Author Archives: Chaplainmike

Slow Church Week 5 The Church of Word and Table Christian practice in matters of spiritual formation goes badly astray when it attempts to construct or organize ways of spirituality apart from the ordinariness of life. And there is nothing more ordinary than a meal. Abstract principles — the mainstay of so much of whatContinue reading “Slow Church Week 5: The Church of Word and Table”

Slow Church Week 4 The Overflowing Church Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, “the least of these my brethren.” – Wendell Berry What Are PeopleContinue reading “Slow Church Week 4: The Overflowing Church”

Slow Church Week 3 The Contemplative Church Wonder is the only adequate launching pad for exploring a spirituality of creation, keeping us open-eyed, expectant, alive to life that is always more than we can account for, that always exceeds our calculations, that is always beyond anything we can make. – Eugene Peterson Christ Plays inContinue reading “Slow Church Week 3: The Contemplative Church”

Slow Church Week 2 The Neighborhood Church The ways employed in our North American culture are conspicuously impersonal: programs, organizations, techniques, general guidelines, information detached from place. In matters of ways and means, the vocabulary of numbers is preferred over names, ideologies crowd out ideas, the gray fog of abstraction absorbs the sharp particularities ofContinue reading “Slow Church Week 2: The Neighborhood Church”