You can go wrong reading Leonard Sweet, but you can’t go far wrong. I never know what I’m going to get from this Christian futurist/theologian, but this was a good read.

Post Modern Pilgrims outlines what he’s been saying for years about the need for the church to be EPIC:
Experiential
Participatory
Image-driven
Connected

I’ve heard Sweet speak at several conferences when I was in campus ministry, and the book was like a refresher course. Of all the books he’s written and that I’ve read, this was perhaps the most readable. (Apart from A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe)

About experience, Sweet encourages the church to quit being so heady and to engage people completely. This postmodern generation is thirsty for real, authentic, piston-charging experience.

It’s marked in extreme sports, video games, and reality shows. Sweet notes, however, that one has to be sensitive when creating a church climate of holy experience:

Experiences can become idolic as well as addictive. Postmoderns collect “experiences” like moderns collected “stuff.”

I love how Sweet later affirms that for the believer in Christ, whether modern or postmodern, experience must always submit to obedience.

Saying yes to the moment does not mean letting the moment define the yes.