Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus

by C. Christopher Smith, John Pattison

Fast food. Fast cars. Fast and furious. Fast forward. Fast . . . church? The church is often idealized (or demonized) as the last bastion of a bygone era, dragging our feet as we're pulled into new moralities and new spiritualities. We guard our doctrine and our piety with great vigilance. But we often fail to notice how quickly we're capitulating, in the structures and practices of our churches, to a culture of unreflective speed, dehumanizing efficiency and dis-integrating isolationism. In the beginning, the church ate together, traveled together and shared in all facets of life. Centered as they were on Jesus, these seemingly mundane activities took on their own significance in the mission of God. In Slow Church, Chris Smith and John Pattison invite us out of franchise faith and back into the ecology, economy and ethics of the kingdom of God, where people know each other well and love one another as Christ loved the church.

Genres: Church, Nonfiction, Theology, Faith, Christianity, Christian, Religion

247 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2014

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real strength of this book is in it's ability to get you brainstorming. The authors aren't experts on the topics being presented - rather, they take what most would agree to be important biblical rhythms for the life of the church (Sabbath, hospitality, work, etc), and then send them out into practical directions, exploring what it has (or could) look like for many people to try to live them out in their congregations and communities. I could see this being a great book to read through with your local church as a way of being challenged together; specifically, to think more creatively about how to live in obedient faithfulness together in your unique context of community and place.

[Paul Sparks · Rating 5 out of 5]

At long last, a book I relish giving away to the vast number of people longing for an alternative between ‘McDonald’s Church’ and the end of the church altogether. In neighborhoods across North America there are hundreds of thousands of Christ followers trying to experiment with a new way of being the church in everyday life. Now, there is a hopeful guidebook that is rich with empirical and anecdotal research, historical depth, and theological savvy that can guide their way. THIS IS THE BOOK you rush out and buy a dozen copies of to give hope and help to your friends who want to follow the way of Jesus.

[Bob Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Slow" could describe turtles, or retired folks on the highways of Florida, but John Pattison and Chris Smith have given us the heart of the word "slow" - more like the first long kiss you gave to your future spouse. "Slow Church" is an intimate longing, a reality that must begin to be embraced. It is a lifestyle for the church today. This book is about how we can enjoy again all that the body of Christ can offer our families, communities, neighborhoods, and our world.

Personally, I had to find "down time" where I could actually take in the content of this book - choosing to read it over my recent sabbatical (an excellent idea for pastors and leaders in the church). As I read, I began to find renewal in my creativity, my trust in God's people, and a new hope of coming together for a Common Good!

Since John Pattison is a member of the church I pastor and a dear friend, I may be biased (no, I am). Yet this book speaks of a vision our gathering in Silverton is beginning to see come to fruition. Reading how we can make this more effective is exciting. Sure we need to learn more about true generosity and how to be hospitable to all people, but it begins with a will to "be" right where we are in Silverton, Englewood, or whatever town God has you living in currently.

"Slow Church" is about the ordinary - not some extraordinary fad or program that will wane, become irrelevant, disappear, or collect dust on your shelf. No, "Slow Church" (if you take the time to read and digest) will change you, and those you love and share life with. It will make you want to stop, re-evaluate, question, and begin to seek and hope again - just this time, a little slower, a little more patient, and a little more generous.

Take a weekend off, find a place of solitude, a comfy chair, and take your time reading this book - then come back to your community and host a dinner and start a conversation!

[Anjanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a Slow Liver by nature, so the title of this book intrigued me. However, I just noticed too many instances of Scripture taken out of context to give it a higher rating. The overall theme is discussion-worthy! There were some beautiful examples of community lived in honor of Jesus, and lovely ideas for intentional, worshipful engagement within culture. I liked the way the chapters were themed. It was fun to hear about the activities of the Englewood neighborhood church from my hometown. The heart of the authors to honor Christ and to love others was obvious. It was a comfortable read, generally enjoyable, sometimes challenging, yet it fell a little short for me. (This was a book full of a lot of application, but not enough “show me where you got that” for newer believers or seekers.)

[Michael Philliber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's be up front. On one hand this book was disappointing to me, especially the left-of-center positions politically and (sometimes) theologically. On the other hand "Slow Church" scored big points and made great observations! Patterned after the "International Slow Food Movement" model, "Slow Church" takes on the MacDonaldization of "Fast Church" and the homogenization principle of the Church Growth Movement. "Many churches, particularly those driven by church growth models, come dangerously close to reducing Christianity to a commodity that can be packaged, marketed and sold" (14). It's a book meant to challenged assumptions and encourage new/old aspirations.

The authors are not advocating moving to the inner city, or to a two-thirds world nation, or voluntary poverty, but rather "we're advocating...that we live more deeply into the ordinary patterns of our lives, considering and talking with others in our church about how and why we do the things we do" (223). To complete this project Smith and Pattison lead the readers strolling along the pathways for cultivating community (inside and outside the church) in the patient ways of Jesus. Very much in tune with Wendell Berry and Eugene Peterson, the authors carefully and slowly build the case for place, savoring where a church is, work and rest, abundance, gratitude and hospitality. The strength of the book comes through the authors' examples from their own practices and those of others. As a matter of fact, the manuscript is loaded down with real life suggestions and ideas that will get the imagination percolating.

"Slow Church" will likely ruffle feathers and disturb some shelves in your thinking. Nevertheless, it is a book worth snatching up, reading and thinking through. It should find it's way into the hands of church-planters, church-renewers, and pastors. With my concerns stated at the beginning, I still recommend the book.

[Susan C Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

We read this for our small group (life group) at church. As we all agreed in the group, this is a book that needs to be read and discussed as a group. We didn't all agree about the "local" issue discussed in the book such as going to the closest church and shopping and working as close as possible to home. We did agree that living in Southern California makes "local" take on a whole new meaning compared to rural Oregon where one of the writers lives. A book that led to some great discussions.

[fpk · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful, new-for-me look at what church can look like. Instead of just a building to drop in and out of on Sunday mornings, church can be a community of people, from all different backgrounds- worshiping, eating, growing, cooking, planting, shopping, knitting, crying, laughing, playing scrabble and just about any other activity- together . That is the key theme in this book- living a life in a community of believers. In 20th century Western culture, our life is so compartmentalized; we bracket ourselves into little separate spheres, and church, if it is a part of our lives, is an isolated little private activity that we engage in once a week, then promptly drop it at the door when we exit and move on to our 'other' engagements. In Slow Church , the authors suggest we question this approach, that we slow down and engage on a more intimate level with our spiritual life and stop divorcing it from everything else. Only then will we find harmony, integration and true relationship. With Christ and with each other. Excellent book.

[Ginger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the chapter on gratitude and celebration, but aside from that, there wasn't much to implement. This read more as a treatise of what was wrong with the church. I'm assuming if you're picking up a book with this title, you've already bought into their premise, that we're suffering from an epidemic of bigger/faster/more in the church. I was looking for ways to cultivate good, and just didn't find that here.

I couldn't help but compare this while I was reading it, with Playing God by Andy Crouch. Much of the material covered was the same, but I found Playing God to be much more finely drawn. While Playing God was released first, there were only nine months between publication, so I trust these authors each had individual ideas, ideas whose time had come, but it's hard not to compare with another similar, better work. Read Andy Crouch instead.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked a lot in this book, and I think comparing the corporatized church to fast food is helpful. The bibliography is excellent though they tend to draw on a few names quite often.

Some pushback: Though offered as a critique of “technique” books that promise results, the book offers techniques, and though it eschews results, it does not shy away from offering numbers to describe successful ministries.

A worthwhile read, however, especially if you are have anabaptist and/or Quaker sensibilities. It is a nice change of pace from church growth and “leadership” books that uncritically bring corporate values into the church.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You can never franchise the blessings of God" (41).

And yet, it is hard to deny the effort the church has made to franchise church life. In fact, a church in town has started offering a "30 minute worship experience"--the equivalent of a drive-thru pit stop for spirituality, not the organic communal church life I've enjoyed my whole life and see demonstrated in the Scriptures. Authors Smith and Pattison compare the "mega-church" phenomena to the methods of food production and distribution that have become standard practice in the U.S. The comparison is incredibly apt. They point out the church's emphasis on homogenous growth (drawing demographically similar people from an extremely wide radius to one central worship location) and a kind of McDonaldization of church life which focuses on efficiency, calculability (taking pride in numerical results), predictability (making all aspects of church life routine and formulaic), and control (seen in the proliferation of branded "satellite" churches piping in a sermon from a distant pastor). The goal is to eliminate the awkwardness and mess of dealing with inefficient, uncertain, and unpredictable relationships with people.

The solution they offer is slow church or "taking time over time" to become a family of believers and children of the Father. And for much of the book, they elaborate on what "slow church" life looks like. Here's my take: MOST of the chapters are full of beautiful quotes (how can you not love a book that quotes Wendell Berry so frequently and so favorably?) and beautiful ideas, elegant in their simplicity. There are also a few chapters (especially towards the end) where they begin to over-explain (and dare I say, attempt to franchise?) their own methods of doing slow church. Read the whole book, but realize you don't have to use it as a manual (I don't think that is what they intended anyhow). The book paints a simple and beautiful picture of the ways the church can pull away from the tides of this culture and engage in true fellowship, deep neighborhood ministry, and lifelong growth rooted in one place.

Some favorite quotes that stand out (among MANY!)

"What message do we convey to churches in and around our neighborhoods when we zip past them to go to distant churches that we deem more desirable?" (109). We are the small neighborhood church and we think we've got a great deal to offer: a healthy, diverse fellowship where believers of all ages know each other deeply and pray for each other earnestly, spontaneously, continually; a robust calendar of fellowship events, Bible studies, and ministry opportunities that allow nearly everyone in our fellowship to use their gifts and minister to one another throughout the week; a solid, Biblically based teaching ministry that doesn't rely on flashy topics, overproduced graphics, or feel-good themes but focuses instead of developing believers who know the whole counsel of scripture. It is a question we've pondered often: why people drive past our church and a dozen others like it every Sunday...

"We often fall into the trap of thinking that if we can't do something in a big way, it shouldn't be done at all" (172). Oh, how often I've felt that pressure as we hosted our little VBS for just a handful of kids...

From a monastery in Dubuque, IA: "We give up the temptation to move from place to place in search of an ideal situation. Ultimately there is no escape from oneself, and the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion. And when interpersonal conflicts arise, we have a great incentive to work things out and restore peace. This means learning the practices of love: acknowledging one's one offensive behavior, giving up one's preferences, forgiving" (62). Is that not a beautiful picture of slow church? Of committing to a body of believers that you live with and grow with for years?

And finally, my favorite insight from the book...
The most eye-opening chapter for me was titled "Abundance" which dismantled the "myth of scarcity" that (as Walter Brueggemann says) "gives us a present tense of anxiety, fear, greed, and brutality... It tells us not to care about anyone but ourselves--and it is the prevailing creed of American society" (156). In this chapter, they focus on the idea that God has promised to provide all that creation needs to sustain itself. He demonstrates this provision powerfully through the miracle of multiplying loaves and fishes, where they are left with 12 baskets of excess. He demonstrates this subtly through the observation of the natural world, which reveals that every plant contains in itself the genetic material for incredible reproduction (think of how many seeds are in a single pumpkin, for example!) This trust in God's abundant provision frees us from anxious striving for more and allows us to be both grateful and generous in response.

And it is because of the abundance of God's kingdom that I can walk away from this book with peace. I have been feeling the anxiety of the small business owner, wondering how I will compete with the bright and cheerful big-box store. This chapter reminds me that there is enough, enough, yes, more than enough kingdom work to be done, enough harvest to bring in, enough living water to be poured out, enough loaves and fishes... enough of a reason for our little fellowship to exist and even to thrive by kingdom standards. This is why I loved this book so much, I guess.

[Sharolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this approach to church. I love how holistic it is! I think this is so needed and necessary and a great antidote to past-faced, modern, capitalist, consumerist life. It's slow though and the results take time. (Slow church I mean, not the book. The book is easy to read.) Patience is required. Commitment is essential. In fact the kind of I Corinthians 13 love we talk about at weddings is necessary for the local and broader church community. I started this book some time ago and then got distracted and finally picked it up to finish. I think I need to start again and savour it through a book club or chats with a friend at least.

[Daniel Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a short and sweet note here. This book gave me hope. A helpful aid to begin transforming my imagination of what local church can be.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slow Church by C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: This book argues that the church has been "McDonald-ized" and that just as the Slow Food movement has returned to embracing food that is good, clean, and fair, so the church needs to embrace an ethic of quality, an ecology of reconciliation, and an economy of abundance.

Slow church. That's not what I wanted when I was growing up. I wanted to get my weekly dose of church and get on to more interesting things. If the authors are to believed, the church growth specialists gave my generation what we wanted--fast church. Messages that cut to the chase, efficient, homogeneous organization that led to big box churches that provided a great show. For a time, I was part of such a church in another city, typically driving 10 miles to attend. But it seemed totally unconnected to the place where we lived and so when we moved to our current home town, we found a church in the neighborhood, which in recent years has come to embody many of the things the authors of this book describe as part of the "slow church" movement.

The authors describe an approach to thinking of the church that gives words to much of what we were looking for. They believe that God's redemptive work is slow and values the unique qualities of people and place and gifting that our particular places of worship reflect. They organize their approach around three categories.

First they think in terms of ethics. What is the good to be pursued in the life of a local congregation? It begins with a sense of place that takes time to become a community that shares life together and learns how to serve the mix of people in a real neighborhood rather than efficiently reaching a "market segment." It encourages stability that takes time to understand a place rather than our restless mobility. It values patience that is willing to suffer alongside others and walk alongside the people of one's community through the seasons and changes of life as Christ is formed in us.

A second emphasis is on ecology. It focuses on the connectedness of all things and all of life as opposed to fragmenting life, and groups of people into segments, often with the result of dividing them against each other--young and old, liberal and conservative, poor and affluent, and even humans versus the rest of creation. It cares about the dehumanization of work and fosters good work based in our neighborhoods. It celebrates sabbath where God provides enough in six days for us to live seven.

A third focus is on economy. Will we join the culture's economics of scarcity or the kingdom economy of abundance? This means noticing all the abundance God has placed in the people and physical resources of a church and a community and responding with gratitude and hospitality. And in a wonderful connection with the slow food movement, it means reveling in the fellowship of the table, having rich conversation over good food.

This book is particularly important for churches that take seriously the work of "re-neighboring" and community development in transitional or struggling communities. It is also important for churches in more suburban "communities" that often don't have a real sense of community and place, and are at great peril over the long haul.

The authors challenged me to consider how, even though I am in a church that is seeking to become these things, I am embedded in a "fast church" life and way of thinking that is formed more by my culture than the church community with which I identify. I work in a ministry that is not located in the community where I live, where I travel extensively, and work with colleagues in a tri-state area, and more widely with individuals throughout the country as well as an extensive virtual community. As I write today, I don't have good answers to resolve this tension. But this book serves as impetus for a conversation, maybe a slow conversation, but one that I recognize needs to begin in my life.

How about you?

[Rachel B · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

The positive aspects of this book could be summed up by stating that it's good to invest time in your surrounding community and develop relationships with people (which takes time!).

Serving, as we do, a God who acts in time but is unbound by it, we can afford to enter a neighborhood with the posture of the listener. We can linger at the table. We can start work we won't see the end of. (p 52)

The fact that we are called to follow God in community is a hedge against the waywardness of our individual desires. The local church is the crucible in which our desires are transformed from the building of our individual and tribal kingdoms to the seeking of God's all-encompassing shalom. (p 225, emphasis original)

It's written by "non-professionals," and this shows in how much of their book was simply them quoting other people. I liked a lot of these quotes, but I don't know that the book itself was super necessary...

The authors have some ideas that I just can't get behind. For example, they believe churches can/should "generate income" beyond the offering plate (through coffee shops, bookstores, etc. in church buildings), and I strongly believe that income-generation is not the business of the church!

They subscribe to Walter Brueggeman's interpretation of the famine experienced in Egypt, which Joseph helped prepare for. They state that Pharaoh was being greedy and selfish by requiring people to pay for the stores of grain with their livestock, land, etc., and that Pharaoh was operating from a "scarcity mentality." In reality, this kind of distribution was all Joseph's idea and happened because God was preserving His people through this.

They also believe that the evolutionary theory is fact, apparently, as they briefly mention that the world is billions of years old.

The authors were very passionate about their subject, but unfortunately, passion doesn't equal excellence in execution. I thought the parallels of "slow church" to the "slow food" movement was taken too far, and they had to stretch a bit to make them fit.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slow Church was written for this reason: "Instead of cultivating a deep, holistic discipleship that touches every aspect of our lives, we've confined the life of faith to Sunday mornings, where it can be kept safe and predictable, or to a 'personal relationship with Jesus,' which can be managed from the privacy of our own home. Following Jesus has been diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship undertaken in the context of Christian community." Against an efficient and consumer driven church growth model the authors offer a different, perhaps older, way of being church "gathered and rooted in particular places at a particular time."

To approach this they examine the ethics, ecology, and economy of church life. Ethics is about quality over efficiency, the real embodiment of Christ in a particular neighborhood, paying attention to place, stability and patience. Ecology sees God's entire work of reconciliation and values the how of church action as much as the what. Its virtues are wholeness, work, and sabbath. Economy is about God's abundant provision and in this section the authors discuss gratitude, hospitality, and dinner table conversations.

This book is beautifully written - the prose is wonderful - and offers a glorious picture of what the church can be when it focuses on God's action in and for a particular place. It mixes history, Scripture, story, and winsome argument for a delightful ecclesiology that asks the church to live out its identity.

[Pat Loughery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes you pick up a book and know you'll like it because you know you agree with it, and you know you'll review it well to support the authors and get the ideas out there with some more traction. And that's not a bad thing.

But occasionally, something from that stack REALLY jumps out to you as IMPORTANT. This book is that way. It's IMPORTANT.

The co-authors build from the themes of the Slow Food movement into a general Slow Church movement, while saying "this isn't the next big thing. it's just ordinariness called into life." As such, it's not Missional, Incarnational, House, Seeker-*, Network, or any other good idea that ends up just getting franchised. This is a theological, cultural and pragmatic foundation for Church. Of all flavors, but which will be engaged in neighborhood, community, relationship and reality. It's given me a broader language for the Church, and also some energizing ideas about how spiritual formation might be approached in a similar, slow, holistic, ordinary way.

I highly recommend it to all who lead, pastor, attend, or care about the Christian church, in all its flavors.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does a really great job of outlining a lot of topics I've been thinking about lately and showing the connections between them.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It might just be where I'm at in my life, but this book hit so many buttons for me. The idea of cultivating gratitude and a sense of satisfaction that I have enough is just so crucial for me. I was especially blessed by the encouragement to cultivate stability. Our modern desire for more and for mobility doesn't necessarily add value. As a church planter, I'm grateful for the reminder that the arc of the kingdom is long and that our job is to plant and water. There were lots of good practical tips on how to navigate the balance between having energy to do what it takes to work for justice and when and how to celebrate the abundance that God has given to each community as it stands. I especially liked the emphasis in several points about how important it is to do church and community histories and how much they can celebrate a church's contributions. We operate too much in our society's culture of scarcity and feel things are going badly and are anxious in our church setting. This encourages indulgence in the goodness of those same communities.

[Dorothy Greco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on the premise that the work of the gospel is indeed slow, individually and corporately, authors C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison invite all of us to challenge the default behaviors and mentalities of American church.

They present three frameworks to do this: ethics, ecology, and economy. How can we choose rootedness, seeing how our long-term placement has deeper impact? How can we push back from the myth of scarcity and believe in God's provision? How can we press in relationally and make space for others at our table, perhaps most importantly, those who are different? Their work is thoughtful and provocative. "The primary work of Slow Church is not attracting people to our church building, but rather cultivating together the resurrection life of Christ, by deeply and selflessly loving our brother and sister, our neighbors and even our enemies."

[April Yamasaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow Church offers a more holistic and hopeful vision for the church. The book’s combination of story telling, biblical study, theology, and practical example is engaging, and makes me want to be more intentional in relating to my church and community too. See my complete review: http://aprilyamasaki.com/2014/06/14/s...

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came away from this book encouraged by the creativity of its authors and excited for the conversations it will instigate as my community reads it together throughout the autumn. It's not about doing more things in a new way. It's about being responsible with the life we're already living—not just as individuals, but as a church. And that's a good conversation to be having.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

We've been formed by a culture of speed, but if we recognize our malformation, and the selfishness and fearfulness that are fueling it, perhaps we will become less resistant to God's transformation.

Simple. Encouraging. Practical.

[Jeff Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first two thirds of the book were really good but somehow I got lost in the last third as to what the chapters had to do with the topic.

p. 13-the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world.” 4 Ritzer identified four dimensions of McDonaldization: efficiency, predictability, calculability (quantifiable results) and control— or at least the illusion of control.

Following Jesus has been diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship undertaken in the context of Christian community.

conventional agriculture experts view the soil as merely a convenient way to hold up the plant while it is fed from the top in the form of ever-increasing doses of chemical fertilizers.

p. 16-Slow Church is a call for intentionality, an awareness of our mutual interdependence with all people and all creation, and an attentiveness to the world around us and the work God is doing in our very own neighborhoods.

efficiency. The ethics of Slow Church is the challenge to be, faithfully and well, the embodiment of Christ in a particular place. By ecology we mean that our call to follow Christ must be understood within God’s mission of the reconciliation of all things. This compels us to pay more attention to not only what we are pursuing as churches, but how we do so. Economy refers to God’s abundant provision for God’s reconciling work.

p.23-5 In the midst of the frantic, churning , disturbed and roiling shallow waters of postmodernity, Slow Church seeks to anchor itself in the deep, still waters of a remarkably patient yet radically immanent God. This isn’t escapism. Rather, it is part and parcel of living as the peculiar people of God. As someone once said, we’re in the world but not of the world, so we can be for the world. In everything, Slow Church looks ahead to the eschatological redemption that is the climax of the central drama of the world. Slow Church takes the long view , examining all thought and culture, every ideology and assumption, all action and reaction by the messianic light of the last day . 6 Paradoxically, taking the long view allows us to be truly attentive to the details of the here and now. It all matters. Nothing is wasted.

p. 25-God is ever faithful to the divine nature and mission in the world, even preferring to be humiliated and to suffer than to deviate from the work of love and reconciliation.

This desire for collaboration is the second aspect of God’s character that contributes to the slowness (and goodness) of the redemption story. The tiniest actions of human faithfulness to God’s mission are slowly and patiently woven together into the great biblical drama of reconciliation.

p.28-improvisation, it is through faithful engagement with God’s people that we learn how to play our part in the drama of redemption. Gradually we learn to speak and act not out of fear and doubt but out of trust in God and care for our fellow humans.

p.33-describe attractional as an “approach to Christian mission in which the church develops programs, meetings, services, or other ‘products’ in order to attract unbelievers into the influence of the Christian community.”

incarnational church that “disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society” in order to represent Christ to the world.

The incarnational church, in contrast, is a “centered set.” A centered set is defined by its core values. It sees people “not . . . as in or out, but as closer or further away from the center [which in this case is Christ]. In that sense, everyone is in and no one is out . Though some people are close to the center and others far from it, everyone is potentially part of the community in its broadest sense.”

p.43-We are bound one to another, but a culture built on speed wants to fling us out from the center like a centrifuge. Thus, to commit ourselves to cultivating goodness through practices of nearness and stability, and to conversationally develop shared traditions, is to take a stand against alienation. It is a way of crafting a new, shared story for the community, while connecting us to the cosmic church across time and prefiguring the kingdom of God.

Slow Church happens when people live, work, worship, go to school , eat, grow, learn , heal and play in proximity to each other, often outside the walls of the sanctuary.

p.50-The apostle Paul didn’t seem to concern himself with the size of his churches. He didn’t judge success by church growth. He was more concerned with following well in the footsteps of Jesus, and with his integrity as “a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15: 16).

p. 51-discipleship. The “narrow way” Jesus talks about in Matthew 7 isn’t a luge track we plunge into, in which every twist and turn is predetermined and our only job (not being Olympic athletes) is to hang on for dear life until the end, which is heaven. The narrow way is one we travel together without fear. The narrow way is fits and starts. It’s running and walking and sometimes waiting. It’s mountains and valleys and darkness and light. It’s not being able to see the nose on our own faces and then things suddenly opening up into a magnificent vista. It’s sometimes hard, but adventures usually are. It’s not efficient; it’s a conversation. You’re more likely to go three miles an hour than seventy. You may feel alone but you’re not. God is there. And look around you: a great cloud of witnesses.

“there is so much about being a Christian that isn’t like that. Slow Church is about taking the time with God, with one another, and with yourself— and not only taking the time, but taking time over time. That makes a big difference".

p. 60-The mission of God in the world is centered on the redeeming and reconciling of a diverse creation.

God is reconciling all creation, but this reconciliation unfolds in a manner that is attentive to, not dismissive of, diversity. Specifically, it is embodied by faith communities of all stripes whose members are being reconciled to God, to one another and to their neighbors.

p. 62-The vow of stability from Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in Dubuque, Iowa, reads as follows: We vow to remain all our life with our local community. We live together, pray together, work together, relax together. We give up the temptation to move from place to place in search of an ideal situation. Ultimately there is no escape from oneself, and the idea that things would be better someplace else is usually an illusion . And when interpersonal conflicts arise, we have a great incentive to work things out and restore peace. This means learning the practices of love: acknowledging one’s own offensive behavior, giving up one’s preferences, forgiving.

p. 64-wake. The down times, the slow work of spiritual formation, the dailyness of apprenticing ourselves to Jesus, the long-term commitment to particular people and a particular place— all the quotidian details of life will leave us restless and discontented. If, however, we find our identity primarily in the scriptural story, we begin to understand community and place as integral to God’s reconciliation of creation through the continuous incarnation of Christ in the world.

p. 66-Congregations are explicitly organized around similarity in social and economic rank; in fact, their survival generally depends upon the degree to which they can maintain likeness in their memberships . A few highbrows and a few low-brows can be thrown into the congregational mix, but the core has to be drawn from similar occupation, income group, educational level, ethnic background, and residential level if the congregation is to survive.

Advances in technology and infrastructure, combined with an ethos of transience, make it all too easy to just find a new church when conflicts arise— as they inevitably will—rather than staying and working them out.

p.76-. Two of the gravest dangers that often accompany stability are (1) seeing ourselves as superior to those who are new to our place, especially those whose transience is not of their own choosing, and (2) using our embeddedness to accumulate wealth and power. This is the difference between rootedness and entrenchment. Christian hospitality compels us to welcome all strangers, regardless of how they found their way to our door or how long they plan to stay. Similarly, developing habits of generosity—sharing the resources God has given us— reminds us that stability is not a means to attain status. Stability is always oriented toward the health and flourishing of our places. It is never an end in itself.

p.83-with.” The great tragedy of our technological success is not just that we’ve created a culture that avoids suffering, but that we have lost the capacity or willingness to enter into the pain of others.

our Lord Jesus, who took our suffering upon himself in love . When we can’t enter into the sufferings of our sisters, brothers and neighbors, the Christ we embody in our neighborhoods is a shallow distortion of the Jesus we encounter in Scripture. The rich flavors of gospel that we are called to convey are watered down. The avoidance of suffering leads us to take shortcuts that steer us clear of human pain, difficult situations and hurt people. Neighbors who struggle with mental illness or homelessness need people who will walk with them as friends and bear some of their burdens. But this intimate calling demands much of us. Too often our faith communities prefer to outsource deep care by giving people in need food, clothing or money and then sending them on their way.

They go on to challenge the notion of patience as passive waiting, noting that this false conception is often used by those in power to keep marginalized people under control. “[ Not] a few among those in very influential positions have counseled patience simply to avoid necessary changes in church and society. . . . [Rather,] patience means to enter actively into the thick of life and to fully bear the suffering within and around us.”

p.86-Fasting and other forms of self-discipline are important not primarily because they make us better individuals but because they remind us that the Story that gives us our identity is not primarily about me and my desires.

The local church is the crucible in which we are forged as the patient people of God. We have been united with each other in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. As we mature together into the fullness of Christ (Eph 4: 13), over time and in our places, we learn patience by forgiving and being reconciled to one another. Our brothers and sisters may incessantly annoy us. But we are called in Christ to love and to be reconciled to them.

p.87-In those difficult times, it’s natural for us to want to fix these struggles from a distance or to run from them altogether. But we learn patience by immersion, journeying faithfully alongside those who are suffering. It’s easy, for example, to lob advice or judgment when a friend’s marriage is falling apart. It’s more complex, and more demanding, to sit down with the couple, to listen, to work slowly and conversationally toward healing, to celebrate reconciliation or to grieve a divorce.

p.91-Driven by a desire to love our neighbors, we handed out thousands of dollars of goods every week. But after years of doing this, we found that it had had little transformative effect on our neighborhood. Friendships weren’t being forged. Lives weren’t being radically changed. In some instances, we were probably even doing harm by fostering dependency on our handouts. So we decided to wind down the pantry ministries and find new, more engaged ways of caring for our neighbors. Rather than handing people stuff and sending them away, we tried to meet personally with people who came to the church with needs.

Churches are the embodiment of Christ and essential to God's work in the world. Churches, including intentional communities, house churches, local congregations and larger associations of congregations, are the primary way in which Christ’s followers are to work in the world. Eugene Peterson says, “A Christian congregation, the church in your neighborhood, has always been the primary location for getting this way and truth and life of Jesus believed and embodied.”


p.101-that the United States comprises 5 percent of the world’s population but consumes 30 percent of the world’s resources. According to the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, the average American, in his or her pursuit of “the good life,” consumes as many resources as thirty-five people from India and fifty-three people from China.

p.107-When we’re under the aegis of nationalism, we forget that God is reconciling all creation, and it becomes too easy to demonize other nations and inflict all manner of destruction upon them.

Nationalistic faith is a shortcut around trusting God to carry out God’s mission of reconciliation. Nationalism is also a shortcut around our call to be peacemakers.

wherever an ambassador is, she is standing on the sovereign soil of her home country. So if the British ambassador is in line at a deli in Washington, D.C., she is standing on British soil. We are ambassadors of the kingdom of God with a sovereign mandate often at odds with a culture of violence and alienation. Our allegiance is not to a country but to a person: Jesus.

p.110-that “Church Growth people assume that you can make Christians the way you make cars and sausages.” 7 And like the industrialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there is a real sense in which the church growth movement has succeeded in some places, particularly in the North American suburbs. But we come back to the question, “At what cost?” You can leverage the homogeneous unit principle to grow a huge church . You can use big screens and the latest technology, combined with the trendiest music and most exciting preachers, to give your church an attractive sheen. But what is the fruit that it produces? And what is the cost of the apparent success of megachurches to brother and sister churches in adjacent urban and older suburban areas? Statistics show that the vast majority of church growth under this model comes from “‘ switchers’—people who move from one church to another based on the perception and experience of the programming.”

p.119-A great deal of damage has been done in our churches and in our communities by our failure to be attentive to God’s reconciliation of all things. As we embrace the complex interconnectedness of people and places, as we think more extensively about the ramifications of our decisions, and as we bring more and diverse voices to the table, the pace of our life together will inevitably slow. God , who is not in a hurry, has called us into a life that is attentive to God’s reconciling work.

p.124-“the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” 4 Our contention, following Chesterton , is that when we take shortcuts for the sake of ease or efficiency, we dilute the vibrant joy of the gospel. In a culture dominated by convenience, our churches must recover the deep significance of good work.

p.131-Some people approach the Bible the same way, looking to Scripture as a comprehensive roadmap that should lead them through life with a fair amount of certainty and efficiency. We wonder, though, if this asks the Bible to be something it was never intended to be. The Jews didn’t look to the Hebrew Scriptures primarily to find answers but to help them know the right questions to ask. Scripture was the starting point for a lifelong conversation with God that took place within the context of the larger community. For both of us, Scripture is more of a compass than a roadmap. The compass points to Jesus as True North. That’s where the journey— the conversation, the relationship— starts.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We are impatient, anxious to see the whole picture, but God lets us see things slowly, quietly. The Church [has] to learn how to wait.” - Pope Francis, quoted in Slow Church.

Slow Church, written by C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison (IVP, 2014), is a book that encourages an alternative way of living as the church today. This alternative isn’t new, it’s actually quite ancient, quite rooted in Jesus. But it’s an alternative to what is causing a great deal of spiritual exhaustion today, an exhaustion caused by a church or religious “experience” that is mass produced and exists not for the health of the person but for the reproducibility and market value of the franchise.

Smith and Pattison’s angle is influenced by the “slow food” movement. The “slow food” movement says that personal, communal, and global wellness are tied to the local farmers and craft-peoples – that the best is the smaller, the local, the particular of a specific season and place. “Slow food” speaks a firm, No! to the reduction of a human person to a calorie-intake machine. Instead, it says, “Taste what is local and can only be found here in this time, with these people.”

Smith and Pattison’s Slow Church is about Christian spirituality with a similar DNA to the “slow food” movement. They are inviting us into the beauties of the particular and teaching us how to participate.

Within my context, I receive many people’s stories of spiritual burnout and exhaustion. By the time we meet one another, many of their stories are littered and empty. They feel worn through by the meaningless attraction of a crowd to fancy worship services; we’ve found one another because they desire to practice a particular way of life, a life which they feel would be the most “attractional” thing they could truly offer.

Their exhaustion often comes when the practice of a way of life is sidelined and what’s celebrated is a cheap attempt to draw a crowd or make a spectacle. They see this ideal as something similar to a Jesus who listened to satan and did jump from the temple top. They have felt that what is fast and “effective” for drawing a crowd is celebrated and what is slow and necessary to produce real life is left as optional.

As we finish talking, the left over question has always been: What is “success” for us?

Slow Church responds. Success is “Conviviality” (a living-with) one another in a particular time, a particular place, and with the particular purpose of attending to the way of Jesus and becoming sensitive to the work of God’s Spirit. For, “Fast and slow, [writes Horneré] are not just rates of change. They are shorthand for ways of being, or philosophies of life. Fast is busy, controlling, agressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality. Slow is the opposite: calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity. It is about making real and meaningful connections – with people, culture, work, food, everything” (p. 13).

“How?” my companions ask. “How can we practice a life of following Jesus that’s not diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship to Jesus that happens in the context of Christian community?”

See, they view the fast-food style of attracting a crowd with its promise of a “spiritual high that’ll get you through the week,” as lacking real spiritual substance (at best) and distracting from the real Christian life and hope (at worst). The real life to be had is not about spiritual highs about getting through (or to get to heaven when we die) but about the unfolding reign of God in the present moment.

Slow Church works to answer the, How? through examining the “Ethics, Ecology, and Economy,” of the way of Jesus and the people gathering in faith for Jesus.

The ethics (read here: the pattern of sharing a common life with others), Smith and Pattison write, are, “rooted in the natural, the human, and spiritual cultures of a particular place. {We must focus on] a distinctively local expression of the global body of Christ. And if we’re with are being called to live with a particular people of a place, then this means we will clash with the homogenous practices found in many ”fast food“ churches today, where only people of a certain socio-economic or ethnic status are gathering together (which is a practice founded on crowd-making principles [read: “church” growth], a practice recognizing that it’s simply easier to make a crowd when there are less differences between people …this is counter-Acts and counter-Paul, both of which speak that the ”great mystery of God" is that Jews and Gentiles are being made into a single people for God’s great redemptive purposes.(Eph. 1.9–10)).

So then, faithfulness, not numbers, must become the “metric of success”, the aim of the people. And many have proposed that if the church focused on faithfulness as its principle ethos, the number of people interested in this life would also be affected.

This ethos of faithfulness is practiced through stability and patience.

Stability is about staying put and staying with a people …sharing life with people who we must learn to forgive rather than abandon when times get tough. Patience is the inner quality that makes stability work. It’s a posture of reliance on God our Father that we receive as we’re immersed in the Scriptures and find our inner restlessness is challenged.

The next part of Slow Church’s “how” is Ecology. This is a section that focuses on cleaning up our lives (Wholeness), our perception of work (Work), and the perception of being more significant if you make more money or work more hours (Sabbath). The essence of these chapters is that the way of Jesus is a counter-culture story. For many of us, the story we hear is that having a fragmented attention (or even pledging allegiance to multiple dominant things, but not sensing a conflict of interests) is preferred. …that you are what you do, and if what you do makes more money then who you are is more culturally signficant. …and that if we don’t keep working, the whole world will fall apart – it’s up to us!

Yes, Jesus is counter to these stories and the words in Slow Church invite us to hear Jesus’ take on these things. Their hope is an ecological refreshing of our lives.

The final section is on Economy which can be summarized by awakening to Enough-ness instead of scarcity. Seeing God as a loving God who has made enough for all allows us to be hospitable, to pour our excess into the lives of others, and to find gratitude within ourselves (which a gift from God as well).

Slow Church took a neat angle in comparing the essence of the “slow food” movement with a living Christian faith. I apprecaite the parallel and believe the authors provide some great questions to think through. This happens primarily as chapter ends. There you’ll find some thought provoking questions; these would be great to think through with a group of friends.

The best setting for this book would be a discussion group who is looking to improve the health of their local congregation. If they feel their congregation is focusing on the wrong priorities or attempting to franchise the faith, taking its substance and real taste away, then Slow Church would be a great dialog piece.

In conclusion, I say, Yes, success is found in “conviviality”, in living a real life together, noticing one another, noticing Jesus, and discerning the work of God’s Spirit. This takes time and it takes a focused, dedicated people. Distracted, frenzied people will find it harder to truly live, to truly experience the work of grace for and within themselves. If we want to come alive as Jesus invites us to do, we will find ourselves slowing down to the eternal pace of God; we will taste the Christian communal experience that is local and done with other people, not just beside them; and we will all discover our fit within the very simple, almost barter system of God’s loving economy.

[Christina Brandsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really good! I appreciated that the authors are regular people involved in this slow church life in their own congregations, not researchers prescribing something onto churches without lived experience.

I agreed with most of it. In a state of transience, I struggled with the elevation of stability as a better way, but also felt convicted by it. I think there's something to staying in and investing in a place and a community. I haven't done that well, but I am grateful to currently be in a community group that is thinking through these things and practicing many of these slow church practices well!


Lots of insights:

Intro:
Following Jesus has been diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship undertaken in the context of a Christian community.

Amateur comes from "lover" - a passionate love for the thing itself separate from the compensation that could come from it

Chapter 2:
-slow church happens when people live, work, worship, go to school, eat, grow, learn, heal, and play in proximity to each other

-homogeneity and quantifiable results - flaws of the church growth movement

Chapter 3:
-sending people from one church to another should be the exception, not the rule and should be part of the work of the church, not accidental in the course of an individual's pursuit of his or her fulfillment - stability
-what were the effects of your move on your church?
-where are the third places (neither home nor work) in your community? Is your congregation engaged in that place?

Chapter 4:
-the health and fruitfulness of a plant diminishes each time it is uprooted

Chapter 5:
-How much life can feasibly be shared when people live an hour or more away from each other? The further one lives from the locus of church activity, the greater the inertia that must be overcome in order to participate

-quaker practice of the clearness committee - 4-5 people gather to help the discerner - meeting for a few hours for silence, unhurried, prayerful, no advice, questions, confidential, and then the process continues by holding the person in the light (parker palmer)

Chapter 6:
-all work must have productive and protective aspects - good work is done in cooperation with community

Chapter 7:
-pause our striving and start abiding - sabbath (radical grace)

-What is the manna for our church - how do we recognize and memorialize God's abundant provision? Contemplation and reflection on God - sabbath contemplation helps us reflect on the work we're engaged in and how and why we do it

Chapter 10:
-Christian hospitality isn't a transaction or impersonal charity, it's seeing in the other, the image of God and giving space for both people to reveal authentic selves to each other

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10

“Church cannot be franchised”

What is the goal of church? Is it just to fill seats? Or is there a deeper purpose. This is the question I see the authors asking essentially. However, it seems they spend more time telling the audience how not to do church, then giving practical advice on how to do it well. That's not really fair, as they do spend some time on how to practice slow church, but my impression is that too much time was spent on the negative.

As far as the actually issues they see with the church, well they are myriad, and in my opinion, well-founded for the most part when seen through the lens of the overall goal of the church.
As the western church: we seek to add programs that have been successful at other churches, rather than assessing the needs of our own church specifically. This also forces us to have reliance on the programs, rather than on God, through whom every program stands or falls. It's as if we have it perfectly backwards, and forget that the thing that makes church successful is the Holy Spirit
We live in the kingdom, and should live by its mandates, adapting the world to it, rather than adapting the kingdom to the world to a degree that we compromise its message. We have conformed to culture, buying into its ideas of haste, marketing, and business as benchmarks by which to measure the church.
We have become divorced from our communities. They wouldn’t notice if we left, or if we arrived
This leads to compartmentalized Christianity (Christianity that is divorced from deep community, or consumer church) leads to dualism. "The further we live from church, the greater the inertia we must overcome to be involved with it." Church is being franchised in isolated pockets, having nothing to do with the community they claim to represent. Western church is entirely revolving around getting people in seats, and balks at such missions as the Glory of God, relegating it to a subset of its goal of growth for the sake of growth. What's worse, its not even doing that, as it dies in the pursuit of growth, shriveling slowly, which is the only thing it does slowly.

We then, should seek to build a lasting church, with deep roots in our communities, as we support one another in the manner that is exlempified Biblically. We too easily convince ourselves that the model presented in the Bible isn't feasible, but I think we lie to ourselves to salve our conscious.


"Practice seventh generation thinking, not seven day thinking"

"If the golden rule were implemented, the economy would not last a week."

[Ryan Linkous · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smith and Pattison offer a great analysis of the issues surrounding ecclesial speed.

I thought parts 1 & 2 ("Ethics" and "Ecology") were better than the final part ("Economy"). Throughout, they offer compelling illustrations and real-world examples to demonstrate how their philosophy of church can actually exist in practice.

The breakdown between their theory and application in broad swathes of churches is that they still offer a very expansive view of what the church is called to do and practice. One could hardly quibble with any of the ways their churches exist in community or the services they render. It's truly transformative. But it still requires all-consuming commitment.

I am interested in churches slowing down. But I think I'd want to apply a little more gas when it comes to more traditional methods of discipleship/catechesis and evangelism/church planting.

One conservative Baptist seminary professor with an expansive theological mind once said to me that he appreciates what higher church traditions offer concerning worship and contemplation. But he criticized them for doing very little by way of outreach and evangelism. I think Smith and Pattison would like to do all of that if you redefined evangelism as "wholeness" and "reconciliation" and if you had a pretty specific vision of what a church's pursuit of justice should look like. I don't think they would mind suggesting there are variances on how to pursue their vision that don't require uniformity. In fact, they might insist upon it. But I still believe it's worth staking out this space.

My remarks are a little critical, but this book is still very valuable (I gave it 4 stars!). I would recommend reading the Intro and Parts 1 and 2 (and only Part 3 if you are really inspired).

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book. I did and it felt like the authors had taken everything I’d been reading and thinking and caring about and gradually beginning to try to live over the past ten years and put it all together in one place with beauty and their own experience. Church, place, stability, reconciliation, wholistic gospel, work, Sabbath, economics, household, hospitality, Eucharist, common table, potlucks, conversation, lay empowerment, scripture as drama, salvation as part of a people being gathered, intentional community, contextualization of the gospel, local focus, sustainability, care for the land, nonviolence, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, Taylorism, individualism, disembodied spirituality, learning from the early church, navigating political partisanship, asset-based community development, thanksgiving, and storytelling- all there and interwoven as they should be. Pohl, L’Engle, Fitch, Vanier, Berry, Jennings, Cavanaugh, Nouwen, Hauerwas, Yoder, Newbegin, Hirsch, Volf, Putnam, Clapp, Ellul, Peterson, Merton, Heschel, Lohfink, Wirzba, Brueggemann, Crouch, Wilson-Hartgrove, Roxburgh, John Paul, Benedict, Francis, Foster, Bonhoeffer and Mr. Rogers, all in one place and in harmony. Accessible and transformational.

[Kelsey Grissom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. Slow food, slow living, commitment to diversity and to recognizing strengths and resources outside of numbers and wealth…these things are all my jam. But somehow this book just never quite clenched it. For one, it belongs to the score of books that have two authors and that make that fact endlessly awkward in the writing. For another, although I’m sure the authors have great hearts, it just kept coming off as preachy/aggressively (or naively?) optimistic. I kept getting the impression that aside from lofty ideals and a couple of interesting case studies (that happened to be their own churches), the authors just didn’t have much to go on. Additionally, the authors quote a few authors whose work I happen to have read…and then construct whole chapters that pretty much paraphrase those authors’ works. And yes, they gave the author credit for the quote they used…but not for the rest of the chapter.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended by my pastor, and it has taken me a couple of years to finally read it. I really like the idea of "slow church" - a church that is deeply rooted in a specific community, that knows and engages with the community where they are planted, a church that takes the time to build relationship within the congregation, and where every person is an important and valued member with something to share. However, at times I found the book very wordy and difficult to follow. I also had some concerns about the use and interpretation of scripture in some places. That being said, there were some valuable ideas. And as the book was recommended by my pastor for our entire congregation to read, I am going to discuss my thoughts and concerns with him to hopefully get another perspective.