Review of Slow Church
Authors: C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison
Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.
246 pages, including end notes
Reviewed by Mark A. Jacobson
Inspired by the Slow Food movement in the late 80s and motivated by the conviction that the McDonaldization of the American church—the Church Growth Movement—remains the default thinking for many congregations, Chris Smith and John Pattison have written a book with the goal “to help inaugurate what we hope is a broad and long and even slow conversation on the topic” of how best to impact our neighborhoods with the Gospel (16).
The term “McDonaldization” is used throughout the book to refer to the values of the Church Growth Movement, values that include homogeneity, top-down governance and decision-making, an emphasis on numbers, efficiency, predictability and control. Smith and Pattison set against those values the values of Slow Church, which include quality never sacrificed to quantity, being purposeful but unhurried, community as opposed to individualism, a bottom-up thoughtful conversation about the mission, goals and direction of a church, all in the context of the firm belief that a local congregation should view itself as fulfilling a dynamic, fluid, synergistic role in its neighborhood.
“Neighborhood” instead of the more general “community” is intentional. One of the chief metaphors used by the authors for the church is that of rootedness. The metaphor emphasizes the concept of “local” in “local church.” Attractional churches may draw people in from far outside the geographical margins of the community and end up not resembling the church’s neighborhood. Satellite churches are largely shaped and influenced by a source outside of the community in which it is located. The authors urge the alternative model of a church being an integral part of its neighborhood. This kind of church has grown up in the neighborhood soil. It reflects all its unique characteristics—racial mix, income disparities, education, and so forth. Slow churches are patient churches, skeptical of the “advantages” of uprooting and relocating. The authors have written this book “as a way of reimagining what it means to be communities of believers gathered and rooted in particular places at a particular time” (15).
For those familiar with the philosophy and distinctive practices of evangelical Friends congregations this book will have a familiar ring to it. Passive engagement of the culture, decision-making by consensus, relationship-building, conversing with each other and listening to one another are values shared by the Friends and Slow Church advocates. This is not to suggest that the book is a Quaker manifesto; these values are seen primarily from the standpoint of New Testament teaching regarding the nature of the church.
The book is structured around another metaphor, that of the family meal. The opening chapter—“A Theological Vision for Slow Church”—is the appetizer, with three courses following. The first course is Ethics, which sets forth the principle that quality must never be sacrificed to quantity or any of its siblings, such as efficiency, expediency, predictability, homogeneity and control, all virtues of the Church Growth Movement. Anything of lasting value takes time, and time over time. The second course is Ecology, which places the local church within the larger context of God’s reconciliation of all things in the culture. The authors constantly remind their readers that church ministry is holistic, potentially impacting every aspect of one’s neighborhood. The third course is Economy, which celebrates the abundance of the resources that God has provided for churches, emphasizing a gratitude that leads to generosity and, especially, hospitality.
The authors do not set forth their own ministries as reproducible models to be cut and pasted into any other neighborhood, which is the genius of McDonaldization. Chris is involved in a Christian Church located in urban Indianapolis that forty or fifty years ago had two thousand members (less today); John in a Friends Church in the small town of Silverton, Oregon. The two locales couldn’t be more dissimilar. Both churches, however, are exploring what it means to be deeply connected to the neighborhood in which each is situated. This causes the reader to think more it terms of principles behind Slow Church than to duplicate specific ministries used throughout the book as examples of those principles.
Do not look for a full-blown description of what it means to be a Slow Church. Much more could have been said, but the authors limited themselves to certain basic concepts at the core of Slow Church thinking. As with any book on church ministry, readers will agree and disagree with thoughts presented. Slow Church, however, deserves a second and third reading, especially for those weaned on Church Growth principles and thus for whom “Slow Church” may seem anachronistic, a throwback to another time and place.
This book is an invitation to think biblically about church ministry, an invitation that church leaders and members should accept with gratitude.
