Slow Church, A Summary

Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus

Chapter 1

Authors Chris Smith and John Pattison begin with the simile that describes Holy Scripture to be like improvisation.  Improv is as an actor saying when he enters a scene, “yes, and.”  When the Church is understood in terms of the “and” as in it being the next phase in God’s redemptive plan it means that we have a roll to play and it is not one of waiting only.  According to the authors the concept of Slow Church is to play out our part in a manner resembling God.  And God is slow, slow as in patient and long suffering.  The Slow Church idea (and I love this quote) is “in the world, not of the world, so we can be for the world.”  They then bring the truth of God being patience and the Church being for the world by describing God using His people in His redemption plan by patient collaboration. 

Smith and Pattison rightly state that the God’s collaboration with man is marred because of the sinful will of mankind.  They seem to have a good understanding of human depravity but have yet to flesh out how they understand the will of God and the will of man intermixing.  They correctly identify a major problem in the west as it works against what God wants to do with His Church.  That problem is the idol of individualism.  Although we more easily identify with Abraham because of his individualism we fail if we don’t see that God used him to start a community and that God repeatedly works to start communities and grow communities.

The subject of joy is next for the authors see it as natural that communities based on the victory of Jesus over death would have deep and profound joy.  With such joy we can holistically love one another within the Church.  It is how we are to love one another in the Church that the rest of the book will explain.