Deal with it, get over it or get help. That's Leonard Sweet's mantra when it comes to understanding Christianity's fluid role in the postmodern world.
The Christian church is in the midst of a “perfect storm,” Sweet told a crowd of 150 at Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary Feb. 5. Such stormy weather is manifested in, among other things, postmodernism—the worldview that questions modern assumptions about certainty and progress. Modernism gave Christians a preferred status as “chaplain” to the culture. But Christians in the West can no longer expect to have that “home-court advantage,” he said.
What's more, he said, the church can't change the fact that culture has rejected traditional institutions. So it must change from the inside out.
And, he added, it does no good to complain about it. “I think God is defragging and rebooting the church,” Sweet said. “I think what he is doing is he is getting us back to the original operating system of Christianity.”