Slow Church Study Guide

C. Christopher Smith, John Pattison

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780830841301
• eBook ISBN:
  9780830894260
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

High-speed internet. Rapid rewards. Quick thinking. Fast food. Fast . . . church?Slow Church by Chris Smith and John Pattison has been eagerly received by a people who are ready to be invited out of franchise faith and back into the kingdom of God. This eleven-session study guide provides an opportunity to reflect on the message of this groundbreaking book both individually and in community. Each session features

• A guide to lectio divina
• Suggested videos that can be watched online
• A series of in-depth questions expanded from what is currently in the book
• A quote for reflection

Here is an opportunity to begin to develop a deeper and richer community where people know each other well and love one another as Christ loved the church.

1

A Theological Vision for Slow Church

Read

• Foreword by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: “A Theological Vision for Slow Church”

Facilitator Prep

These and all other resources are available at guide.slowchurch.com.

• Slow Food Manifesto
• Carl Honoré, “In praise of slowness” (video)
• David Fitch, “A Slow Church Ecclesiology” (video)

Welcome

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Trust in the Slow Work of God” (poem)

Lectio Divina

Read the following text with these three questions in mind:

• First reading: What word or phrase touched my heart?
• Second reading: Where does that word or phrase touch my life today?
• Third reading: What is the text calling me to do or become? What is the text calling us to do or become?
  Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.
  Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.
  How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God. (2 Cor 5:14-21 The Message)

Conversation Starters

1. Slow Food, Slow Money, Slow Cities and the other Slow movements differ in scale, scope and strategy. What they have in common is their opposition to what Canadian journalist Carl Honoré describes as “the cult of speed”: a philosophy of life that is controlling, aggressive, impatient, etc. What are some ways we have ceded ground to the cult of speed—in life, society, culture and even in the church?
2. Slow Church suggests that what makes the Slow movements so compelling is that they make possible “real and meaningful” presence. How does Fast Life threaten to short-circuit real and meaningful presence—with God, with one another, with our own selves and with the natural world?
3. “Many churches . . . come dangerously close to reducing Christianity to a commodity that can be packaged, marketed and sold. Instead of cultivating a deep, holistic discipleship that touches every aspect of our lives, we’ve confined the life of faith to Sunday mornings, where it can be kept safe and predictable, or to a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ,’ which can be managed from the privacy of our own home. Following Jesus has been diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship undertaken in the context of Christian community” (14). This is flamethrower language. Why do you agree or disagree with this assessment?
4. Slow Church was written by nonspecialists (20). Neither author is a pastor, church planter or professional theologian. How do the vocations and gifts of people in your congregation who are not church specialists give shape to your church’s life together?
5. No one is a passive observer in the biblical drama. God desires collaboration with humanity, which “undermines our cultural impulse to be consumers and spectators rather than faithful participants in the unwritten fifth act of God’s play” (23). What will happen when more people move from being “church consumers” to coproducers of God’s Story in the world?
6. “Our calling in Christ is to community, to a life shared with others in a local gathering that is an expression of Christ’s body in our particular place. The people of God become a sort of demonstration plot for what God intends for all humanity and all creation” (29-30). What are the theological and practical convictions of your congregation that give shape to following together in the way of Jesus?
7. What are the shared practices that help form your congregation as a local church community? What are the particular strategic initiatives to which God has called your local congregation, in its particular time and place, in participation with God’s mission?

Closing Thought

Gerhard Lohfink, Does God Need the Church? Toward a Theology of the People of God:

It can only be that God begins in a small way, at one single place in the world. There must be a place, visible, tangible, where the salvation of the world can begin: that is, where the world becomes what it is supposed to be according to God’s plan. Beginning at that place, the new thing can spread abroad, but not through persuasion, not through indoctrination, not through violence. Everyone must have the opportunity to come and see. All must have the chance to behold and test this new thing. Then, if they want to, they can allow themselves to be drawn into the history of salvation that God is creating. Only in that way can their freedom be preserved. What drives them to the new thing cannot be force, not even moral pressure, but only the fascination of a world that is changed. (27)

2

Terroir

Taste and See

Read

• Chapter 2: “Terroir: Taste and See”

Facilitator Prep

• David Fitch’s alternative criteria for measuring church success
• Alan Roxburgh, “Why Join God in the Neighborhood?” (video)
• Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens and Dwight Friesen, “The New Parish Movement” (video)

Welcome

Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” (poem)

Lectio Divina

Then when you pray, GOD will answer.

You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, “Here I am.”

If you get rid of unfair practices,

quit blaming victims,

quit gossiping about other people’s sins,

If you are generous with the hungry

and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,

Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,

your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

I will always show you where to go.

I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—

firm muscles, strong bones.

You’ll be like a well-watered garden,

a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,

rebuild the foundations from out of your past.

You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,

restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,

make the community livable again. (Is 58:9-12 The Message)

Conversation Starters

1. “Slow Church is rooted in the natural, human and spiritual cultures of a particular place. It is a distinctively local expression of the glo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• How to Use This Study Guide
• 1 A Theological Vision for Slow Church
• 2 Terroir: Taste and See
• 3 Stability: Fidelity to People and Place
• 4 Patience: Entering into the Suffering of Others
• 5 Wholeness: The Reconciliation of All Things
• 6 Work: Cooperating with God’s Reconciling Mission
• 7 Sabbath: The Rhythm of Reconciliation
• 8 Abundance: The Economy of Creation
• 9 Gratitude: Receiving the Good Gifts of God
• 10 Hospitality: Generously Sharing God’s Abundance
• 11 Dinner Table Conversation as a Way of Being Church
• Praise for Slow Church Study Guide
• About the Authors
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright