Category Archives: IM Book Review

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”

SLOW CHURCH WEEK 1 The Convivial Church Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts… – Matthew Arnold * * * In their revelatory new book, Slow Church, Chris Smith and John Pattison reflect upon the following important words from the beginning ofContinue reading “Slow Church Week 1: The Convivial Church”