Book Review

The Church of the Perfect Storm

by Leonard Sweet

This book features a collection of essays on the elements that contribute to a culture storm today and how the church can navigate her way into the future. About 500 years ago, Christianity faced a “storm” when it experienced the Reformation. Claiming that we are either heading into a storm, are in a storm, or are just leaving one, Leonard Sweet proposes that Christians are now headed into one of the greatest culture storms ever—one that he calls a “perfect storm.” The premise of the book is that the church’s place in this culture storm is not in the harbor, but in the midst of the storm, in deep water.

I found the introduction and the two chapters by Sweet to be the most thought-provoking and useful sections of the book. He identifies three types of storms that are battering our culture today—all of them Category Five storms: (1) a cultural storm, the tsunami of postmodernity, a religious storm; (2) the hurricane of post-Christendom; and (3) a STEM storm (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)..

Claiming that the “world is getting better, but the dangers the better brings are getting worse,” (22) Sweet identifies three areas where the scale-up has become “postprogress”: (1) the GRIN revolution (genetics, robotics, informatics, and nanotechnology) has made us posthuman; (2) globalization has made us post-round; and (3) our care for planet Earth has made us post-cold. He concludes his opening chapter with these words: “Only truth can turn off the suicide machine. We must cure the status quo with truth. We must be about the mission of jamming the suicide machine with truth” (36).

Mark Batterson’s appeal in his essay (“The Relationships of Winds and Waves”) emphasizes that if we are going to turn the spiritual tide in America, the church needs to stop retreating and start redeeming, it needs to stop criticizing and start creating, it needs to stop seeking shelter and start chasing the storm. He proposes that “God is calling the church out of the church and back into the middle of the marketplace” (110). He identifies four options that the church has and urges the fourth: ignore culture, imitate culture, condemn culture, or create culture. Earl Pierce has a brief but useful treatment on postmodern paradigm shifts and shows how the Greco-Roman cognitive paradigm is now giving way to an affective paradigm.

I found the book to be both conceptually stimulating and practically useful. I recommend it to storm watchers who are concerned about how the church will navigate its way through the culture storms of our day.