I’ve been listening to the audio book version of Leonard Sweet’s latest book, So Beautiful: Divine design for life and the church.

While I’m only about 1 sixth of the way through the book I’m really liking what I’m hearing.  Sweet has been criticised in the past as being too critical of the contemporary church.  However, and this is the first book of Sweet’s I’ve read (or listened to), I don’t get the feeling he’s criticising without a solution.  There is a strong prophetic undercurrent in all he has to say.

That undercurrent surfaces in a splendid way via his discussion on the church’s in-built operating system. That is its DNA.

Sweet enlarges on the thesis put forward by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost in books such as The shaping of things to come, and Hirsch’s Forgotten Ways, where a latent force - the Missional DNA of the church, is described.  Hirsch and Frost define this DNA as a course correcting mechanism - a part of the Creators design within his people, with the specific purpose of enfusing them with the ability to come back to their redemptive purpose. Sweet likens this course correcting ability to a reboot of a computers operating system.  Restoring the church to its “original” condition, enabling it to fulfill the function it was designed for.

What is particularly cool about Sweet’s discussion on this “missional DNA” is the way he has labled it - nailing it in the initials: MRI.  Sweet’s contention is that MRI is indicitive of God’s inbuilt plan for his people and can be found from Genesis through to the end of the NT.

So what is MRI?

M = Missional - The act of being sent.

R = Relational - The practice of engaging in deep, ongoing involvement with other human beings (what my friend Hamo would call “going deep”.

and

I = Incarnational - Living this missional/relational life everywhere, regardless of the culture, the time or the geographic location as authentic (in the way we were designed) examples of humanity.

In the first 6th of book, Sweet is calling the church to reboot - to reset itself back to its original operating system and to re-enage with the world in the MRI way.

You can download the audio book version of So Beautiful Here (for a short time - follow the “free download” link in the top right hand corner of the site).