Leonard Sweet
Leonard Sweet
Author, Scholar, Semiotician, Preacher, Entreprenuer, Futurist
Leonard Sweet is an author, scholar, and futurist who has written more than seventy books and over 1,500 published sermons, and a frequent name on lists of the most influential Christians in America.
A historian and semiotician as well as a theologian and pastor, he reads the culture for signs of where the church is heading, work that runs through his books on preaching (Giving Blood), evangelism (Nudge), ecclesiology (So Beautiful), and discipleship (I Am a Follower). His Napkin Scribbles podcast carries the same instinct to a wide audience.
Len Sweet’s recent publications include groundbreaking textbooks on preaching (Giving Blood), evangelism (Nudge), ecclesiology (So Beautiful) and discipleship (I Am A Follower). His “Napkin Scribbles” podcasts can be accessed on leonardsweet.com or Spotify. His Twitter and Facebook microblogs are ranked as some of the most influential in the religious arena. His “LenTalk” vlogs are found on his Leonard Sweet YouTube channel.
Len works with doctoral students at four institutions: Drew University, where he has occupied the E. Stanley Jones Chair, George Fox University, Northwind Seminary, and Evangelical Seminary (Kairos), where he currently holds the Charles Wesley Senior Professorship of Doctoral Studies. In 2015 he launched his own homiletics resource preachthestory.com. In 2020 he founded his own publishing house the Salish Sea Press. One of the most sought-after speakers in the religious world today, he resides on Orcas Island in the San Juans in the PNW.
For Invite, he joins Len Wilson in Telos.
Telos (Hardback)
The Hope of Heaven Today
Forget everything you think you know about the end and discover how you can start living a better story today – no matter what the future holds.
Are we living through the beginning of the end?
The end has indeed begun – but it is not the special effects explosion many of us imagine. For too long, we’ve gotten the end wrong, which leads to poor decisions with dead-end consequences. To live a better Christian story, we need a better vision of the end.
Telos argues for a new way of looking at the end: as the culmination of God’s grand story. It introduces Jesus’ most important word in describing the end: the Greek word telos. Telos is the rhythm of human history; the presence of God; the plot, purpose, and completion of the story. The end is the kingdom of God, and the kingdom is here and now.
In the book, Rev. Dr. Leonard Sweet and Dr. Len Wilson challenge six false endings playing out in the world today, which result in tragedy and despair. Through an examination of cultural and philosophical trends converging in today’s chaotic times, Sweet and Wilson show how many of the problems plaguing American Christianity are rooted in bad theology and offer a better definition of God’s kingdom: the present reality of the presence of God that gives us hope for today and tomorrow.
Telos will help you gain:
- An understanding of the philosophical and culture movements that fuel our wrong ideas about the end of the world and the problems they are creating today
- A new perspective on time – past, present, and future – and why God’s kingdom is more than a place or singular moment in history
- A positive vision of the future based on the true meaning of the kingdom of God
- A new way of engaging culture without culture warring
- A worldview that empowers you to live with more hope and peace every day, even in chaotic times
A lot has been written about the kingdom of God, but nothing like this. This book is an invitation to stop worrying about the future or running yourself ragged trying to build the kingdom and to instead step into the life of the kingdom that is available to you now.
If you want to know what happens in the end, how telos helps us live in the stream of the Spirit, and how to live a better story today – no matter what the future holds – read what may be the most important book of our time.