Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus

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Fast food. Fast cars. Fast and furious. Fast forward. Fast . . . church?

The church is oftenidealized (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 to leave franchise faith behind and enter 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.

C. Christopher Smith is editor of The Englewood Review of Books and a member of the Englewood Christian Church community on the urban Near Eastside of Indianapolis. He is the coauthor of Slow Church. Chris's writing has appearedin Books and Culture, Sojourners, The Christian Century and Indiana Green Living.

John Pattison's essays, articles and reviews have appeared in Relevant, Books Culture and other magazines around the country. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he is the coauthor of Besides the Bible.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (MDiv, Duke Divinity School) is a writer, preacher, and moral activist. He and his wife, Leah, founded the Rutba House, a house of hospitality in Durham, North Carolina. Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, a popular education center in Durham committed to "making surprising friendships possible," and is an associate minister at St. John's Missionary Baptist Church.Jonathan is the author or coauthor of more than a dozen books, including Reconstructing theGospel, The Third Reconstruction, Strangers at My Door, Common Prayer, The Awakening of Hope, The Wisdom of Stability, The New Monasticism, and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers.