Carpe Maňana

Morphing the Latin "carpe diem", often translated into the English, "seize the day", Leonard Sweet's Carpe Maňana pleads the question in its sub-title, "Is Your Church Ready to Seize Tomorrow?"

The book is advertised as a "naturalization manual" to help Christians lead in this strange new world of postmodern culture. Leonard Sweet, an "outside the box" thinker, offers strategies for leaders to put their faces, not their backs, to the future. (Actually Sweet is more of a "live outside the box" kind of guy rather than simply, "think outside the box". - See page 100)

Key quotes:

P. 26 - "The church is trying to get out of what God is trying to get into - the world."

P. 27 - "The greatest sin of the church today is not any sin of commission or sin of omission, but the sin of NO MISSION."

P. 51 - "The screen is what credentializes you. If you can't speak to them in their native tongue, they don't really listen to you."

P. 55 - "In God's house there are many rooms. In the devil's house there is only one. To continue God's creativity, you need diversity and distributed control...centralisms are collapsing."

P. 76 - "Why will you forget a name quicker than a face? Because your visual memory is stronger than your textual memory."

P. 81 - "Jesus picked up images like a magnet does paperclips. Jesus knew that images more than words could best bend the world to God's being, so he communicated most of his truths through visual images warped in sound."

P. 114 - "The average 5-year-old laughs 150 times a day; the average 45-year-old laughs eight times a day."

P. 153 - "The church has tried everything except the one thing that is needed. It has tried to be an inclusive church. It has tried to be a confessional church. It has tried to be a program-driven church. It has tried to be a purpose-driven church. It has tried to be a seeker-sensitive church. What if it tried to be a spiritual church?"