By Leonard Sweet & Mark Chironna
NavPress (2019)
Paperback, 262 pages
Reviewed by ALBERT L. REYES
Rings of Fire provides a vivid picture of the near future of the Christian faith in the United States of America. Leonard Sweet, an expert semiotician, serves up key metaphors for a vivid picture of the ministry reality Christian ministry leaders face in the third decade of the 21st century. Christian ministry leaders who attempt to point the way to the future for ministry organizations—whether a church, parachurch, university, seminary, or denominational ministry—will find Rings of Fire to be an excellent roadmap for the future, as well as the present.
Christian ministry leaders attempting to tell the truth about their context and their ministry, as well as carve out a pathway to the future, must read this volume to gain a sense of direction and vision for the future. This future is now. Sweet sums up the future by saying, “The world we used to call home is going up in smoke. Our descendants will have multiple worlds go up in smoke in their lifetimes” (p. 3). For leaders who respond to the changing context via social media, Sweet asks a simple question: “The number of people on Twitter who follow a religious leader, house of worship, or pastor? Answer: Two percent” (p. 18).
Sweet leads the reader on a journey through a volcanic future by describing six “hot zones” outlining our current social context in which we minister as leaders. They include cultural hostility, the collapse of nation-states, the impact of China, the impact of world religions, engaging the public square, and the future of America. He also inserts “hot takes” to guide the leader into the future with potential responses to the current context. Sweet follows up “hot zones” with a section on “hot topics” that Christian leaders are already encountering, ranging from tolerance to secularism, gender identity to suicide, race relations to prison systems, to ecology, artificial intelligence, senior citizens, and the speed of change.
In the concluding section of Rings of Fire, Sweet offers biblical and theological considerations with which the “hot church” can grapple. He points out the crisis of spiritual reproduction, the issue of idols, the question of the afterlife, sexual abuse in the church, the connection between politics and religion, and conscience. True to Sweet’s love for the narrative as his primary hermeneutic approach to Scripture, he makes a plea for the use of story in our witness. While there is a limit to using narratives, he notes, “Humans cannot live without story” (p. 235). Rings of Fire is about gazing into the future and making sense of it. It is for ministry leaders who understand their primary role is to tell the truth about the ministry in its context and to point the way through problems with relevant and God-inspired solutions. Sweet rightly concludes that we will always have ministry problems to solve and recommends “we get better problems” (p. 241).
Albert L. Reyes is president and CEO of Buckner International based in Dallas, Texas, with over 36 years of pastoral, higher education, and nonprofit leadership experience. He graduated from the leadership PhD program at Andrews University in 2010