reformation in history is better the cutting edge of technology so this is predictable that what the church has got to do to go through this reformation.

And what is the reason – why is it religious circles that slow down the reformation?

Whoever masters a media form and its highest level of sophistication and literacy will have the greatest troublemaking transition through a media form. So those denominations who really mastered print culture and made part of their identity are holding on with their finger nails. My brother is Presbyterian minister, he went to Princeton as PHD (доктор наук) and is pasturing a very small church in Philadelphia. And I say to him: “John, how does it feel to be a leader of the second fastest dying church in the US?” The average age of a Presbyterian is 71. The only thing keeping this church going is medical science. �?Cos it keeps people alive longer. Thank God for doctors and for pharmaceutical companies – they are church’s best friends. But Presbyterians mastered the print culture at its highest level. And this is the problem with some Pentecostals in the US. They’ve sold out to respectability. And the respectability is the Gutenberg mindset.

What are the key methods for developing revival through the high technologies?

Well, one is just as simple as what you did yesterday by getting a computer up there. I think you have heard of Robert Shuller. I preached at his church and the computer up the stage. He was scandalized. He got mad at me. I got to work him through the idea that computer is as much a Bible as this is a Bible. Like I said, my computer is twenty three Bibles. I could swear on the stock of Bibles in my computer easier then on this Bible. It’s just going to take time. What else I do – I use screens. I always try to use a VJ – video jockey. I don’t do PowerPoint – PowerPoint is a Gutenberg. I call him my dancing partner.

Video jockey – someone who’s grown up on Google. I also call him my dancing partner. He, sort of, dances with me. Everything I say, he puts up images of what I’m talking about. You know I got this idea from my students. As on seminars all of them have computers. And what they do when I’m talking – they search Google. So I said: “OK, what you do around the table, let’s do it in front of everybody.” So I work with a VJ. And then ideally I have a third screen. And this is little tricky. I saw it in Korea last year and we did this in the whole stadium, so it can be done. In the future everything will be on web cast. So the question is how you get those people that aren’t there to participate with you? So on the third screen you can project Twitter (social network), or have a place for people to text messages. And what I’ve done too is getting light text messages from people who aren’t there but are a part of it through the web cast. You can also split the screen and have a live blog of people who are there. This is what I’d be happy to get in Google world.

Are there other Christian ministers in the US who speak about this subject?

Oh, they just look at me and shake their head. But they will get it, they will…

When it was the era of television or radio did Christians respond to it the same way as to high technologies?

No, they really claimed radio quick. But Billy Graham was the one who really broke the television. Because in “holy circles” you couldn’t have TV. I grew up in a “holy home” and we were not allowed to watch TV.

That’s why you love Internet…

But see, what I do with my kids though – I say: OK, you can go into MySpace but see, the Bible says, you’re in it but you’re not of it. So you can go into MySpace but you’re not of it. So you go into it missionary. I challenge my kids – what will you do in MySpace different? If you’re going to be IN it and OF it then you are not going to be there at all. So what one of my seventeen year old sons did was this. When he went into MySpace and I told him that he was going there with a mission, you know what he did? You know the top-ten, top-eight people lists. He redefined his top-eight and made it his prayer list for the week. And then he got board and decided to do some research to find out who is not on anybody’s list in their school. He came up with five kids who were like the total rejects, nobody had them on anybody’s list. So my son and his friends put those five on their lists. That’s being in MySpace missionary. And that’s a challenge to go into this but not become of it. Don’t be afraid of it. Jesus said: “What do you do more than others? How are you different from anybody else?”

Aren’t you afraid that Google might start sending an anti-Christian message?

Yeah, but isn’t it the same with books?

It’s just that it’s a very good way of influence on very big numbers of people…

But the way they set it up is free market. It’s totally free market. Their search agents are totally free market. And as long as it’s free market that’s the protection.

Are there people or organizations that work on missionary strategies on the Internet?

We need to create a global organization. In the world everything is moving. You see a moment and then it’s already gone. The only way you can catch a moving target is to get ahead of it. You know it’s like in soccer – wherever you kick it, you got to give that person a lead. The whole leadership literature is missing that lead. Nobody wants to talk about what does it mean? That’s what is missing. We’re playing catch up and put down, catch up and put down. But it’s time to get ahead of it.

Currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School (Madison, NJ), and Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University (Portland, OR), Leonard Sweet is the author of more than one hundred articles, 600 published sermons and thirty books, most recently The Gospel According to Starbucks (2007).

Sweet's web-based preaching resource Wikiletics.com is the first open-source preaching resource on the web. Founder and President of SpiritVenture Ministries, Sweet is a frequent speaker and conversation partner at conferences both in the US and around the globe. In both 2006 and 2007 he was voted "One of the 50 Most Influential Christians in America" (www.thechurchreport.com). His current projects include a preaching text entitled Giving Blood, The Leadership Myth (with Joe Myers), Pay Attention: Every Bush is Burning, and later in 2007, Outstorming The Perfect Storm. His weekly free podcast is called "Napkin Scribbles," and a longer subscription-based weekly podcast is available from WiredParish.com.

SALE! 40% OFF! How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week

TAGS: Leonardo Sweet Internet Google Second Life Drew Theological School George Fox University

[11/01/2008]

Print Version