Quotes – Post-modern Pilgrims – Leonard Sweet

Monsignor Romano Guardini: “‘Today the modern age is essentially over.’ The church was on the right track, he argued, but riding the wrong train”. xiii

John R. W. Stott on ‘double listening’: “the faculty of listening to two voices at the same time, the voice of God through Scripture and the voices of men and women around us. These voices will often contradict one another, but our purpose in listening to theme both is to discover how they relate to each other. DOuble listening is indispensable to Christian discipleship and Christian mission” p. xvi

“The history of civilizations is the history of the human imagination.” p. xix

“There is a difference between trailblazing and trendsetting. There is a difference between the spirit of newness and the spirt of nowness. The Geist in our Zeit must be the Heilige Geist. The spirit of our times must be the Holy Spirit.” p48

“If you remember nothing else in this book, remember this call for the church to recover tradition. We can become a “traditional” church by nurturing a culture that is identifiably Christian and postmodern at the same time, not one that looks like postmodern culture itself.” p48

(Definition of zeitgeist – https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Zeit+Geist

“The postmodern church seems to have lost the plot to the “stories of Jesus.” Could it be because the redemption story was told in the modern era more by “creeds” and “laws” than by “parables” – narrative-wrapped images?” p88

“Metaphors generate a spirit that quickly captures and charges space. That is why the Jesus method of communication was not the exegesis of words but the exegesis of images: “the kingdom of heaven is like…”” p95

Sweet, Leonard I. Post-Modern Pilgrims : First Century Passion for the 21st Century World. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2000.