Slow Church Book Review
(I use capital C on Church to designate
Church Universal)
The primary work of
the Slow Church is not attracting people to our church buildings but rather
cultivating together the resurrection life of Christ, by deeply and selflessly
loving our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and even our enemies. Quote from book,
In an age of impermanence, in the land of programs &
packaging, how does the Church of Jesus Christ express it’s calling &
commission? Well…we build buildings, contract research teams, re-brand our
corporate design strategy & put on a concert. This of course is a bit
exaggerated but all within the realm of possibility.
We do Church in the US like companies expand their presence in a region…we franchise. Slow Church, a book written by C. Christopher Smith & John Pattison offers up a profoundly different vision for what the Church is & does to be true to its original calling.
Both astute observers of history & sociology, Slow
Church is resonate with historic landmarks & turning points for ways of
living we often don’t even recognize today. Without being Luddites, the authors
reveal the good & the bad of industrialism & the power of the
machine. One of the book’s strengths is
its ability to go from lofty historical observations & their sociological
implications to the daily mundaneness needed for substantive change. That is
indeed what the slow movement is about. How do I live out my values in my
marriage, my home, & most often missed in Evangelicalism’s view on Church,
my neighborhood?
I first met Chris Smith at a Missional Learning Commons gathering
outside Chicago where he was speaking on another work of his entitled the “Virtue
of Dialogue.” As someone deeply concerned with “how we talk with one another”
his writing quickly won me over as a fan of his take on spirituality, faith
& the church. I was quickly drawn to the warmth & welcoming demeanor of
Chris as he spoke but more than that the obvious weightiness of his observations
& challenges he put forth. I had no idea he had written a book just about
to come out. I soon discovered his leadership in the Englewood Review of Books
(http://erb.kingdomnow.org/ I highly recommend it as a source for good
books & commentary on culture & faith.
There are people much more scholarly & astute who can
parse the theology or accuracy of Slow Church but I am going to go another
direction. I found the book troubling. How? It is too true to follow. I mean
this in a good way. I am overwhelmed with the books implications for my
personal life. Over the years many of us have planted churches, served on the
staff, committed our lives to what ostensibly we thought was the Great Commission
only to find later it was our own hubris & the same in our fellow leaders
who took us there. For that I am humbled & sad. Listening to Chris that day & then later
reading Slow Church I found myself deeply convicted about what I am doing to
root myself in a deeply authentic and honest community of believers. I admit
it. I go to a large mega-church & do so for many good reasons. But Slow Church
shared its theological take on the state of the Church with an honesty that is
so lacking in many books of this ilk. I have found most books on how to do
Church find it is easy to critique & much harder to do & be the answer
we seek.
Both authors would consistently talk about their struggle to
reconcile the their own brokenness & that of the people in their
communities to the Cross of Christ. Both offered up what Eugene H. Peterson
called “long obedience in the same direction.” I so appreciated this posture as
I am one who often feels overwhelmed & overly idealistic. But it was this
admission of how much of me this shift would take that allows for the book Slow
Church to make any sense. I always want the quick & flow chart schematic
with a 12 week course I can offer my leaders. I want a clear-cut delineation as
to how I was doing it wrong & how quickly I could get my staff, team or cohorts
to doing it right. The book will convict those attitudes of the heart. It will
only befuddle your desires for pragmatic tactics.
To establish fidelity in a community is to plant the
entirety of your life in that place. Clearly informed by the writing of Wendell
Berry, both authors point time and time again to the need to “commit” to a place,
a neighborhood, a people by living with them. This missional perspective is
taking place across the church today & I for one am sorely in lack of its tutelage.
Slow Church is a treatise of sorts on the missional character one needs not
just to plant a church or “do” church but to be human & a reconciled
follower of Christ in that setting. In that sense, it is about a slow
spirituality. Both authors affirm that there is a real observable praxis to see
the fruit of the Slow Church movement.
It is amazing that a book of this length (not too short not
to long) so holistically shares a vision for the Church and community. Caring
for God’s creation takes on an ethical outworking as how we treat the very land
upon which our homes and business reside reflects on how we view the created
order & its ultimate Progenitor. Both Chris & John consistently offer
up a “sanctifying” engagement that always brings me back to the query, “what am
I about today?”
It is clearly evident that this treaties has been born from
the flesh & blood of obediently walking it out. The consistent attitude of hospitality
nearly becomes a “theological centering act” as the table of God & the
table of humankind become the same. Is the nourishment of my own life, family
or business at the expense of others? Who are those “others” and do they live
within proximity of me so I can welcome them in?
There is a way of “being” the Church. That is what Chris and
John point to chapter after chapter. That is why this work is oddly enough on
some level more of a practical “how to” book that I would have originally
perceived (given its exceptional breadth of references & astute read on the
times). In a writing style that reveals many more books to come, both authors
don’t talk down but to. They don’t offer easy answers but do offer up balanced
& honest limitations as truth as well. They have created a near
self-contained treatise on how to do church in your neighborhood. I know I will
e-read this over & over again & keep it front & center in my
library on how “Life meets the Church. For many the read could be a road upon
which to come back home.
