From Slow Food to Slow Church

Another book I read this summer was Slow Church by C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison.  It was interesting to be reading this one alongside the Barbara Kingsolver book I talked about here.  The authors make the case that our fast food culture that values efficiency, predictability, calculability (measurable results), and control (or illusion of control) has leaked into, not just our food, but into all areas of our life including the church.  They make the case that the values of the Slow Food movement are values to be embraced in our churches.  The authors want us to "reimagine what it means to be communities of believers gathered and rooted in particular places at a particular time." (p.15)

Here are some quotes that I thought were helpful in understanding some of the tenets the authors were trying to present as an introduction to the idea of Slow Church:

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. (p.16)

Slow food wasn’t started by farmers.  It was started by eaters who stood up and declared that they were no longer content to be passive consumers of industrialized food.  Thus, we think it’s appropriate that a lot of the energy in the early staged of the Slow Church conversation comes from non-specialists who are motivated by a love of God, a love for the body of Christ in the world, and a desire to be more than passive consumers of religious goods and services. We want more risk, beauty and wonder than can be experienced at a spiritual filling station.  We want some skin in the game.  (p.20)

            “Eating is an agricultural act,” Wendell Berry famously said, and Slow food views consumers as active participants in the production process.  Eaters who know where their food comes from, know how it got to their table and support local farmers become nothing less than co-producers. P.20

            Similarly, Slow Church is more than a consumerist experience.  It goes beyond just offering people a safe haven on Sunday morning from the storms of fast life.  Slow Church is a way of being authentically connected as co-producers to a Story that is as big as the planet (bigger) and as intimate as our own backyards. (p.20)

The primary work of 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. (p.33)

[Slow church]…sees people not as in or out but as closer or further away from the center [which in this case is Christ]… In one of Wendell Berry’s short stories, the character Burley Coulter says, “The way we are, we are members of each other.  All of us.  Everything.  The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.” (p.34)

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There are lots of other good ideas about church in this book and I will share more about this in future posts.